Training with Coach Ric During the COVID Pandemic

Ric’s Training
The UK has been in Lockdown since March 23rd, which is 10 weeks ago today. So I figured it’s time to look back over my training to see what I’ve done, and how that’s helping my goals.

We need some background first, which I’ll keep to a minimum, explain what my goals were prior to Lockdown, how they’ve changed, the training I’m currently doing, and what the future may hold for my training. So, without further ado, let’s look at my background.

I’ve been training and racing since 1984 (every year) so my ‘base’ is pretty solid. I’m 51, and for the last ~2.5 years I’ve been attempting to ride my bike every day (which I’ve succeeded in). My goal for 2020 was to ride some road races, qualify for the UCI GF Road Race World Championships in Canada at The Tour of Cambridgeshire, add 10W to my FTP (of last year) and to keep my weight at 64 to 65 kg.

The winter of 2019/2020 (which now seems a million years ago!) was, for me, pretty horrendous. It was extremely wet (which I’m not good with) and I seemed to have done most of my winter training indoors on Zwift. During the first part of March I was starting to fall behind with my training. I hadn’t done sufficient long rides, my FTP had plateaued, and I just wasn’t training enough (due to the poor weather we’d been having). I’d set up a training camp for the latter part of March to start to turn things around so that I could be fit for the Tour of Cambridgeshire. Then we hit lockdown. At this point, my average over the winter and into March I’d been averaging a consistent 8 hours per week every week, my CTL (chronic training load / aka Strava Fitness Score) was around 50, and my FTP was around 3.6 W/kg.

How Training Changed
As we entered Lockdown it became obvious that races would start to be cancelled, and so this relieved some pressure on me that I wasn’t quite fit enough yet. Phew! So, my goals shifted a little, build some bigger weeks on the bike (more weekly hours), ensure one MIET session each week, lose some weight. This resulted in the first two weeks of Lockdown of me completing 12 hours each week, which was a sizeable jump up from 8 hours per week. This caused a jump of my CTL by 10 points to 60. Previously, I’d felt that as an ‘older cyclist’ that 12 hours or so per week, was the most time I could sustain on the bike. However, during the latter part of the second week in Lockdown, I started to contemplate a few new ideas, 1) could I manage 12 hours in a week on the turbo trainer, and 2) would more than 12 hours per week be possible?

For the start of week 3, I thought I’d try and do 14 hours of which I’d figure that 12 hours would be on the turbo. Monday was an easy 30-mins recovery spin, and 12 hours was completed by Saturday’s ride. This left me with Sunday’s ride, which was 4 hours and 15 mins. Thus, I was now over 16 hrs for the week. Looking back in my diary, the last time I’d done that much was 12 months previously at a training camp. Prior to that, the last time I did that amount was before Strava existed! However, I managed the 16 hours unscathed, and felt fine from it!

For the next 6 weeks my weekly training hours varied between 16 hours and 16 hours and 50-mins. This was now the highest workload I had put out in, literally, decades (when I was in my 20’s!). For the following week, I’d mentally felt a fraction tired, so I figured I was due a recovery week and did a fraction under 14 hours.

During the seven week block of ~16 hours/week I was able to move from just endurance rides and started to integrate some tempo MIET and TT style TTI work. I included some sprint work (my weakest area), and only needed a slight increase in food intake to cope with the riding.

For the first few weeks of this new training regime, my CTL ramp rate — the rate of increase of my TSS (the metric that is used to measure intensity and endurance) was around 7 points per week. Accordingly, my CTL ( aka fitness score in Strava) rose from 50 to 101, and at the same time my ramp rate has eased off a little (now 5 points per week). My TSB is currently -15, and more importantly my FTP has risen to 4.1 W/kg, while I’ve lost about 1kg. This is now my highest level of fitness since my mid 20’s. Interestingly, it now feels that I could add more to my FTP, so my aim is to now include a little more MIET and TTI work.

What have I discovered about myself?
Undoubtedly, this has been a bit of an adventure discovering how far I could push myself. I’d figured I couldn’t push this hard at my age, but this hasn’t been the case. I’ve had a couple of tough days in the last 10 weeks when I’ve struggled (but you wouldn’t be training correctly if you didn’t). I’ve had one completely disastrous day where I struggled to get above recovery power (but the next day felt absolutely perfect). My longest ride during this period was a fraction over 170 km (currently planning a 200km ride), my biggest week was over 400 km, and most bizarrely (in my opinion) is the fact I’ve put out some huge long distance rides on Zwift (over 100 km, and a fraction under 4 hours). I didn’t think it’d be possible for me to ride much more than 2.5 hours indoors.

The Future
Unfortunately, no one can tell you what FTP you’ll be able to get to. And, importantly, FTP isn’t the only metric you should be looking at. There’s fatigue resistance/endurance; MAP (maximal aerobic power); sprint power; etc. However, I feel that there is more power to come. I’m also curious about how long I can maintain such a weekly training volume. I’d not have thought that this was possible, but such training has health and performance benefits (e.g., lower fat mass, better health markers around glucose, increased mitochondrial density, better fatigue resistance, etc). Of course, downsides could be that you could become exhausted so it’s important to listen to your body, and not push when you’re exhausted.

Most winters I’d avoid bad weather (that hasn’t changed!) but I felt that I couldn’t do long rides on the turbo trainer. I now realise that I can do long rides during the winter when I can’t get outdoors. This will have a knock on effect that I should go into 2021 with a higher level of fitness and not be in the position I was this year (irrespective of the weather).

What Can You Take From This?
It’s important to note, that everyone is different and even if we have the same goals that training would be different between riders. However, there are some commonalities. Increasing overall volume while maintaining some intensity will increase your fitness in certain areas. However, increasing your volume too much or too rapidly will result in your performance dropping off. Increases in volume (so long as you don’t increase too much) will likely result in increasing efficiency (if you sustain the new volume for a long period of time). help with weight management, increase certain aspects of fitness (e.g., fatigue resistance) and may also help with better bike handling skills (as you’ll be riding more, although if all the new riding is indoors then this may be a moot point). Adding in less structured but some occasional moderate and hard efforts can help maintain other aspects of fitness, while increasing the amount of structured moderate and hard work will help increase further aspects of fitness. Drop me an email if you’d like some pointers.