Beasty's objectives for 2010

Beasty

A couple of commutes, an hour on the track, finished off with 90 minutes on the turbo tonight added up to 224km for the week, and a YTD total of 9,688km at 29.3kph, 593km ahead of schedule.

Only 312km now to go, but it looks as if the weather will keep me off the road for a while. I have just taken delivery of a few more VR discs, and I guess I'm going get a bit of practice at them this week.

Planet X

Well done in advance.

Beasty

A paltry 40.7km this week, all on the turbo, making the YTD 9,729 at 29.3kph. The weather, and extended periods in the car trying to overcome the elements left little time (or indeed motivation) for the turbo, and road conditions were to hazardous to get out on the bike.

This was my 2nd lowest weekly total of the year - the only time I did less was after breaking my wrist in last winter's fall. Looking on the bright side, I'm making this my offical winter break!

I'm currently away, and will not be back until Monday afternoon. Hopefully I'll be back on the turbo on Monday evening, but will then be back in Manchester again for a couple of days. I had planned a track session, but this has been cancelled as they are now due to be painting the inside of the track. If conditions improve I may be back to commuting towards the back-end of the week. If not it will be more time on the turbo. Either way I'll be looking to get into the final 100km by the end of the week.

niceonetom

How are you recording your distance on the turbo Beast? I've been using my garmin for HR and cadence as usual but I think it's under-reporting speed and distance (though I don't really care because it matters not). If I cared about "distance" on the turbo, say to achieve some sort of yearly total, I'd investigate.

I remember being told that garmins ordinarily calculate speed from gps and only use the speed signal from the sensor/rear-wheel if it can't get a lock on the satellites... that would get around variation in wheel circumference. I suspect that in the absence of gps data my unit has concluded that I have 14" wheels, hence the measly speeds it claims I'm going...

Anyway, well done. Keep it up.

Beasty

The Tacx VR calculates distance automatically, so it's not an issue

I have used the Garmin 500 on the track in Manchester. As it's indoors the GPS does not work, so I switch it off and use the Garmin speed sensor. You do need to input the wheel circumference (in the bike settings menu from recollection)

Beasty

Further problems with the power supply meant I did not get on the turbo until Wednesday, meaning I had been off any form of bike for 9 days - my longest contiuous break for over 2 years

I still managed 3 turbo and 1 spinning sessions, totalling 169km, and bringing my YTD total to 9,898.6km, at an average speed of 29.4kph.

Only 101.4km left to do, and I would hope to do this during the course of the next week. Unfortunately it looks like I'll be hitting the target on the turbo rather than the road, based on the weather forcast.

Beasty

... 44.6km in 1hr 42min tonight. I spent about 50 minutes doing intervals with some of the local guys - power output was good, and I pushed the CP curve up between 1min and 1min 21s, and hit a peak of 1,005w. Normalised power was 274w over the full distance. The power detail was quite surprising, as I did not feel I was pushing it that hard. Perhaps it's the benefit of the break I had last week showing through, as well as the chance to get back on the road after the icy roads.

When everyone else had had enough, I went up Ardgillan and then did a couple of local laps to knock another 20km or so off the target.

levitronix

1000 watts ! you should put that back into the grid make some money off the ESB

shaungil

levitronix wrote: »

1000 watts ! you should put that back into the grid make some money off the ESB

Presume someone has hooked up a bulb or whatever to a bike. Do you get much out? Is it true that the back up generator in Beasty's demense is in fact BeastY?

Beasty

The Tacx VR is supposed to feed power back into the system - don't get any credit for it though ...

Beasty

YTD total - 10,001.01km

Raam

Nice one

Staro

Great achievement, well done.

RobFowl

You're a legend...

Seriously well done

kennyb3

Savage stuff Beasty!

peterako

Wow! With Weeks to spare and through the bad weather too!!

Well done!

20,000 for next year??

Beasty

peterako wrote: »

20,000 for next year??

When I started this it was not with the expectation with doing much racing - perhaps giving the track and some TTs a go

As it turned out, although I cut my overall distance down a bit during the racing season, there were some weeks I was doing too much - it takes time to recover, particularly at my age. As a result, on some days my racing really suffered. Hence next year I will be more focussed on race preparation, rather than overall distance

Having said that, the 10,000km has done me the world of good. This year's efforts have, IMO, given me an ideal base for next year, and I feel much stronger as a result of all the work I have done.

shaungil

Legend

NeedMoreGears

Superb!

Lumen

Beasty needs a bigger challenge for 2011.

Lets break both of his arms!

Beasty

Lumen wrote: »

Beasty needs a bigger challenge for 2011.

Lets break both of his arms!

As you know, moderating this forum can be more challenging than cycling 10,000km;)

RobFowl

Lumen wrote: »

Beasty needs a bigger challenge for 2011.

Lets break both of his arms!

I've arranged frost and ice this weekend as requested Lumen

Just tell Beasty he needs to do some more intervals while cornering in the dark

Beasty

RobFowl wrote: »

I've arranged frost and ice this weekend as requested Lumen

Just tell Beasty he needs to do some more intervals while cornering in the dark

I was half-expecting some missile to take me out as I was heading through bandit territory towards Balbriggan last night with 9,990km on the clock ...

ROK ON

Well done Beasty. I think given your power stats that you should change your name to The Generator.

I think you are right on doing the distance. All cyclists I think need a big year in terms of milage at some stage. I am now doing certain types of training that I am not sure that I would have been capable of doing without firs having done some big endurance base building.

English Bob

Well done Beasty!!
Great going.

midonogh

Well done Beasty. Great achievement

biomed32

well chuffed for you Beasty, a fantastic achievment!!

lafors

Brilliant Achievement Beasty!
Enjoyed reading your updates this year.

Next Year: 10,000km......on a unicycle

Beasty

I've not been on the bike since hitting the 10,000km mark on Wednesday, so YTD total still stands at 10,001km at 29.3kph.

If the weather relents I may try a commute this week, otherwise it will be a few more turbo sessions between now and the end of the year to keep things rolling over.

I've started a new thread for 2011, and will be winding this one down over the next couple of weeks. Thanks to everyone for their supportive comments and advice during the year.

GlennaMaddy

Beasty wrote: »

Having said that, the 10,000km has done me the world of good. This year's efforts have, IMO, given me an ideal base for next year, and I feel much stronger as a result of all the work I have done.

You're absolutely flying at the moment, and looking good for next year.

There are people I work with who drive to the office everyday , their cars wouldn't have covered 10,000km this year.

Beasty

4 turbo sessions for a total of 129km this week. YTD now stands at 10,130km at 29.4kph

Each session I've been trying to include a 10 minute all-out interval, pushing up the power output to around 310w this evening. It can be pretty tortuous doing this sort of thing on a turbo. I then add a 40-60 minute Real Life Video to get some distance in

No more commutes this year, so I will close the year out with some more turbo work. Hopefully the weather will have improved when I get back to work in the New Year

Beasty

The weather having relented (at least for now), I took the opportunity to get out over the past couple of evenings.

Last night I was out for 1hr 20min, and was delighted to improve my power output from about 40s to just under 3 minutes. What was even more pleasing was my normalised power was 297w over the 80 minutes, with a best 60 minutes of 301w, an improvement of over 20w on my previous best

Tonight I improved it even further with normalised power of 299m over 1hr 45min, and a best 60 minutes of 321w. Hence I have improved my 60 minute normalised power by 40w. To put this in perspective, if I could translate this to an equivalent improvement to my average non-normalised power this could be worth well over 2 minutes over a 25m TT. Clearly this is just theory at present, and I will need to await the racing season to try to put this into practice. I also managed to improve my peak power between 17s and 50s, as well as at the full workout time of 1hr 45m

The power curve now looks like this:



The other encouraging thing is my peak power has increased significantly through the year. In 2009, when I was at least 5kg heavier, I only managed to get above 800w on a couple of occasions. Tonight I exceeded 800w on 6 separate occasions, with a peak power output of 974w. Over the course of the year I have improved my peak power by nearly 25%, and now feel I can hit 900w pretty much at will - something I could only have dreamed of 6 months ago.

I feel as if there is still some improvement to come - I hit tonight's peaks after a hard session yesterday, and still managed to improve power output at both the short and long ends. So everything is looking encouraging as we enter the new year.

Beasty

Only managed a couple of evening sessions up to the year end, totaling 81km, which brings the final total for the year to 10,211km (2009 6,800km) over 347hrs, 43mins, 10secs, an average speed of 29.4kph (2009 29.6kph). The distance can be broken down as follows:

751km road racing (23 races, 21:42:10, 34.6kph, 275w)
6,961km other road (28.2kph, 247:04:52, 216w)
504km track (33.5kph, 15:04:22)
1,477km turbo (32.2kph, 45:51:42)
518km other (gyms/spinning) (28.7kph, 18:02:00)

Total climbing – 65,000m
Energy expended – 250,000kj

I was out again this evening, and the Powertap was playing up - I'm assuming the battery has gone, which may beg a question over some of the recent power stats (I suspect it's been overstated in this week's spins). I'll replace the battery tomorrow and hopefully get out in the evening - this should give me a chance to compare performance with the last couple of outings to see if the power records are consistent.