It has begun. Last night I performed my first ever session following an honest to goodness training plan developed for me by a coach. My life just got a whole bunch more structured!

The goal that Jim Cunningham, my coach, had for me was to get a baseline for my FTP.  No… not my File Transfer Protocol… My Functional Threshold Power.  This is theoretically the maximum power you can maintain for 60 minutes.  Thankfully, this is not typically calculated by making you get out on the bike for an hour going all out.

Here was my plan for the evening.

1. Warm-up for 10 to 15 minutes with a little more effort in the last three minutes — going at about 70%
2. Easy spin for 5 minutes
3. Ride for 20 minutes between 218 and 230 watts
4. Easy spin for 5 minutes
5. Do a 20 minute Time Trial
6. Cool down for 10 to 15 minutes and be sure to stretch at the end

Well, as usual, I messed things up a bit.  I left from home to do my attempt in Cleveland Park.  About 8 minutes after leaving my driveway, I was entering the park.  I couldn’t get a consistent effort at 70% due to the traffic, but I tried to get close.  The problem is that threw me off my game and I forgot that I could have gone for 15 minutes to get the effort I needed.

Not only that, but I didn’t do the 5 minute easy spin after that effort.  I went right into the 20 218-230 watts segment.  Once again I was foiled by the terrain.  Cleveland Park has a couple of nice hills and what goes up has to come down.  I was afraid I was going to get pulled over by the police because I was descending so quickly trying to keep my wattage up!

Finally, I settled for just getting an average between 218 and 230 watts.  This made my power chart look more like an EKG, but at least I hit the target on the average.  I also took a moment to pull my phone out and take a look at the plan again.  That is when I realized I had goofed.  I figured I would get it right from that point on.

The 5 minute easy spin was nice, but it went by faster than I would have liked!  It was now time to give that Time Trial a go.  Hopefully, I would do better than the last time I had Jim give me an FTP test.

It was a couple of years ago that I paid Jim to do a one time evaluation of my fitness.  He had me do something very similar, but it was on a trainer.  Having never done a time trial before, I went out pretty fast!  I completely blew up after 12 minutes and Jim had to extrapolate from that.  Looking back, I see he was pretty accurate even so.

Well, I’ve learned to pace myself a bit, but I was getting pretty excited as I went past the 10 minutes mark.  My Garmin was telling me that I was averaging over 300 watts.  My highest 60 minute power reading was 275 watts and highest 20 minute was 290 watts, so that would have been awesome!

I kept it over the 300 watts average despite the downhills and stops for traffic.  Right at the very end I punched it on the flat to keep the power reading over 310+ watts. When I pushed the lap button I saw an average of 304 watts.  I’d take that as an FTP for this try any day!

Now for the bad news. When I pulled the data into TrainingPeaks, I found the power average was actually more like 286 watts.  My Norm Watts read 315, but average was the lower number.

Oh well, 286 is right there with what I have been at for this season.  That is why I’ve gotten myself a coach.  I’m not going to see improvement in the very first session!

I finished up and rode easily back home.  It took me a little while to get home because of my pace, but that helped me end up finishing the session within 11 seconds of the projected time.  At least I got that part right!

We’ll see how this goes.  Baring my soul, I have to say I am not real motivated right now.  The ride to Texas made my season very long and it seems like I haven’t had much time at all off the bike.  The first ride was fun enough, but I don’t want to burn out.

I don’t think Jim is going to let that happen.  Looking ahead I see that he has me doing a good amount of stuff off the bike in the weeks ahead.  I’ll also get to do some mountain biking.  I’m looking forward to that.

What I don’t think I am looking forward to are those times when all my pals will be out doing some fun ride and I’m going to have to discipline myself to do what I’m prescribed.  That is where the “slave” reference comes.  It would probably better if I looked at it more as boot camp than slave camp.

Being a slave in the off season will give me freedom come race season.  That is when I’ll be glad I gave up some of that freedom in the winter.  I’ve just got to see it through.

 

Tags: FTP, Jim Cunningham, TrainingPeaks

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.