Yesterday was the big day; my first ever MAP test! I'd done no cycling on Sunday, and nothing on Monday morning either, so my legs should have recovered from Saturday's ride. The test was scheduled for 14:30, so I was determined to take things easy, get hydrated and to eat accordingly. The last thing you want on any max. effort test is to feel lunch sitting in your gut!

After driving over to Alex's house he explained the mechanics of the test. It was to be done on his indoor trainer which is fitted with SRM cranks to measure the power being generated. The general idea was that I would be told to cycle at a particular power output which would increase every minute until I could do no more.

I really had no idea what to expect, or what sort of power output I'd be capable of. I'd made a vague effort to work out how much power bad been required for my Calga TT a few months back and had come up with 153W, so I figured anything over 200W would be good. Alex left me to do a 20 minute warm-up and get used to the SRM readout. It's surprisingly sensitive, so maintaining a steady power output is very hard for an inexperienced user. I was fluctuating all over the place, often 20W over or under the level I was aiming for. I tried a couple of short efforts and managed to top 300W easily enough, so things were looking up.

Once I'd warmed up thoroughly, Alex decided to start me off at 125W and I'd be required to increase by 25W every minute. 125W is super easy, and I was soon past 200W and heading for 250W without feeling too stressed. I was concentrating on trying to minimise the yo-yoing around the target wattage and dealing with the gearing on the test bike. With only 7 gears there's a large jump between each one, and when I chose to shift into my final gear around 300W it took ages to engage which was a bit off-putting.

By this time I was breathing hard and I knew the end would be coming up soon, though I desperately wanted to reach 400W. Every minute the pressure piled on and on and I could feel the lactate starting to burn in my quads. For some reason, my right quad was burning more than my left, so I obviously favour it to a large degree. By 375W I was consciously trying to work my left leg harder, reasoning that since it wasn't burning as much it could clearly do more work, then, finally, I was there: 400W. Having reached that goal, the next target became to finish the full minute at 400, though that proved to be too much to ask. After just short of 30 seconds my power started dropping consistently below 400 and I was cooked. That's it - show's over, I could spin the legs over and try to get some breath back.

Alex disappeared to download and analyse the power data and returned shortly afterwards to announce that my mean maximal aerobic power (MAP) is 406W. I was pretty happy with that.

Emil, my boss in Canada, who's a pretty decent track rider, reckons he's never managed 400W in any of his MAP tests, but he's 20kg lighter than me and it's easier for heavier guys to put out bigger numbers. Anyway, that's the baseline established and Alex is designing my training plan to take me through to La Marmotte in July. I've also got a shiny, rented power meter fitted to my bike for the duration of the plan: another gadget to play with!

Update: here's the graph of my MAP test. The green line is cadence, so you can see I changed gear twice during the test. The yellow line is power, which, although it oscillates wildly, increases steadily until I can't hack the pace any more, and you can see the line tailing off on the right-hand side.

After a couple of weeks off over Christmas, I've been back into the training in earnest as the reality of La Marmotte starts to sink in.

I ended up riding 219km this week, which is my biggest week ever, so I'm pretty happy with that. Saturday's long ride of 90km was tougher than expected due to the 35C temperatures and a 30km/h headwind for much of the return journey. I was certainly glad to get home after that one and spent the rest of the day flaked out on the couch watching the Tour Down Under live on SBS.

My MAP test is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully my legs feel OK then and aren't still dead from this week! Thankfully Tuesday is a public holiday for Australia Day, so I can recover from the test's exertions then!

The other good news is that I've got rid of the Christmas weight gain and am now back to 88kg. My training load has been enough to encourage slow and steady weight drop up to now, so if this continues there'll be no need for a semi-diet at all.

Both my parents are what I would term "Holy Joes". It's not a derogatory term, I just use it to mean that they're religious, their religion is important to them and that they take it, and the observation of it, seriously. As a result, I was baptised a Catholic at three weeks old and my parents fulfilled their obligations (to the Church) to raise me as a Catholic.

Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for the Catholic Church, my parents also placed a strong emphasis on education, and as a result, as soon as I was old enough to think for myself I started questioning the existence of God, quickly coming to the conclusion that it was a total fabrication. This resulted in many discussions with my Dad, who, although he didn't agree with my conclusions, wanted to ensure that I had given careful consideration to my point of view and that it wasn't a knee-jerk teenage thing.

I've been an atheist for over 20 years now and one thing that has bothered me more and more in recent years is that the Catholic Church still counted me as a member. The existence of the Catholic Church pretty much proves there is no God, as surely a benevolent and loving God would baulk at being represented by such a fucked-up organisation?

I had wondered how to go about getting excommunicated until I realised that being excommunicated only meant you were a member in bad standing, not that you'd left. Then, last week, while reading about Atheism Ireland's response to Ireland's new blasphemy law, I noticed a link to Count Me Out, an Irish web site set up to make the process of leaving the Church as easy as possible. As it turns out, there's been a provision in Canon Law since 1983, called an actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica which allows you to formally leave. You sign a declaration, provide some identifying information (date of birth, parents' names, place of baptism etc.) and send it off to your local diocese, the Church cogs roll and you're out the door. You're still in the Church records as having been baptised, but the record is amended to note your defection. According to the Church, baptism imparts an indelible seal, so technically I'm still a Christian, but since that's just more religious mumbo-jumbo it doesn't really bother me. The important thing is that I'll no longer be a member, so they're free to believe whatever nonsense they like.

Anyway, you're required to send the request to the diocese in which you live, not the one in which you were baptised, so my situation is slightly complicated by the fact that I now live on the other side of the planet and I've never had any dealings with the Catholic Church here. Anyway, I posted my request yesterday, so I'll wait and see what happens.

As mentioned previously, I've entered La Marmotte and have engaged a coach to train me for the event. While I'm confident that he knows what he's talking about and will be well capable of designing a programme to prepare me for the event, there are two other obstacles to success.

The first is my inherent laziness. Family and swimmers who trained with me will remember my lack of discipline when it came to training. Sure, I trained, but rarely as much as I should have, and if it wasn't for the fact that my sister was more dedicated than I, I'd have remained in bed a lot more often when the 4:45am alarm went off. Still, that's my cross to bear and I can only resolve to force myself out of bed in the morning as required.

The second problem is my weight, or more specifically the surplus of it. The advantage gained by extra weight travelling downhill is more than wiped out by the disadvantage of carrying said extra weight uphill, so in an event with 5000m of climbing, being 89.5kg is a distinct handicap. In September I was weighing in at 93.4kg and the commencement of cycling training, combined with a mini-diet, got me down to 88.3kg by November as which point I stopped the mini diet. The idea was to see if I could maintain the new lower weight for a while before making another step down. Christmas was the big hurdle, but I think I did OK to limit the weight gain to about a kilo.

Anyway, the scales tell me I consist of 20.5% body fat, leaving my non-fat body weighing 71.2kg. If I could get to 10% BF I'd then be down to 78.3kg or a 13% weight loss. That should help my climbing be something less than glacial! The plan at this stage is to do nothing until I've completed the MAP test, as the results are useless if I'm tired or lacking energy for the test, then to reactivate the mini-diet in stages to get to my goal weight. However, if I'm losing weight anyway as a result of following the training program, there'll be no need for the mini-diet. Time will tell.

The biggest thing on the horizon this year for me is La Marmotte, a cyclosportive in France on the first weekend of July. A cyclosportive is a mass-participation cycling event, usually longer than 100km, where you're given a timing chip and you cycle the route at your own pace. There are also food & drink stations set up along the route and the road may or may not be closed to traffic. However, there are cyclosportives and there's La Marmotte!

La Marmotte is commonly regarded as the most difficult of all the European cyclosportives. It's 175km, which in itself isn't a huge distance as cyclosportives go, but what really sets it apart is the 5000m of climbing included in the route. This isn't just any old climbing, it's riding over four of the most famous cols in Tour de France history! First up is the Col de Croix de Fer (27km at 5% - yes, that's 27km uphill!), followed by the Télégraphe (11.8km at 7.8%), the Galibier (18.1km at 6.9%) and then, after a long descent back to Bourg d'Oisans, you climb probably the most famous of them all, L'Alpe d'Huez (14.2km at 7.7%).

So, what's an overweight sometime cyclist like me doing entering an event like that? Well, Sean & Lisa announced that they were getting married in Antibes just as Jacqui started complaining that she wanted another holiday, so we decided to make a proper holiday out of the trip to the wedding. Since we were going to France and I'm a religious follower of le Tour every year, I wanted to take my bike and ride some of the famous cols while we were there. Myself and Kevin, plus possibly Tom, Niall and Ciarán are planning a 4-day cycling trip based out of Barcelonette anyway, but I also wanted to do some of the bigger climbs in the Haute-Alpes. Jacqui refused to act as support vehicle, and I didn't really want to be cycling around with a pannier full of camping gear, so the simplest way to accomplish my goal seemed to be to enter La Marmotte. Now that I've done so, the enormity of the task in front of me is slowly starting to sink in!

However, to assist me in my preparation I've enlisted the help of a local cycling coach, Alex Simmons, who'll draw up a training programme for me, starting on the 24th. First up is a Maximum Aerobic Power (MAP) test, where you cycle at ever increasing power outputs until you collapse, well not really, actually until you can no longer generate the given power output! This will give a good indication of how unfit I am and will therefore allow Alex to correctly set the relevant training intensities in my program. The program fee also includes the rental of a power meter, another gadget to play with. Should be interesting! Alex has previously training people for La Marmotte, so will also be able to shed some light on what to expect and help determine what a reasonable goal would be for the event. Should be fun.

Here's a video someone made of last year's event:

The Christmas break provided a good chance to kick back and relax. This year we headed up to South Golden Beach for a week, to spend the holidays with Jacqui's Mum and the rest of her family. Days were spent reading, playing board games, visiting the beach (at the end of the street), eating at various cafes in the area and generally taking life easy. (photos)

After that it was back to Sydney for New Years and a party at Amanda & Azan's house, affectionately known as Club Brookvale. Naturally, given that the girls had organised it, it was fancy dress and the theme was 1970s Pimps and Porn Stars. Myself and Jacqui skipped the Pimps and Porn Stars bit and opted for the 1970s hippy look, mainly because that's all you could get around Byron! The scary thing is that our outfit aren't the usual deals, cobbled together from the local Vinnie's. They're brand new, purchased from a shop selling such clothing, so clearly there's a market for this stuff in Byron. Scary! Either that or they've based their entire business plan on holiday-makers looking for hippy fancy dress outfits?? (photos)

A video which debunks the claims that the hacked CRU emails give evidence that claims of anthropogenic global warming are just a global conspiracy. Worth a watch.

Training has been progressing nicely over the last couple of weeks. Above is a graph of my weekly cycling hours since September and I'm pretty happy with the results. I've been consistently above about 4.5hrs for the last few weeks and am feeling good on the bike, ready to step things up a notch in December.

I went down to Canberra at the weekend to visit John and brought my bike, intending to do a ride in the hills on Saturday morning. I had a couple of Guinness on Friday evening, but was still home at a reasonable hour, so made it out on the bike at 6:30am. Unfortunately, on the climb out of Coppins Crossing, a short pitch of about 8%, I felt terrible. My HR was through the roof, I felt exhausted and knew instantly that there was no way I was doing the planned 80km hilly ride.

I thought that maybe having beers the night before was the problem and was a bit pissed off that I'd wasted the opportunity for a hilly ride, but it wasn't until I got back up to Sydney yesterday that I remembered that I'd donated blood on Thursday evening! No wonder I was wrecked, I was missing 10% of my blood, meaning there was 10% less red blood cells to carry oxygen to my muscles. Blood doping in reverse! So, that's the reason for my paltry 2:41 this week!

My weight has stabilised at a little under 88kg, down from just over 93kg in September. I'm off any diet for the moment, and the plan is to keep my weight at this level until January, then to drop another couple of kilos to get me into the low 80s. I've committed to Alpine cycling in June, and the less there is of me, the easier it will be to get up climbs like Alpe d'Huez:

The target is to get to around 80kg or under by June, which shouldn't be too hard to do if I can stay motivated to keep my cycling hours up for the next six months.

Totals

Nov.29: R 0:20 - C 2:41 - W 0:00
Nov.22: R 0:00 - C 5:05 - W 0:00
Nov.15: R 0:23 - C 4:40 - W 0:00

Well this week ended up being pretty easy. I had great intentions at the start of the week, but never got into it really, and decided pretty quickly to make it a rest week.

I would like to have a 3:1 ratio between training weeks and rest weeks, but I seem to lose motivation heading into the third consecutive training week, so I think I'll stick to 2:1 for the moment until I learn to absorb the training better.

My long ride was still scheduled for Saturday, but a friend's birthday on Friday put paid to that so I headed out this morning instead. I had a 90km route planned, heading down to Kurnell and back, and was on the road at about 6:15am. It's great at that hour as the roads are super quiet.

I'm not going to bother going into the details of the ride, but it went well. I made it to Kurnell quite comfortably, grabbed a coffee and some banana bread, then returned home. I was feeling good towards the end of the ride, so detoured into Centennial Park and did a few extra laps to take my total up to 100km. I'd never ridden 100km before, so I figured that I may as well go for it this morning as the extra 10km was no big deal. The good news was that my arse gave out before my legs did - I'm still getting used to spending four hours sitting on a race bike saddle!

So, total distance ended up as 100.3km, in 4h 11m (incl. coffee stop, stopping at red lights etc.), average speed of 27.7km/h (excl. time stopped) and a total of 2548kcal burnt before breakfast. I had to spend a couple of hours on the couch recovering though!

Totals

R 00:00 - C 4:11:00 - W 00:00

Weight: -0.1kg

Had a decent week this week. Didn't get everything I had planned done, due to crappy weather on Monday and a hangover on Thursday, but still managed to get some decent cycling in over the weekend. 30-odd km around Centennial Park on Friday was followed by Saturday's long ride (see map above), then the TT on Sunday.

The long ride is going well, though I thought the route I had planned would be over 70km. Hopefully I can get a 100km+ ride in by the end of the month and can also get some hilly rides in. I might head down to visit John in Canberra later in the month and ride the Canberra HIM bike course which is a hilly 90km.

Totals

R 1:05:55 - C 5:08:18 - W 1:00:00

Weight: -1.2kg