Training’s been going reasonably well over the last couple of weeks. The weather has interfered on occasion, as have one or two social events, and I took it way too easy on the rest week which was very slack of me, but in general, I’m getting all the important sessions done every week. My compact cranks (50/34) and 11-28 rear cassette cluster arrived two weeks ago, so I fitted them to the bike last weekend. As a result, my lowest gear ratio went from 1.56 (39/25) to 1.21 (34/28), which, although it’s complete overkill for whatever I’m likely to find around Sydney, will come in bloody handy when the Galibier rears up to 11% after 28km of continuous climbing! I haven’t put the 11-28 cassette on yet as the 11-25 I already have is fine for the moment.

Yesterday it was time for another long ride, and I wanted to ride more hills this time, so I decided to drive to Sutherland and ride loops of the National Park for six hours. Apart from the climb to Otford, I hadn’t ridden any of the climbs in the park, so I structured the route so I’d end up riding all the main ones. I parked at Waratah Park, then rode to Heathcote along the Pacific Highway before heading to the coast and entering the park at Otford. An initial largely downhill stretch took me to the turn off for Waterfall, but I went straight on and started my first climb of the day up to the Garie turn off. That went well and I was then into the gently undulating, exposed part across the top of the park. That was a pain in the arse, literally, as the road surface is chip and seal and really rough. Having pumped my tyres to 110psi before I left the house, this was not comfortable! Finally I came to the drop down to Audley Weir before starting the climb out to the park entrance at Loftus.

I’ve driven this road a couple of times and always thought it would be a hard climb, but apart from an initial sharp pitch it was actually OK. After getting back to the car I ate another muesli bar, restocked with water and headed off for the second lap. The plan was to ride the lap in reverse, so, after dropping back down to Audley Weir, I encountered my toughest climb of the day heading south along Sir Bertram Stevens Drive. My plan had been to climb at around 230W, but this was bloody steep and I had no choice but to ride at 280-300W. Even then I was only travelling at about 8kph! Once at the top it was back to the shitty road surface, but I’d prepared this time and had let about 20psi out of my tyres, so this time I was a lot more bearable. I was starting to get pretty hungry now, and the sun was heating up, so after descending to the Waterfall turn off I munched my last muesli bar, guzzled some more water and set off for Otford. I was familiar with this climb, so it was fairly easygoing, though I was still hungry and was now regretting my decision to eat all of the muesli bar!

I realised at this stage that I hadn’t any money on me, as I’d left my wallet back in the car and had forgotten to put $20 in my jersey pocket. I was also down to less than a bidon of water, 30km from the car and bloody tired already. I was a bit worried about bonking, the suitably technical term for when your body runs out of glycogen and just shuts down. Although it hasn’t happened to me, I’ve heard stories and didn’t fancy being stuck 20km or more from the car needing a sugar fix with no cash on me. I decided that riding back through the park, up the Waterfall climb and back along the Princes Highway would be the best way back to the car, which in hindsight might have been the first indication that I wasn’t thinking straight! Anyway, after the largely downhill run from Otford I knew that the Waterfall climb was the main obstacle between me and the car and that there was a surprise steep pitch near the top. The first part of the climb was a little bit steep, but then it settled down in the middle and all was well. I’d only ridden down this hill before, so only had the vaguest idea of where the top was when ascending. Sure enough, after ten minutes or so of climbing (all the while fantasising about the food I’d eat when I finished) the road pitched up.

A roadside sign indicated 2km of windy roads, so I assumed the climb was that long. I got stuck in, but by this time I was knackered and was struggling to generate enough power. I was back up to 280W and travelling around 9kph again, so the progress was slow. I focused on the next bend, then rounded that to a longer straight and refocused on the following bend. However, when I rounded that bend and saw another I was shattered and had to stop for a quick breather and a stretch of the legs. I was a bit pissed off by this stage, and more so when I got going after two minutes, rounded the next bend and saw the train line just up the road! If I’d kept going for another 400m I would have made the top of the climb! Oh well, if I’d fuelled myself properly in the first place I wouldn’t have had that problem in the first place. Having reached Waterfall it was a slightly downhill 15km back to the car, then straight to the shops for a Coke and a large bag of jellies!

Total ride time was 5h17m and a distance of 129km. That’s my longest ever ride time-wise and only a couple of kilometres off longest distance too, though this was a lot hillier and therefore a good bit harder than the ride three weeks ago. I was a bit annoyed at not getting the planned six hours in, though it’s a lesson to me to figure out a proper strategy for ensuring I get enough food in during long rides. I was also pretty tired at the end of the 5hr ride three weeks ago, so I need to be able to finish these relatively strongly if I’m to have any hope in La Marmotte which could easily take me 10 hours or more. On a positive note, all the climbing went pretty well and I’ve read reports that the top pitch of the Waterfall climb can be up to 12%, and that the main pitch South out of Audley Weir is around 9%, both of which are at the upper end of what I’ll face in France, so at least I’ve experienced a little of what I’m in for.

One of the concerns I had when I initially received my training program from Alex was that it didn’t include any rides longer than three hours. Given that La Marmotte, even if everything goes perfectly, will most likely take me at least eight hours, this could have been a problem. Alex told me just to go on an extra-long ride every couple of weeks, but otherwise to stick to the plan. With that in mind, on Saturday I resolved to ride for five hours with some small hills thrown in.

I’d ordered a second bottle cage and bidon which had arrived earlier in the week, so I stocked up on water, threw a few muesli bars in my jersey pockets and hit the road, armed with $50 for food refills and emergencies. The first part of the ride was straightforward enough as it’s my usual Saturday long ride, but once I got to Cronulla it was all relatively new territory. I’d ridden the route once before a few years ago as part of the Gong Ride so I knew where I was going.

There were plenty of cyclists heading South as well, though I resisted the temptation to tack onto the back of the pelotons and stuck to my own pace. Once past the Audley entrance to the National Park there was a nice, wide shoulder to the road and less traffic lights which made things more enjoyable, though I was also my first and only encounter with dickheads, as some arsehole hung out the passenger window and roared something at me as he went past, hoping to scare me off my bike. At best he got a mild look of surprise on my face, but no wobbles on the bike!

I entered the park at Waterfall and got to practice some descending, a skill which will be vitally important in France, then got stuck into the gradual climb up to Otford which felt a lot easier than the last time I had done it a few years ago. That must mean I’m a lot fitter, as I’m certainly not lighter! I reached Stanwell Tops after 2h 40m and I was still feeling good. The only problem I had was that my lower back was acting up, presumably due to the different position and different recruitment of muscles while climbing. A bit of stretching sorted things out quickly, but I’ll have to do lots more stretching over the next few months to really loosen up the muscles around the back/hip area. The last thing I need is back troubles when faced with two hours plus of continuous climbing!

Stanwell Tops was my rough turn around point, and I knew it would be a bit easier on the way back as it was gradually downhill for most of it. Unfortunately the first 10km or so was still rolling hills, so I wasn’t quite done with the uphill stuff yet, but once back to Waterfall I was back on the smooth, wide shoulder, with a slight tailwind meaning 40km/h+ was easy enough. Once I made it back to Cronulla I was back on my normal long-ride route and it was just a matter of counting down the kilometres until I was home.

The last half an hour was a bit tough mentally. I was starting to get properly fatigued and was struggling to keep the power up where I wanted it. As I headed back to the coast I was also riding into a headwind which didn’t help matters but I stuck with it and made it home without too much hassle: 4h 57m ride time, not including traffic light stops etc. for a grand total of 132.3km, my longest ride by 32km.

Now I’ll have to plan a six hour route in a couple of weeks!

It would seem that I haven’t commented at all on how my training program is going since I did the MAP tests and rented the power meter seven weeks ago. Pretty slack of me, so I’ll try and summarise it a bit here.

The basic structure of a training week is that I ride on Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs, with a day off on Friday, a long ride on Saturday and then Sunday off as well. The key sessions are a tempo ride on Monday, a hard intervals session on Thursday and then the long ride on Saturday. Each session has a required power band that I must ride in for the duration of the ride, with the power bands determined from my MAP test results as follows:

Long rides are in Zone 1, tempo in Zone 2 and intervals in Zone 4. Since each zone comprises a fairly wide power band, and since power fluctuates pretty easily on-road, I opted to aim for the middle of the relevant power band, so 200W for Z1, 230W for Z2 and 285W for Z4.

The first two weeks of the programme were a bit of struggle. The weather was atrocious for the first week, resulting in me missing scheduled sessions which wasn’t an auspicious start. The second week was much better and I managed to get all the required sessions done. The next two weeks were basically time off as first Mum & Dad were here for a visit and then I was in NZ for Bevin’s wedding, although I did managed to do some MTBing while over there so at least I wasn’t sitting on my arse all the time. On my return from NZ, if I had continued the program where I’d left off, I would have done one week and then had a rest week, so I opted to just restart the program from scratch so I’d have a full three weeks before the next rest week and that’s what I’ve been doing.

So far, so good, though I missed one session the week before last. I’m finding things getting easier as I go along, though I want to string a couple of decent weeks training together to see what the cumulative fatigue over a 3-4 week block will be like. I’ll have done three solid weeks this Sunday, so I’ll see how I feel then.

Totals:

Bevin and Jonny tied the knot in Wanaka at the end of February, so that was a perfect excuse for a holiday. Mum & Dad came to Sydney to visit myself and Jacqui for a few days first, and Cliona was able to make it over to Wanaka as well. Cormac, Belinda, Jacob, Dave and Isabella couldn’t make it due to the effects of the bloody GFC, which was a bit unfortunate.

I arrived on Tuesday and went straight to Fergburger in Queenstown to sample the best burgers in the world, and to take a photo to annoy Sean, Tom, Dave and Kev back in Ireland as it was a regular stop for us on our ski trips to NZ. Bevin had kindly purchased some Brewski for me, which was awaiting my arrival in the fridge, so that made for a perfect start to the holiday.

Cliona, Margaret and John were due to arrive the following day, and Jacqui was going to arrive on Friday, so I had some time to myself. I rented a bike and rode the offroad trails to Lake Hawea and back., enjoying nice scenery and a well-tended trail, but no real singletrack - definitely a trail for tourists rather than MTB enthusiasts, but worth the ride nonetheless.

The lead-up to the wedding was pretty easy going. Bevin and Jonny seemed to be pretty chilled about it all, so, apart from all the dramas suffered by Cliona, John and Margaret on their travels from Ireland, the days beforehand were pretty relaxing. The day itself was good fun. The wedding wasn’t starting until 4:30, so myself and Jacqui went for a bike ride along the lakeside in the morning. I’d volunteered to take unofficial photos, so I had to gather Bevin’s collection of lenses to play around with and that was it.

The ceremony was held down at Wanaka Station Park and the separate parties arrived in classic cars which looked great. They boys were stylin’ in their matching Nikes and the bridesmaids looked stunning! After a short delay, Bevin showed up and looked absolutely beautiful. My sisters scrub up well :-) Cara, their dog, ran around making sure all was well during proceedings, which were conducted under a huge, ancient sequoia tree. Jonny’s cousin, Scott, was the celebrant and all went without a hitch, apart from the best man, Jonny’s brother, Tom, almost fainting in the heat! The formalities over with, it was back to the hotel for the reception, speeches, drinks and dancing.

We still had a couple of days to relax before flying back to Sydney, so we just chilled out, visited Puzzleworld and went for a stroll up Mt. Iron. Since we were flying out of Queenstown, I insisted on another visit to Fergburger before leaving!

Since then, I’ve been a bit slack getting all the photos organised as I was hampered by the fact that each of the cameras used had a different time zone, and the new Aperture 3 is frankly atrocious at adjusting the photos’ metadata, leaving me in the end to sort the photos manually.

Anyway, here they are: Wedding Photos and general Holiday Photos.

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)