2022 Year In Review

370 hours
7251km

All of which is on my mtb. Mixture of road and mtb rides.

About 8 weeks worth of sickness and injury. Another 2-3 weeks of due to work or traveling.
3 weeks of a chest infection in april. Ending the year with 2 weeks off with covid now

Current ctl of 38. Average of 50. Season high ftp of 295 and sitting at 270 now. Weight has been the most consistent ever at 65kg. Still a good bit of fat on me.

Didnt gain any ftp as it was my first year doing mtb so focused on skills all year. Ended the year riding with some of the fastest xc guys on some gnarly local natural all mountain trails on my 100mm hardtail with outdated geometry. I just upgraded to a 120 full sus so hopefuly this will be a huge step up!

Goal for next year is to eat better and avoid being sick as much! Hopefully hit the big 300 ftp at 6 hours a week but more consistent training. Im busy balancing relationship, part time uni to get my chartered acreditation and full time work. So i cant increase volume but i can try to improve other parts of my life

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DNF my goal ride. 200 miles from sunrise to sunset. Got to halfway feeling really drained and made a hard decision to bail.

Training had gone well indoors but I found it really hard to get outside. Either the weather got in the way or family commitments or I just didn’t feel ready.

My adjustment this year is to commit to an outdoor ride each month (at minimum) to try and make sure I’m saddle fit.

I certainly find it demotivating when I see indoor ‘speeds’ of +20mph and then outside seeing 13mph. I appreciate that indoors doesn’t have stops for traffic or hills but I think I get too used to a continuous spin, rather than having to pull away etc.

I’m also very un aerodynamic, with rather wide shoulders, and there isn’t much I can do about that.

I could probably lose about a stone as well so that’s my current focus. Holiday times are bad for me because there’s always food in the cupboard. Going back to work really does limit what I can eat.

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Indoor speeds are usually nonsense

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Oh I agree, but it still gets in my head! I think I tried switching off distance completely?

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Yea, I never look at speed indoors. It doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t translate to outdoor speed very well.

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Hit my time goal:

image

Volume seems to work, peak FTP by year versus hours:

Trained harder in 2017, and a lot more injuries and unplanned time off. Going easier in 2022 delivered more consistency with a small tradeoff in hours to basically reach same fitness:

however I didn’t train threshold power in 2022 so peak 1-hour power PR is still 2017.

Climbing similar to hours:

I’ve sliced and diced my data a bunch of ways, those comparisons were the ones that stood out.

For 2023 my ‘WindWarrior: what works’ will see a focus on:

  • endurance and volume as first principle
  • add more intervals aimed at increasing power from 30-min to 2-hours
  • more climbing

Basically a repeat of what I did in 2016 and early 2017.

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Like most of those who’ve posted before me, this year has been a mixed bag. None of which I’m complaining about because I’m closing out this year in a far better place than I was when it started.

I’ve clocked up 6000 miles and took my first KOM :laughing:

Scored points in every race and placed top 5 in most of those. This will be the biggest change for me. With our first child expected in April 2023, I’m calling it day in terms of racing. I had a blast, met some great people and achieved more than my ‘numbers’. I’m happy that I threw my hat in the ring and had a go. My wife has already paid for my 2023 race license, ‘just in case…’, but I’m not bothered if it doesn’t see the light of day.

I managed to get through six years of racing relatively unscathed so I’m in the minority!

Next year will be TR trainer rides where I’m able (30 minute workouts, here I come :grin:) and trying to holding onto my previous teammates coattails on the Saturday Bash.

What I’m most looking forward to is the opportunity to teach a little person how to ride a bike and hope that they get enjoy from it, like I do.

Hope you all have a great 2023 season :+1::biking_man:

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I think 2022 can be summed up by saying it’ll be a year to forget, nothing bad happened but tbh nothing good happened either. It has, for reasons, been a non-entity.

I’ve made steps to alter it for 2023 even if it’s only a single thing: I’ve entered an Ultra so I’ll have to do more and get outside lots if I don’t want to get rescued!

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First complete year using structure training. Came back to the bike middle 2021 after I don’t even know may years. 2022 was good started the year with 2 Wkg finished with 3 Wkg that was my goal. Sick for a while in October and November but rest was good. Now I want to reach 4Wkg in the next year and half to two years let’s see.

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The only stat I really tracked this year was time. I wanted to increase on last years’ volume, even though I’m just about maxed out. I managed to do an extra 24 hours, so about an extra 2 weeks of ‘bonus’ training.

I did some early season races and got an 8th and 4th, and turned out I had Covid during the 2nd race, with symptoms starting a few hours after the race. That put paid to several races I had planned. I came back very flat, getting dropped on the first lap of an E, 1, 2, 3 curcuit race. I put in some VO2 work, which returned some top end, but it was too late for most target races. Overall I felt pretty strong aerobically through the year, comfortably able to knock out 3-4 hours of tempo. I was most proud of PR’ing a 100 mile solo ride at 303NP, which turned out to be at 0.89IF once I re-calibrated FTP on my Neo (-25w vs Flux2).

As a fairly new rider (2206 hours) I’m hoping 2 consecutive ~600 hour years is continuing to build my aerobic capabilities :crossed_fingers:I really need to do a few VO2 blocks to up the ceiling and vary the stimulus more, so that’s a goal for 2023.

and KOMs (the stats that really matter)…

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Just trying to work out whether you are the same Steve Rose that rides with London Phoenix occasionally, is the a Colagno I can spot in your profile pic…?

Nice work! There is a school of thought which posits a goal isn’t worth setting unless you have at least a 30% - 40% chance of failing to hit it :+1:

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No, must be a common name. I’m based in Norfolk :grinning:
You can’t select Norwich as a location in VeloViewer!

Lol! Ah ok, it was indeed the London location that made me suspect… :nerd_face:

Season ended in November, but from a yearly perspective it’s been a good one for me - 3rd proper year of structured training and first year of being self coached.

Highlights included:

  • 23,750km completed
  • 650hrs ridden
  • Hit 5w/kg for 60 mins for target road bike TT event
  • Hit 400w for 5 mins as part of peaking for hill climb series
  • Competed in my first races (road bike TTs finishing on the podium on each across 10m and 25m distances, hill climb series taking the overall title for my age category)

Low lights included:

  • COVID ahead of a training camp/ first peak event and taking circa 3 months to get back to baseline

Goals for 23 include:

  • More of the same…
  • Do a vEveresting
  • Really nail my aero position on the road bike
  • Enter some more road bike TTs
  • Retain my hill climb “title”
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@WindWarrior cool to see the long term data and change in your training strategy. What tool are you using to show the graphs?

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WKO5, it’s a great analytics package with a human performance model. A bit of a learning curve so not for everyone.

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There’s an option ‘Get your local town/city’, click that and you’ll get Norwich. I don’t think Peterborough was in the default list either; my home town definitely wasn’t and I have got both of them that way.

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Nothing on the trainer this year, my last ride was in July.

I hope 2023 is a better year for me…

and for all of you as well!

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Interestingly it doesn’t seem to count Trainer Road workouts in the virtual rides as I have done TR workouts >2 hours.

The focus this year was to really focus on structured training via Trainer Road starting near the end of April, I had a goal to do at least 500kms per week but failed that in February, aside from February I did achieve this, the goal had been to exceed 6000 kms, which I did.

272 hours was actually a drop from 2021 (185 activities but almost 291 hours) but that was no structured training to mostly structured training from May on.

Increased my FTP from 175 watts (3.04 w/kg) to 217 watts (3.84 w/kg) where I have been stuck at since September 27th (doing trad base doesn’t seem to let AI FTP give you a boost).

Haven’t ridden Zwift since starting Trainer Road and don’t have a power meter for outdoor rides but 20 min peak power has gone from from 169W to 190 watts, 30 minute power from 162 watts to 177 watts.

Goals for 2023 will be increasing my 2 hour power, 157 watts to 183 watts, 1 hour power from 170 watts to 200 watts, 30 minute power from 177 watts to 210 watts and FTP from 217 watts to 243 watts.
And to complete a >1500kj TR workout (Maclure or Chowchilla would give me this with my current FTP).

Considering at least trying mid volume for a bit this year but currently have the flu, so barely getting through this week of low volume.

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