No, must be a common name. I’m based in Norfolk 
You can’t select Norwich as a location in VeloViewer!
Lol! Ah ok, it was indeed the London location that made me suspect… 
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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55m, former NORBA Racer, taking to Gravel.
As far as the year…Got a Coach, did a lot of building this year and my races looked like this…
Rock Cobbler - Heat Stroke, cut the course right before the big climb. It was hard.
Sherwood Forest Hopper - Puncture before the start, it was a wet road and the sealant didn’t do it. Spaced that I had dyna plugs. Tubed it, but the tube picked up the same puncture, so I was constantly topping it off the rest of the race.
La Gravila at Sea Otter - Did not Start bike was leaned against the wall and the Di2 battery went flat.
Unbound 100 - Top 50% of all finishers, Top 50% of all Men, Top 50% of all men 50-59. Best race of the year.
Tahoe Trail Relay (Thanks to @Jonathan on that tip) 2nd place men’s team (um, out of two) despite bad crash at mile 9.
Rebecca’s Private Idaho QSR. Day 1- MTB Stage Mechanical. Day 2 Hill Climb Time Trial under paced. Day 3 Super hot & smokey, Pacing, fueling and hydration could have been better.
Gray Duck Grit 222 - 39° at the start, 27° with winchill of 11°, but even so overdressed, overheated, got sweaty and then got hypotherma because I wasn’t able to manage temps between climbs and descents. but damn racing at night is so cool.
Got a blood clot in late October early November, now on thinners and managing it. Working with the docs to figure out how I can race and not bleed out if I crash.
Year end I had my big ride around the San Francisco Bay on December 21st. 152 miles in just over 10 hours on a mix of gravel and tarmac. Riding the Embarcadero in SF, Across the Golden Gate at about the half way point was pretty damn cool. Will try for the longer version this summer, that one is 180ish miles.
2023 will be pretty much the same schedule, maybe with more MTB, and if I can swing it USAC XCM or a western states 12 hour MTB race.
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A Great year on the bike, even though I didn’t ride until early March ( low motivation) then lots of tours ,moved to a hilly(er) area .Went to Cape wrath following a 40 year old aspiration and wrote a book about the physical and mental journey.
Did a PB on my local test course 22 miles by 2 mins
This year I’m riding the 1972 TDF route over 3 weeks in June a lot of endurance miles between now and then. Happy new year and safe fast riding in 23 !
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2022 wasn’t one for the archives with challenges at home and work over summer and sickness towards the end of the year. Found motivation and fitness took a fair few hits.
Moving away from weekly and monthly mileage targets this year to focus on 1) time on the bike 2) enjoying social rides and 3) more climbing. At the height of COVID I had a great routine over summer of getting out on shorter rides around work. Health (physical and mental) was at its best that year so getting back in that groove is the overall aim.
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A very good year
411hrs activity
Hit my all time FTP pr in May ahead of my A race in July: 4.75w/kg (pls bear in mind I’m 52yrs old)
Did better than my stretch target in my A race. 10th place in the Trans ALP mtb stage race. (Grand Vets catagory)
Was super motivated after the summer to build on this but it just didn’t happen and the last 3 months have been very average, 2023 will not be great I fear.
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2022:
- 3rd year of structured training
- Reached initial goal 500km/24h (self supported, on gravel bike)
- Switched from power to HR for Z2 workouts, helped to improve training consistency greatly
- Pushed TTE ~35min → 50min
2023 goals:
- Start increasing speed/intensity for 24h ride, hopefully 600km+. Looking new bike for this
- Keep extending TTE 1h+. No real need, just to keep fitness improvements more interesting
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It’s been a mixed year.
I hit 14,000km, and probably would have hit 16,000 (my target) if it weren’t for Covid and my decision to ride mainly off-road from September. That’s not bad. I also got a KOM I’ve been targeting for a while.
I’ve worked out that lots of volume at low intensity, with 1x/week hard intervals, is what works for me. More intensity burns me out very quickly. That’s a positive. I also need to work with a coach; left to my own devices, I will try and do too much. Someone above mentioned using HR as a metric for long rides (and turning off the power meter); I’ve found that hugely helpful as well.
My racing didn’t work out, partly because of anxiety issues, but also because I got stuck in the ‘I’m racing so I need lots of intensity to prep for this’ mentality. It actually just made me tired. TBH I have probably decided to put formal racing behind me for now and focus on semi-competitive sportives and personal challenges, such as audax. Those are other good learning points.
My back pain is much better, and I have realised (the hard way) the importance of stretching.
I’ve also realised that the type of long rides I really enjoy are light/‘champagne’ gravel, and solo. It may sound selfish/misanthropic, but it’s me time, without traffic, and without the pressure to perform or conform. Group rides are good on road, for ~3 hours. I need to ride with people faster than me a bit more often; I’ve got into the habit of riding in groups where I’m the strongest rider (or 1 of 2), and I need to get out of my comfort zone there.
I have spent too much on bikes, the most expensive of which I don’t actually like that much. I need to stop chasing the perfect bike/the next best thing, and accept that the perfect bike doesn’t exist.
Apologies for the essay. Actually writing that all out has been very helpful!
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I got an indoor bike a year ago at age 55, with the goal of doing “cardio” two hrs a week. Somehow this morphed into me doing 16-17 hrs a week by the end of 2022. In total, I rode 550 hours and burned 350,000 calories (since I rode mainly indoors, “miles” doesn’t mean a lot to me). It took me from Jan 1 to Aug 20 to burn the first 175,000 calories and ride the first 300 hours, and then I burned another 175,000 calories from Aug 21 to the end of the year while riding the final 250 hours.
My FTP went from 181w on my first TR ramp test, to 316 per my most recent AI FTP. I mostly just followed Seiler’s advice and did a lot of lot of easy riding. I remember in the spring, my easy wattage was like 130-140w. It just slowly crept up all year, just like Seiler said it would. I did a three-week VO2 block over the summer, but no other structured HIIT.
Recently I started working with a coach and have been doing some Tempo and just did my first SS workout a couple days ago. (I don’t mind training in the “no man’s land” between Endurance and Threshold, but at my age I consider such efforts to be Intensity workouts and not something I want to do multiple days in a row.) I do feel that all the LSD riding has given me a kind of stamina at higher wattages that I didn’t really believe was possible before. I’m curious to see how it develops as we progress in SS and to higher intensities.
Going from couch potato in 2021 to burning 350,000 calories in 2022 changed my body composition a lot. I got a DXA scan in early February and was 19.4% body fat. A follow-up in October showed me at 12.8% body fat. Between those two scans, my weight dropped from 90.0kg to 86.1kg (at 192cm height), and I lost more than 6.4kg of fat while gaining more than 2.6kg of lean mass. I have trained a lot more since October and lost another 1.5kg on the scale and feel leaner. I plan to get another DXA in Feb to see what the change is year-over-year.
I also did a couple VO2max tests at the local university. The first one in March was 4.16 L/min, for 47.1 relative VO2max. A follow-up in mid-August was 4.9 L/min at around 88.5kg, for 55.2 relative VO2max. A 55 VO2max probably sounds super meh to younger people, but just look at a chart of how VO2max declines with age, yikes!
The mid-August VO2max test was only at about my halfway point in terms of kilojoules produced on the bike in 2022; I doubled my kJ total since then lost another 4kg body weight, so I suspect my VO2max is now quite a bit higher. I will get it tested again in a month or two.
Mid-August was also when I finally got a real bike. Before then, I didn’t want to just get an expensive bike on a whim, only to flake out on my newfound hobby. But by the time I had logged 300 hours on the wattbike, I figured it was OK to get a bike with wheels. I got the gravel bike shown in my profile pic.
I am scared of riding on roads in the US. I kind of thought I would become less scared when I heard more stories from seasoned cyclists, but it turns out nearly everybody who has been cycling a long time has had near misses or worse. It’s unbelievable the number of people I’ve heard about or from who’ve broken their back, hip, neck, etc. And these are all people who have way more experience and better technical skills than me on the bike.
I took up the bike for my health. A serious injury at my age could set me back years, or forever. To me, that’s a dealbreaker. Not in the sense that I will never ride outside, but it has a big impact on where I will ride, and how.
It’s a funny thing—cycling seems like literally the greatest sport for improving your health on the one hand, but there’s this Sword of Damocles thing going on in the background.
I probably did 95% of my riding in 2022 on the indoor bike. An obvious goal is to spend more time biking outdoors in 2023. I don’t know if I will do any racing or just go on some group rides. Whatever I do, it will be off road, as much as possible. Hopefully once a week, which would be a huge improvement over 2022.
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Those are some impressive stats. A 300W+ FTP from <200 is a huge improvement. Congrats. My VO2 max is only very marginally higher than yours and I’m over 10 years younger!
I’d be very interested in how you’ve paced/monitored the easy rides: HR? Power? I know n=1, but as a volume responder myself, I’d intrigued by this.
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I have mainly relied on HR. My cycling HRpeak from ramp tests and VO2max tests is 182-183, and Seiler advises his Z1 (in the three-zone model) should have HR in the range of 60-75% HRmax. Practically speaking, I have just aimed to have my HR in the range of 115 to 125 bpm for most of the year, and let the wattage fall where it may.
Chad McNeese created a hand-dandy spreadsheet summarizing the Seiler zones and the Coggan zones. I relied on this for most of my Endurance rides in 2022. Thanks, Chad!!
The coach I am working with does a lot of HR-based training, but based off of Coggan zones, which use threshold HR instead of HRmax as a reference. Given that my threshold HR seems to be around 162 bpm, my coach has advised me to push up the average HR on Endurance rides into the range of 128-141 bpm. This is quite a bit higher than what I had been doing, so it has been an adjustment and I am skeptical that I can really handle 15-17 hrs a week in this HR range.
As a compromise, I have been pushing my Endurance HR up in “baby steps,” like trying to get an average of 126 bpm on a 3hr Endurance ride, instead of 118 bpm. Definitely it means pushing more watts, but at what recovery cost? There’s the rub. We shall see how it goes… a work in progress!
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A 7% loss in body weight there whilst increasing ftp power, well done.
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Mine is currently 52, I’m 56, a year older than you. Garmin reckons it’s in top 5% for age and male. At my winter weight at moment, so expect it’ll rise as I head into Spring and summer.
Yeah my weight fluctuated a bit over the spring but seemed to settle over the summer, fall and winter, starting trainer road, my weight fluctuated with each ramp test, I went 57.5kg to 58.7kg to 57.2kg, 57.2kg and then 56.5kg (where I have been since late August). I don’t worry about the weight however, many suggest it doesn’t matter what my w/kg is when my FTP is so low lol.
If I could wave a wand and gain 20kg but increase my FTP by 80, I would likely be faster from what I’ve been told.
Pre-Trainer Road when I was just using my free Rouvy trial and doing a 20 minute test instead of a Ramp test, my first FTP 168 watts at 56.7kg or 2.96 w/kg back in Dec. 19th 2021.