A Knight To Be

*CAUTION: This post may contain images of a grown man in tights practicing masochism with the aid of a bicycle. TL;DR: The Sufferfest Training Plan, 12 weeks, MAP (VO2max) focus helped me raise my MAP by 4.3% (w/kg) and my FTP by 2.5% (w/kg).  Pre-Event Checklist? Done. Event Strategy? Done. All boxes ticked; battle awaits. Today I rode my second 4DP Test: Full Frontal. The first was a little more than 12 weeks ago, and since then, my focus is Maximal Aerobic Capacity (MAP, or VO2max) with The Sufferfest Training Plan. As a reminder, this is the 12-week General Cycling Plan, Advanced Level, Indoor Only, MAP focus, with all the toppings: Strength, Yoga, and Mental Toughness. TL;DR*: NM: 987 => 994 (+7W / 0.71%) AC: 470 => 456 (-14W / -2.98%) MAP: 314 => 328 (+14W / 4.46% ) FTP: 268 => 274 (+7W / 2.24%) LTHR: 182 => 180 (-2 BPM / -1.10%) And in W/Kg terms (as I gained 1kg over these 12 weeks): NM: 14.51 => 14.62 w/kg (+0.11 w/kg / 0.76%) AC: 6....

Week 9, 21 days to go. Today I took the Empty Tank Express . I'm in the Peak phase of the plan, and while I haven't tested my legs in a race or anything more demanding than the Full Frontal Test, I'm hitting minor breakthroughs consistently. Xert helps me keep tabs on my progress, maintaining the balance between informative analytical data and analysis-paralysis (e.g. Today's Plan). Revolver + Half Is Easy What you see here, are two Sufferfest workouts done back-to-back. " Revolver ," followed immediately by "Half is Easy". Here, have a taste: Both these workouts revolve around the same idea: equal work to rest ratio, at VO2max or above. Revolver is 1 minute On, 1 minute Off. Half Is Easy dishes out 2 sets of ~10 minutes each, with 15sec On, 15 Off. Now, look here. On the one hand, I have a VO2max (MAP) weakness. On the other, I have Repeated Efforts as a strength ("Attacker!"). The result of these two comb...

Week 5. I open my eyes. It's already light outside, must be late. My smallest son is next to me in bed - he usually comes over at around 6 am if he doesn't wake up to do so at about 2 am. It's Saturday, so no rush. No need to initiate the coffee ritual with the usual urgency and mayhem of kids getting ready for school and kinder. A drowsy affair of sorts on most weekdays and even more so today. I shift my attention and scan from the feet up. Ah, sore muscles. My faaaaaaavorite. I smile. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is my friend. My joy. It means something's working. This is new. This time it's different, I can tell. No other training plan, at least in the last couple of years, had me enjoying this pain regularly. Of course, whenever I hit the weights with a hard session of an hour or more, working to Failure on exercises, I'd soak in sweet DOMS the following days. But here, with the SUF plan, the Strength sessions are less than half an hour ...

Week 5 When I first started with The Sufferfest Training Plan, I had to pay attention to planning the upcoming weeks carefully. Going from Xert, which is "dynamic," meaning you can find the right workout for your goal on any given day, SUF Plans are pre-fixed. Let's dwell on that for a moment: Pre-fixed training plans are a "given." You get the workout schedule for the next ~12 weeks and follow it. Sick child? Holiday? Business trip? Tough luck. Yes, life always gets in the way, but you more or less have to make up for missed sessions somehow. The Sufferfest makes it easy to figure out what to do in such a case: https://thesufferfest.com/blogs/training-resources/skip-a-workout-dont-panic . But as a whole, you're committed and inflexible. It's the same with training plans on Zwift and Today's Plan. Zwift will give you a short window to complete workouts, but if you miss the train, you're in trouble. Dynamic/Flexible training pla...