Now that my main goal for the season was successfully completed, I've moved into a week of transition, with no real structure to my training, just getting out and riding how I feel most every day for an hour or so. I figured this easy time would be a good time to take another look back at my season, at least as far back as I have PowerTap data for.
The graph to the left shows the percentage of my training time spent above any given power level. So the left hand side of the graph is all 100% as you have to spend 100% of your time at or above 0 watts. You will note that there is no data line for July. This is because my PowerTap was being repaired and I trained without it for nearly the entire month, so there isn't any good data to look at as far as actual power goes.
The first thing you'll notice on the graph is that the lines, in general, shift up and to the right as the season went along. This shows I was spending a higher percentage of my training time going harder than the previous month. Part of this shift is due to my estimate of my LT power increasing over this time period. When I first got the PowerTap in May, I estimated my LT at 280W. In June the estimate was up to 290W and by the time I did a good solid TT in August, the estimate was up to 310W. Each increase would have forced me to spend more time at higher intensities as my interval work was based off them.
If you looked at a graph of my absolute time above power levels, you would see a similar shift. Using my FT power levels as examples:
| | 280W | 290W | 310W | |||
| May | 10.5% | 290 min. | 8.5% | 234 min. | 5.7% | 155 min. |
| June | 15% | 497 min. | 12.9% | 426 min. | 9% | 304 min. |
| August | 19.5% | 596 min. | 16.3% | 508 min. | 11.4% | 354 min. |
In each case, I roughly doubled the amount (both as a percentage of total time and as absolute total time) I spent above the respective power levels, indicating I could go harder longer as the season progressed. The increase from June to August is particular striking when you realize that I trained 4 fewer hours in August than in June. Total training times I recorded for this season were: May - 41 hours, June - 51 hours, July - 62 hours, August - 47 hours. It is interesting to note that I spent around 11.5% of my training time each month (+/- 1% or so) at or above LT.
So now that I am nearly at the end of my transition week, I need to start focusing on my next round of training. To be honest, I'm at something of a loss in deciding what to do since I don't have all that much time before training will be moving indoors for the winter. I'm not sure I can, or even want to really, maintain the same intensity levels through the winter as I have this summer. For most of the summer I've been holding my CTL in the mid to upper 90's and I'm not sure how I'll be able to keep a big portion of that through the winter. While I can probably go with generally higher intensity workouts that are up to a couple hours long, I'm fairly sure I'm going to lose some endurance over the winter. Hopefully we'll have times when I can get out on the mountain bike and get some longer rides in.
Goals for next year, I think I've got plenty of them:
- Complete a century in less than 5 hours
- Enter my first road race
- Do a solo 'stage race' tour around Vermont (roughly 550 miles in 7 or 8 days
