The Number's Trap

Was another windy training day today, with the wind again being 16-26mph from the NW. I tried a little different route today, the intent being to keep duration roughly the same as yesterday but cut a bit on the intensity. I really don't want to get overtrained again.

My plan didn't work so well however, as my 34 minutes outbound took me almost 36 minutes to come back rather than the 22-23 I expected. Well, planned I should say. Problem was, part of the outbound route was an extended downhill section which I of course had to climb back up to get home. By the last climb of the day (the steepest, of course), my legs were definitely feeling it.

On the plus side though (actually it was all plus side, but still), I did get my longest ride in, 1h 9min, and my longest distance, 14.5 miles, fastest average speed, 12.4mph. I also decided that the data I've been seeing would put my threshold power higher, so I've bumped it from 220W to 231W. Some of the data seems to indicate it should be higher still, but I don't think the number of samples I have are enough to warrant that big a jump (to around 260W). It'd be nice if it were true, but I know I can't sustain that yet.

And this leads me to the title of this post, the number's trap, or rather, the trap that numbers can be if you get too focused on them. There are likely any number of traps that numbers can place in ones cycling path, but the one I'm thinking of is when "success" appears to stop. By this I mean the things that I'm currently concerned with: weight loss, threshold power, personal best power at various durations, average speed and so on.

Here at the beginning, most of these things will be steadily showing improvement with weight going down, power and speed going up. The trap in getting caught up in this is what happens when they stop. With weight loss a goal, how do you react when you don't lose weight or perhaps gain back some? How do you deal with your power/speed plateauing or decreasing?

I know last year I had to deal with these, and I don't think I was really prepared to. When my weight didn't keep dropping when I felt I "needed/wanted" to be lighter I got a sense of "why bother". By that time I was edging into overtraining when didn't help matters any. Also, when you are losing lots of weight, you get constant reinforcement about "what a good boy you are". Once you've lost the weight and people are used to that, you don't get those compliments any more.

So I think that is something I need to start thinking about now, here at the beginning. I need to realize that "success" is eventually going to be just to keep going and not give up, and to realize that just because I think I should be a certain weight or be able to go a certain speed or whatever the number is, it doesn't mean that I should. There will come a point where further "improvement" will have a cost greater than the rewards of achieving it. Knowing when you get to that point should be an important part of any training plan.

Regards.