Time to take a look at bike training for next year. Firstly though a couple of other things.

1. I’ve put my  training diary and training planner spreadsheet up for download. Take a look on my Resources page.
2. Jo has offered to be support crew for the West Highland Ultra on June 20th next year. So I’ve entered and am really excited about it. Certainly aiming to win it but it’ll also be really awesome having Jo providing support.

Biking then. Here are some stats to get us rolling:

This shows a steady progression year on year until this year. I’ve struggled this year the most in my Triathlon career with motivation and at best I would considered I’ve kept  my cycling ticking over but not much more. One positive spin on this is that in the summer I focused on quality sessions rather than volume and it certainly contributed to the low figures above and my good bike performance in Wisconsin. I’ve not had to rejig my plan any further following this analysis as it looks a pretty reasonably target.

That said throughout 2007 I biked strongly and in fact Lanzarote that year is the strongest I’ve ever felt on the bike. I must admit though that on the whole I’ve felt pretty strong on the bike. The only times I really haven’t is at Germany and Kona this year. Here are some bike averages for the 5 months leading into races:

(The eagle eyed amongst you may notice that the daily vs wkly don’t quite add up. It’s because the wkly is actually the daily average of the wtd values. My gut was this would give the same but it’s slightly different)

The daily averages include zeroes. Pretty clear why I felt so good at Lanzarote and manage to run well off it. Also interesting is Wisconsin – here I experimented with focussed sessions each week in the 8 weeks preceding the race which resulted in the lower volume. The intensity was significantly more. I also think I rode much more sensibly. What I’d like to recreate is how I felt riding at Lanzarote – it felt like there was no way my legs would pop ! Yes, it’s going back to my comfort zone but definitely whilst in New Zealand big miles is the order of the day. I think come the summer I’ll do the intense sessions again.

I didn’t include New Zealand this year in the above because the 5 month period included Christmas. I know that doesn’t really matter … but with the space I didn’t need it. However, thats the one race where I’ve felt really good running off the bike. So I took a look at the 8 weeks ahead of that race. I averaged 403 miles per week and 58 per day. It’s certainly not rocking my belief that miles in the legs is a massive factor in Bike / Ironman performance.

I feel that I’ve got the biking right over the years and it’s just patience required to reap the rewards. It’s disappointing that I’ve let it slip this year but there’s no point worrying about that.

Goal for next year is to manage a 250 mile ride. I’ve tried it the past three years and failed. 2006 the first year I tried I only managed 168. You may think poor effort but I remember the day – to do such a big ride the idea is to manage it before dark so it means riding pretty hard. On that day I headed out and 30 miles in a spoke broke (it was like 6am) so I rode home and got on my fixed deciding I wanted to get some sort of first that day so I did my first 100 miler on a fixed ! Perhaps in New Zealand I’ll manage a 250 miler ! I’ll be on my TT bike and I believe the days will be pretty long.

I also like the fact in 2007 I managed to one hundred 100 mile rides ! Perhaps thats another little training goal. It’s abit like the 40 runs of 40 mins in 40 days (or X of Y in X) but looking at something for the year. Hows about one hundred and twelve 112 mile rides pre Kona…. now there’s a thought.