Well after the last post, the recommencement of training didn’t last very long. July went reasonably well, but August was a disaster. Three weeks of almost constant rain made it pretty hard to get out on the bike, and for some reason I managed to stack on all the usual winter weight that I had managed to avoid for the previous three months!

September started quietly from a training perspective with an excellent holiday to Uluru, followed soon after by my brother’s first ever visit from Ireland, and by late in the month my CTL (Chronic Training Load, which basically measures fitness) was down at 22 (which is almost untrained) and my weight was back up to 89-90kg. On the plus side, Spring had spring and the weather was getting a lot better, so it was time to get moving again.

Being that unfit meant it was a slow start, as interval type training would take too much out of me, so the first two weeks involved just getting out on the bike and putting in the hours.

My initial plan had been to do four-week blocks - three weeks solid training and one easier recovery week - but two weeks in it became obvious that doing three solid weeks back-to-back was going to be too much, so I’ve switched to three-week blocks - 2.5 solid weeks with half a week recovery.

Here’s the last month’s workload and things are ticking along nicely now. The three-week blocks work well, as just when I’m getting really tired at the end of the second week I can convince myself that it’s only a few days until I can take a few days break. Each of the solid weeks works out to 4 hard rides and two easier rides, and if I’m really tired I have the option of skipping the easy rides. Most of the time you actually recover better if you actually do the really easy ride rather than doing nothing. My CTL is now pushing 60, which would class me as semi-fit (based on my personal scale).

What also became apparent as I got back into exercise is that I tend to eat too many carbs. Despite riding 9-10hrs/week during the first block, my weight barely shifted at all! I was eating pretty healthily 90% of the time, but was still prone to snacking in the evening despite eating a decent sized dinner.

I’ve tried super-low-carb Atkins before and had good results on it, but wasn’t keen to go that extreme again, so instead I opted switch my focus away from carbs onto protein & fat. All it boiled down to was making sure I got about 120-150g of protein per day, then eat plenty of good fats like avocado, olive oil, fish etc. and then add carbs on top depending on how much training I was doing. Instead of carbs being 55% of my intake, they dropped to 25-30% and fats went in the opposite direction. Result: 89kg at mid-October, 84.8kg this morning, less than a month later. Riding 250-300km a week obviously helps shift the weight, but from previous experience, if I’d stayed on a mainly-carb diet I’d probably still be around 86.5-87kg at this stage.

Good to finally be making some progress again!