Miles ridden- 557
Longest ride- 84- Lune CC Coal Rd Challenge Reliability Ride
Hrs ridden- 33 miles
Number of bike sessions- 21
FTP- 330/5w
Fred hills ridden- 0- But did some horrible ones in Lancashire!
February has been a good month of training. As usual the weather has not been too kind! The good thing about entering the Fred is that it gets you out. So this month I’ve kept up the same pattern of training with the shorter, interval sessions in the week with a longer ride at the weekend. On average about 5 sessions a week.
As my training is not just for the Fred, some of the turbo sessions have been more geared towards some of my other goals for the season. Longer efforts at threshold for time trialling or sessions where you work around threshold/sweet spot and then push harder for a short interval then back the threshold/sweet spot which help with road racing. The longer ride at the weekend then increases the endurance and helps with the fat burn!
However, these turbo sessions can also help with the Fred. One myth about the Fred is that is that it is just full of hills. Maybe there is some truth in that statement…but there are also plenty of flat/rolling sections and it is these bits where you can make up plenty of time. You may go a few seconds faster on Hardknott by increasing your power to weight ratio but you can take minutes off the flat sections by being able to ride at a higher pace for longer.
My longest ride so far this year, The Coal Rd Challenge, was a good example of this. We road hard as group for nearly 5 hrs and took the climbs at our own pace. We rode this at 17.4 mph with nearly 6,000ft of climbing. A good training ride and in the sun!! My other longer rides were not quite a fortuitous. One which ended up for 30 mile slog into a headwind and the other in horrendous rain for 4 hrs. Surely the day cannot be any worse!!
I also had a re-test with my coach in February and was pleased to show an improvement in my FTP. If I can keep the weight off it will have a big impact on the Fred and my season as a whole!