[Closed] Winter Training Goals...

First off I shall get new glasses 'cos I thought this thread was going to be about goats..

Secondly.. just making sure that I build back up to and maintain three rides per week which has been impossible all year due to injury..

Thirdly.. being a bit more conscientious regarding dietry input..

also TSY's post has inspired me to throw in some push/pull ups as well.. I've been slacking on those since being a daddy..

that is all

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By March I want to not shit myself when I think about the swim part of an Ironman, so I think a bit of pool time.
And found this yesterday - http://www.transgrancanaria.net/eng/paginas/home
*ponders*

Swimming is a constant goal for me iDave. Not being able to cycle for the last month has seen my swimming come on no end 🙂

Why do you keep finding these crazy running events? And did you see my world cycle challenge thread?

Why do you keep finding these crazy running events?

Finding them is one thing.

What goals have you set yourself fitness wise for the winter?

None. How are you getting on with that five minute mile? Or have you seen sense and realised it's not possible?

Just trying to maintain the fitness I have (which isn't a whole lot) so I don't start next year like I've never ridden a bike before (which usually happens).

Darcy - I haven't been able to walk properly for a month and my knee keeps giving way... not very well in summary. 😛

yunki+1 🙂

I'd also like to get sub 74kg. I need to start doing exercise outside of biking and frisbee, I keep meaning to start running and do circuits. I'd like to get to a sub 6 minute mile - screw 5 minutes, that's crazy talk!

Just carrying on as I am really.
120+ miles per week and 100 situps a day.

samuri - why on earth do you do 100 situps a day?

I've challenged myself to commute everyday throughout November (24 miles a day), combined with also giving up booze for the month.

I'm interested to see what impact that has on my weight, I'm currently 14.5st and normally have a couple of pints a day...

Oh well i guess someone has to be the first fatty to contrabute to this tread. Come spring time i would like to

1 Be Sub 100Kg pref sub 98kg
2 Have lost the tag of a fair weather biker and ride through the winter
3 Not be the slowest rider on club rides any more

samuri - why on earth do you do 100 situps a day?

Have you not seen his abs?

i'm with you RM 😀

1) loose approx 6-8kg
2) stop injuring myself and ride through winter
3) try going to the gym before work (using a 3 day free trial at a diff gym to see if this is possible next week)
4) start rowing again at the gym

i want to be fitter before spring starts instead of spending spring trying to get fit for the summer and injuring myself so i cant enjoy the summer anyway!

After a year of injuries i want to get my running back up to where it was last year.

Keep the biking going and get some swimming in preparation for some triathlons next year. Thats the goal for the winter and next year 😀

Come Spring 2012 I'd like to be the equivalent of an MTB Ninja.

Get to 2nd cat next season and hand down some serious pain

tricky how far across the South do you race?

well mainly somerset.. but might venture further to get more races in next year. I want to do it properly

(will do a few xc races as well)

Just preparing my mtb for some local cross races

imporove on core strength
improve flexibility
increase knee strength/ control
drop a few kg
nice steady base

hopefully this should see me enter spring with a few less niggly pains.

Gain back a stone of muscle.
Get my fitness back to a level where I can just about hang with some guys who race.
Crack flat tabletops and sideways whips 😀

Would I have to start in Cat 4 if I started road racing? What is the level of competition like? Are there any bench marks I can look to as to what my fitness / ability needs to be?

Learn to swim proper front crawl

Build a proper base of sensible running training without getting injured by building up too fast

One long ride per month

Get my old mtb from father in law's garage and build it up as a singlespeed

Under 37mins for Leeds Abbey Dash on 20th Nov.

teaboy - what's your plan on the swimming front? Have you looked at any of the swimming tuition places? Swim smooth, total immersion etc?

Yep 4th cat is where you start. I'd say just turn up to some races and give it a go.

Are you a member of a road club? If not i'd recommend joining one. You learn lots off other riders and racers and can practice drills, riding in a group, drafting and pace lining.

The thing about road racing you realise it's not all about fitness. I got caught out many times with this.. bad tactics, bad positioning, not reading the race very well..going too hard when it was my turn to pull.

But I learnt lots from it.

If you can afford it have a fitness test to see where you're at. I did this last november and did 5 months of religious training (av 8 hrs a week)

Get in a solid base of winter training; as its my 50th next year i want to challenge myself to enter something different on and off road. Run a sub 1.30 half marathon (havent done this for about 10 years).
Stop eating loads of crap while watching tv in the evenings!!

Cheers Tricky, I'm not, no. Only bought a road bike this year but thinking about doing some racing, can average some pretty good speeds on my tod but experience of riding in a group is limited.

Sounds like I need to find a club in the Oxfordshire area and just get on with it.

TSY - good question!

My aim is to do decent triathlons and open water swims so I really want to be efficient.

I'd ideally like to get lessons but it's tricky to fit them in with a young family so I've been looking at both Swim Smooth and TI.

I like that they both start off with drills to get the technique right. The TI website utterly summed me up - fairly fit in general but struggling to move water out of the way and knackered after a couple of lengths!

From what I read I like the sound of TI and will have a look at the book, but has anyone got any tips/ recommendations/ experiences of learning in Leeds/ Airedale/ Wharfedale?

i got better at swimmin by watching TI vids on youtube - not a brilliant swimmer but much better.

Re swimming topic, if its any help i used to do triathlons and was a crap swimmer. I had half a dozen 1-1 lessons to improve technique and my swim times improved dramatically. Even though i havent done a triathlon for over 15 years i can still get back in the pool and knock out 800m quite comfortably mainly on good technique.

teaboy - I bought the TI DVD and think it's been instrumental in getting me to swim well. I've been looking at the swim smooth website recently and think on the whole it might be better.

IMO the 'easy freestyle' TI techniques might be focused too much on gliding.

Cheers Tricky, I'm not, no. Only bought a road bike this year but thinking about doing some racing, can average some pretty good speeds on my tod but experience of riding in a group is limited.

Absolutely key.. also there's crit races (very short) or road races. Persnoally find road races much, much harder. Crit races are good for getting much fitter (in my experience)

In some ways average speeds on your own don't mean a lot for racing. We've had a few tri guys turn up to our 10mile Time trials who absolutely rinse it.. put them in a race and they get dropped... reason? they aren't used to going into the red. they ride so much at their threshold and very rarely go anaerobic

Get to 2nd cat next season and hand down some serious pain

Get stuck back into climbing and weights to regain my strength/muscle lost on my month long cycle trip and if possible, do a top roping course.
Try cx racing
Read the joe friel book loaned to me by cynic-al and put together a base training plan aiming to start racing in March
Training camp in the sun in March
Start running again on a regular basis
Lose a bit of weight
Get a VO2 test done and another body composition analysis to see i compare with end of season and base training.

edit

also there's crit races (very short)

oh forgot..

and defend my Bristol Rollapaluza champion title 😀

Lose a bit of weight get some base miles in - due to injury last winter i missed that and felt like i was chasing form the whole season and never quite got there.

I'd like to be as fit whe the clock's go forward as I am now.... Have invested in 'proper' lights for the bike to help this happen. Also upping the amount of running I do.

Going to get out on the hills more and bag a few more lakeland/snowdonia peaks over winter (by foot, or by bike depending on access). Thinking if I can stretch to a new/2nd hand SLR, I may feel inspired to get some decent winter landscape shots.

Already started putting a good base in for next year. Turbo in week to program + gym and trail mtb at weekends. Mostly trail centre because its all weather. TBH weight just needs to be stable as I need plenty of energy. Training burns a lot of calories and experience shows that your performance is a more important indicator than weight loss although being lean helps. I have a regular loop that I ride which tells me how my performance is changing in relation to training.

I'll be doing less MTB'ing and more Roadie'ing as the trails morph into the Somme, So that means more spinning, loosing weight, gaining higher rpm aves and expanding lung capacity. I shall counteract all this efort with larger consumption of cake and tea.

The only swimming I'll do is to catch up with either my windsurf board or kite board.

I'll only do situp's to get the TV controller and to pull the duvet over me and MrsBouy,

I've got some new lights coming soon so I'm going to re-start my winter night road rides (used to do that quite a bit about 2-3 years ago).

Starting track racing again next week (the track league has actually been running for about 6 weeks now but I wanted some time off after the Three Peaks CX).

Oh and I'll probably get my 2nd Cat back next year when road racing starts up again. I could have done it this year but was really just racing for fun and to get back into it. Still managed to win a crit though. 🙂

I intend get my weight down, increase upper body strength for xmas and a weeks surfing down the Gower so the following regime has been adopted -

Gym and swim 3 times a week.
Spinning once a week, had started to do it twice a week but the rest of the body wasn't getting as much of a workout.
Ride on the hills at the weekend for a blast!!

I'm getting a fitness test this afternoon, so I'll be able to compare the results against the test done earlier ths year in February. This will then form the major input into my winter training.

Although I already know I want to throw in one strength session this winter.

[i] samuri - why on earth do you do 100 situps a day?

Have you not seen his abs? [/i]

😉 To maintain my awesome abs

That's just a side effect though. I used to get lots of back pain when riding, it just got worse and worse. 20 miles on a mountain bike would do it.

Then I started doing situps, lots of them. At once stage I was doing 400 at a time, every other day. It made a huge difference. No back pain at all now.

Thing is, it takes so long to do that many situps, so I cut back to 100 a day. I don't always do them. But most days is my plan.

and defend my Bristol Rollapaluza champion title

I know a few who will say that was lost due to slipped seatpost. 😉

re: swimming

FWIW I bought and read the TI book and did little else other than practicing a bit of gliding whilst taking the children swimming. I've always just swum backstroke/breaststroke as I could manage these at a rate like my overall fitness (not the fastest, not the slowest).

Finally got into the pool by myself yesterday lunchtime, and there was a noticeable difference - just the whole ethos of relaxing, concentrating on balance etc. seemed better. Struggle to manage 50M normally without going into oxyen deprivation and sinking, but I was doing back to back lengths and not struggling anywhere near as much. So it's worth a look.

IMO the 'easy freestyle' TI techniques might be focused too much on gliding.

You're maybe right for someone who wants/needs to be competitive, but for aqua-retards such as myself I think it's a decent option. I was still quicker than my breaststroke lengths but with a similar effort level.

Not knocking it brassneck - it's brought my swimming on a long way... can swim the 20m pool with just 4 breast strokes because of it.

Thanks for the swim tips. It's good to hear about reformed aqua-retards.

I've ordered the TI book as it's less than £6 delivered from Amazon and it'd be daft not to give it a bash first.

And.... blow bubbles!

I know a few who will say that was lost due to slipped seatpost.

<trumpet blowing>Pah.. I was way faster than him through the rounds</trumpet blowing>

Eh?? don't remember that at all. I thought i'd timed it wrong in the final as I only really turned on the gas at 500m.

I did get trounced in the final by a welsh guy in august (although he is the 2nd fastest in the UK)

Only goal I have is minimum 600 miles a month until new year.

As 2012 is year 2 of entering events for me;

a)I'd like to complete the 10k run in March that I entered sub 50 mins
b) I'd like to be top 3 in one of the 3 50k Southern trails rides I entered last year (came 8, 5, 4 in 2011)
c) I'd like a sub 50min (dry) NIGHT lap at SITS 2012 or its wet equivelent
d) I'd like to do the on one hundred again if there is one for 2012 and finish in the top 90 (120th or so this year)
e) Compete in my first ever road sportive
f) Complete my first road 100k

All of which means maintaining my fitness/weight til Jan by riding 3 x per week, then ramping up the intensity some thereafter (increasing volume will be tricky!)

Get back to 11st. Sneak under 1h30 for half marathon. Get back to the front of the mid-pack in fell races, rather than mid-mid-pack. Defend 13th best Vet title in Cheshire cross-country. Do a couple more cx races. Improve 1K swim time. Start climbing again. Find some spare time. Finish with a grin on my face.

My main goal for winter was fitness. Unfortunately i'm going to be spending a lot of time on the turbo I think.

My actual goal for next year was based around the Megavalanche, qualifying well & finishing 'somewhere' in the top 50 overall, preferably at the sharper end.

Last winter and spring is the first time ever i've done any sort of fitness training as an adult, so it's been a fairly steep learning curve. This year I have a bit more of an idea what to expect.

3 things for me, and quite generic:

*Rebuild my base fitness which was all lost when I got off the bike in Feb and back on in September.
*Start some running.
*Develop and stick to a simple core strength training plan.

1 specific thing:

*continue losing weight - another 1.5 st ideally.

I tried my hand at road racing 18 months ago, and wasn't fit enough (plus suffered from bad riding technique). I'm determined to give it another go - sole ambition is to finish a 3/4 race in the bunch.

Get back my running fitness after a calf injury - I think I've still got it but been off a month now.

Build up my upper body strength to tick off some long awaited rock climbs after a 10 year sabatical

Just keep plugging on with the 200-300 mile weeks, play a lot of badminton, let my wrist get better, not have any more injuries, maybe put on a bit of weight to keep myself warm over the colder months.