Dirty Reiver 2022

[Crosshair]

Well I managed to get a place on opening entry day so it looks like I’m going back for another go in April.

My training since the last one has been a typical roller coaster. I started off okay but got a bit bored of just training. So I switched to a block of Zwift racing as I hadn’t really done any Vo2 all year.
This, on top of my relatively good base from months averaging 9 hrs a week, meant I saw some incredible gains.
My FTP ended up peaking at 340w (according to Intervals ICU) or 332 according to Zwift. Which is ballpark of my best ever.
Then I got sick! Two weeks completely off the bike followed but I jumped back in again once better and was soon hitting good numbers again.

Then I got sick again! And had another fortnight off.

So I’m now in my second week back. Last week I did 6hrs of endurance riding and my power went from 208w at 151bpm at the start of the week to 265w at 155bpm on Sunday.

Work is a pain this week so have been back on Zwift but got a pasting up the reverse KOM

As for my plan, I still need to lose a ton of weight- that will likely make a bigger difference than even 20 or 30w across the entire event. The climbing was just bonkers- relentless hills all day. But often, the more I want to lose it- the harder it seems to be

I’m going to just do what riding I can in the rest of December, and then I need to try and up the volume in Jan, Feb and March. The weather will make this harder but I’ll substitute with a Zwift race if needed.
Then for my taper, I think I’ll switch to another Zwift racing block to try and replicate that FTP bump.

As for tactics- I may try and blow myself up As stupid as it sounds, I almost paced too well last time. I think I may end up faster overall if I try and cling with the fast riders for maybe 20/30 miles and then as fast a group as I can hold.
I’m also wondering whether to carry less and stop at least once. Maybe at the 2nd out of the 3 rest stops.

So plenty to work on!
I have no idea how much time I can knock off, under 9hrs seems like a realistic kind of target- 10% faster over such a long course will be worth the effort.

[weeksy]

I did notice your up and down structure lately and wondered what was going on, now it all makes sense.

Keep fit and healthy mate.

[Crosshair]

A tough week last week. A couple of stressful work days threw my schedule out of the window. Ended up swapping in some Zwift races instead of TR workouts.
With 1.5h left to claw back, I set off around the Pretzel course on Zwift, hoping it would take 2h45 or so and then I’d have topped it up to 3hrs.
Sadly it wasn’t to be- I had no legs whatsoever. Pulled the plug at 1h30.

Still, fatigue *is* just fitness waiting to come online, and with a nice easy recovery day today, tomorrow should hopefully see some of that fitness appear along with some motivation.

I’ve never once missed riding my bike on recovery days- I think that’s a sign you’re not training hard enough! So I’m going to enjoy keeping my feet up as much as possible in between a few easy jobs at work today

[Crosshair]

January is still proving tricky for training. Last week, a couple of days of 12000 steps and having to dig some holes made the riding seem hard. Went outside for intervals one day and ended up chugging around barely above Z1.
I also hated the feel of being back on the 170mm cranks. So they’ve been swapped for matching 175’s.

The weekend was a bit of a write off too. Had heartburn yesterday and couldn’t face the bike in the evening.

So I went out today for a fiddle with my saddle height and an endurance ride. With squishy tyres and winter gear, the power didn’t give me much speed but 2.5h at 220w was a good dose of training and 1900kcals.
As always, once I was out of the door- the conditions never bothered me. If anything, having a permanent Zwift rig makes it harder because you think ‘ah, I’ll just ride Zwift instead’ and big rides indoors are so you end up racing Or procrastinating about when to ride so long that you never do.

[Crosshair]

Heading into a recovery week this week so I wanted to dose myself up with something hard beforehand. Settled on another Zwift century, this time as part of a group ride.
The start was a little hard, 260w average and 27mph before the climb!
Kept finding new groups and eventually slogged around in 4h25. I was nearly 30w up on the Century I did in August. But more pleasingly, the decoupling was less than 1%!! That a really good sign that my base is robust.
30w on to my Dirty Reiver effort should hopefully save me a good amount of time

[Crosshair]

80 miles today in the sun. Targeted 200w-230np as that’s my DR goal power.

I ate constantly- haribo, jelly babies and mini caramel short breads.

I probably under drank a little. I took 2.25l but only drank 1.5.

The more big days I do, the more I realise these are the best use case for a power meter (as I discussed with Weeksy the other day)- as it gives you confidence to just settle in at the right pace rather than smash the hills too hard when you are fresh.

My favourite training rides are on Salisbury plain so today was a bit of an experiment to try getting there from home.
It’s a 60 mile round trip so it would become quite an epic day to ride there, do the Plain end to end and back (50-60 miles), and then ride home! Maybe that should be my last big ride pre-event if I catch the weather right.

[weeksy]

The only thing is, it changes completely the dynamics of fun for me, riding it at 'pace' just kills the spirit of riding, sometimes you wanna just GO GO GO and put a bit of power and speed in... but it's not allowed. I completely understand the how and why it's not... but i would personally find it VERY hard to ride like that.

[Crosshair]

Yes I get that too
You just need to do what the Vegan Cyclist describes as imagining the future you.
Would the ‘future you’ slogging up the last few hills of the day prefer that ‘current you’ had ridden conservatively or burned all the matches in a blaze of early glory?

I definitely enjoyed overtaking a load of people in the last five miles of Dirty Reiver last year. As soon as I knew there were no more big climbs, it was hammer time

[Crosshair]

Still struggling with motivation. Even when I have lots of time, the weather has made me procrastinate too much this week.
In the end I settled on a couple of double days.
A nice easy spin on the gravel bike for an hour or so followed by an evening Zwift race both Tuesday and today.

Sunday we are off to Northumberland and hopefully, I’ll get the chance to do a lap of the reservoir at Kielder. Last year I did it on my road bike when we went up. That was on callipers and 25mm GP4000’s on the race bike
I was dreaming of buying a gravel bike back then so I will enjoy every minute this year, and of course, it will be good prep for April.

[weeksy]

conditions apart from a bit of wind have been pretty much ideal i'd have thought ?

[Crosshair]

Yes but that means I have work ready to do too So I end up stuck between doing my work in the evening and ride in the day or just leaving it until the evening to zwift in the dark.

[Crosshair]

Well I managed a couple of rides in Northumberland last week but the weather was crap enough to put me off of going bonkers
On the evening we arrived, I set off up the coast feeling like a pro. Whistling along in the high 20 MPH’s. Turned around 55 mins later to ride home and realised I had been tailwind assisted to the tune of about 25mph The slog back was certainly good mental training.

I got to Kielder water too but they have barely scratched the surface of clearing the storm-felled trees on the reservoir loop so I had to follow a shorter diversion. Still, it was nice to get a bit of actual gravel under the tyres.

After a tough Zwift race on Thursday, my legs were cooked in a way that doesn’t usually happen. On Saturday, I went out with Banjo on a big group ride. It reminded me of why I am not cut out for riding in company
It’s an odd thing that very few people on that ride are capable of pacing properly. They all smash the hills and then coast down the other side. As a result, I spent the entire ride either getting passed or passing others and then latterly, on the tail of the slightly stronger group home (who decided not to stop at the cafe)- getting my ass kicked fullstop

All five rides since the previous Saturday had been torquey-
Saturday zwift race
Sunday Headwind slog
Tuesday Kielder up and down constantly
Thursday zwift race and
Saturday annoying group ride
For nearly 11hours! So it was with some trepidation that I set off yesterday on a century ride.
I thought I may have to bail so I stayed local initially but by keeping the watts capped- I actually felt great!
It is amazing the distance not going too hard makes.
I took 600g of carbs with me and ate and drank the whole lot.
My feet ached around the cleats a little but otherwise it was a good ride. It was slower than the last one I did on the Diverge thanks to the brutal headwind on the way home but similar watts (172w/190np). HR was a low Z2 130bpm. Decoupling was only 2% which is great although shows I wasn’t trying hard enough really.

(If that sounds like a lot of carbs, interestingly, Phil Lovett did a YouTube video yesterday where he had his fuel utilisation measured. At 170w ( still Z2 for him) he was using 100g per hour!)

So 17h30 in 9 days is a good way to start my endurance phase. Because my winter turned into a low volume, Zwift smash-fest, I guess I’m doing ‘reverse periodisation’ although, because the event is a Z2 endurance ride- I guess it is applying the rule of ‘make your training more like the A event as you get nearer’.

[Crosshair]

Had a really painful hour on the bike yesterday. Plodding along at under 100w it puts so much more weight through your saddle and hands! And my body felt wrecked.
Back out today for three hours at 17.5mph though and despite really bad DOMS the engine was willing. I spun easy into town, did a 38 mile loop aiming for 250w and then spun home.
Lovely weather but another soul destroying headwind for about 18 miles

[weeksy]

Was deffo blowy out there. I thought of you when on the Yamaha earlier and coming through Shefford

[Crosshair]

That loop is uphill for about half the distance and then usually you get the tailwind home but today was just more suffering

[Crosshair]

Another painful recovery ride yesterday. Limped around for 45 minutes

Then today I headed back out for the 50mile ride I did on Tuesday.
The wind was a little more favourable and Rich came too. He knew the aim was an endurance ride and he averaged about 20w less than me despite taking most of the wind. But he is -30kg on me if you include bikes. I had a front puncture but it kind of kept sealing itself and then finally stopped leaking when the pressure was low enough (40psi at a guess).

It was great muscular endurance training and following Rich made it easy- just by following his wheel I knew I’d be in the right zone. Despite my legs being frazzled- it was amazing how they kept going.
I’m not too sure where this week will finish up but I’d like to get over last weeks 14 hour tally.

I’m going to aim to do 2hrs easy endurance tomorrow (which will be 9h27) and then that leaves 6 to do over the weekend.
Regardless of sunshine, Monday is going to be a day off!

[Crosshair]

I let Strava choose me a loop today.
I followed the map screen as I would have been scuppered had I missed a turn. That meant I had no data to follow which made a nice change.
It was 110 miles with nearly 5k ft of climbing but it took me up Streatley at 101 miles

I was certainly glad to get home. That’s 16h40 this week or 26h35 since last Saturday!

[Crosshair]

Recovery day yesterday. Then fitted new front wheel bearings and some 42mm Pathfinder Pro’s today as I had another big puncture on Saturday so didn’t want to leave them any longer.

Took them out on a recovery spin and they are noticeably chunkier/draggier but look pretty cool.

Hopefully get the rear bearings changed in the next week or so too.

[Crosshair]

[Crosshair]

2h20 odd today at high Z2 Hr. Power was low tempo though which is a good sign. Couldn’t quite hold on to 18mph during the spin home from town but 17.8 door to door felt good on the monster truck tyres