A Little Background...

This will provide a starting point, bringing me up to present time (so I can remember later)... I have loved cycling for many years, but never committed the time to it that I needed to become good (I am obviously not genetically gifted- I have got to work at it to be decent). My fitness was completely horrible when Eliza, my daughter, was born on April 29th, 2005. Life changed quite a bit and got even more busy than before. I had put on some weight by the winter and was disgusted. It was that time when things changed. I started riding again. I started riding during lunch with a coworker... I weighed 218 lbs... my heaviest ever in my life. I rode my way into spring and lost 20 lbs. I went out on group rides and got killed... but I had fun. I did my first century that year (2006) in September and followed it up three weeks later by completing the 6 gap century in north Georgia. I had a decent winter that off season and stayed in shape riding some lunchtimes and riding mountain bikes with Brooke. We were doing a 45 minute ride at night on the moutain bikes (1-2 days per week) and a 2 hour ride on the weekends... all pretty hard. When spring came around, I was in the best shape of my life, but it took a while to get my road legs up and running. I had lost another 10 lbs and was now around 190 lbs. I raced several times last season as a Cat 5 and upgraded over this offseason.

I bought a power meter and am in the middle of a winter training program that me and a teammate put together after doing a lot of online research (google wattage mostly). The winter base phase basically lasted from November 1 to the end of the year, increasing CTL incrementally (4-8 points per week- I chose the low end and took it easy every 4th week or so) while doing a 45 minute (usually 40 minute because it felt so good to quit 5 minutes early) FTP workout every week and a sprint workout (8x15 second sprints... all out). Since November, I have increased my 40 minute effort from 270 Watts to 302 Watts and have increased my 5 second (1111W to 1250W)and 15 second sprints (739W to 1046W- this interval was untested until this winter) considerably. Overall the program has been great. I am currently doing five- five minute intervals at 110% FTP each week with a FTP (40 min) every other week or so (sometimes more). Over the next week or so, I will be posting some charts to show progress over this winter thus far...