Ouch! I am SORE! March was an epic month for training despite a cold that knocked five days out of the month. Plot to the right shows a performance management chart from Today’s Plan. Each day is given a Training Stress Score which is an integral of a function involving power and your functional threshold power. Basically the longer you spend at higher percentages of your FTP the greater the TSS. A TSS of ~60 is a good workout, 120+ generally needs some good recovery time, and 200+ is epic! Yesterday I did a 68km ride in wind and cold and hit 210 TSS.. I was toast.

From the above you can see the 491km I did in March was nit just big for March, it was big for the pathetic 2018 I had! In a nutshell March was a good training month. Now here comes the kicker: in order to be ready for Barry Roubaix, which contains lots of climbing (The Sisters and the Killer Wall!) I am also loosing weight. I have been calorie counting since the 22nd of November last year (starting at a disgusting 270lb) and in order to supercharge fitness, weight loss and wellness I am abstaining from alcohol for the month leading up to the ride. That’s right! Since bedtime on the 12th of March I have been 100% Alcohol free.

The plot above shows my weight as a function of time. You can clearly see the change in gradient when I started abstaining from Alcohol. Now the astute amongst you will exclaim: a gradient of -0.59 lb/day is dangerous and unhealthy! I concur completely and I am as shocked as you. But be assured I am consuming at least 1400 calories a day, aiming for 1700 a day. However, I am getting an obscene amount of exercise.

For example, according to Garmin, I burnt 2010 calories on yesterday’s ride (solo ride = no one to hide behind). I consumed 2641 calories (indulgence: two delicious brats for post ride refuel!) leaving a deficit of 1069 to my target of net 1700.. Now 1700 allows 600 calories a day for weight loss (1lb ~ 3000cals, note 1cal -> 1kcal) so I had quite the calorific deficit.. What is a sustainable calorific deficit? You will find as many opinions as web pages on that! In any case I am gaining in power and loosing weight. I updated my FTP from 223 to 246W (at the urging of Garmin) two weeks ago so now my FTP power to weight ratio has gone from 1.8 to 2.25 W/kg! A hell of a March indeed! I need a beer 🙂