Detraining

We all know that many of the adaptations that happen in response to training are very elusive. It wont take a long time for some of the cardio vascular adaptations such as stroke volume to decline to their untrained levels. I read somewhere that for cycling, just a week of sedentary life is enough to lose half of the adaptations! I will soon be able to verify that on myself as I am coming from a two weeks of inactivity due to a crash. I have my bike back, My bruises are healing slowly and my hand is not as sore as before. Unlike two weeks ago, I am now very motivated to get back on my bike today. I will ride fairly slowly today and tomorrow and try to do a time trial on thursday to see where I am standing. My guesstimate is that my FTP should have dropped to 280-300 Watts from its latest 317W, but we will see. During this past couple of weeks, I also gained about 2-3 pounds, in spite of trying to limit my calorie intake. It sure takes a lot of determination to limit your food intake when you suddenly switch to a sedentary life from a 15+ hours/week of intense training. I am however not too much worried about any of this, I don't have a serious race planned for this year and I am sure I will be back where I was in a month. This two weeks, I tried to have fun and regain the motivation so it can also be a good vaccination against the late season burnouts that many cyclists face.

thedailyplate.com and my new FTP

I encourage anyone who wants to count calories to use www.thedailyplate.com. I have used other websites before but after a few days of excitement I gave them up. With our busy schedule, the most important thing about a calorie counting site becomes its user interface. It should not take you more than a couple of clicks to find and record what you put in your mouth. Also many of us eat at least one meal and a couple of snacks outside. It is essential for these websites to have a comprehensive database of what you get in food chains and gorcery stores. The daily plate sports all these features in the most usable form that I have seen. It allows me to enter my exercise calories and calculates it into my goal calorie intake automatically. It is also possible to add your own custom food. One other thing I like about it is to give you the list of what you have eaten recently. Eating is one of those phenomena that conform to the temporal locality princinple. Meaning that if something is eaten recently, the remainder of that package is stored in your fridge and there is a high likelyhood that it will be devoured again in the near future; hence the usefulness of this favorite food lists.

Now the good news about my FTP progression: I was riding along and I saw a local time trial going on. Apparently these folks hold that everyweek and I was just about on time. I asked if I can do it as well and they said yes (it cost 5$ though). So an hour into my endurance ride, I did some quick pickups around my threshold power and entered the end of the line. Off I go as the last rider on a 15Km somewhat hilly route which I wasn't familiar with. It looked to be a fast crowd as most rider had TT bikes and full kits (skinsuits, disc and deep rims, booties and aero helmets and bottles, pretty much nothing was missing). Anyhow, I managed to reel two riders in and averaged 330Watts (normalized power 333Watts and VI=1.01). My speed was not amazing (only 40Km/h) which shows what a horrible CdA I have on my road bike! Anyhow, I am going to set my FTP to a new value of 316Watts and that bumps up my power to weight ration to 4.21

Coffee: A staple in every cyclist's diet

Cyclists are crazy about their coffee. They drink it in a variety of ways depending on the situation. From a dark roast brew in the morning served with milk to a double espresso shot drunk black.

Jens Voigt knows this the best :


But Coffee is bad for you, right? How can something that dark and bitter not kill you? It is bad for your heart, it causes diabetes and many other things, didn't you know ?

Well, WRONG! Up to this date, there is no actual evidence that conclusively suggests that coffee is indeed has any negative health effects. Furthermore, some new studies have suggested that, coffee does have some positive impact on overall health and it maybe an effective way to control appetite. For athletes, coffee is helpful as a recovery drink too. This study showed that coffee may reduce muscle pain and force loss after an eccentric exercise to which the subjects have not been accustomed to.

I personally am a regular coffee drinker. I drink two cups in the morning and top that with a couple of more during the day. I am going to take advantage of this for my weight loss plan. Whenever I crave for a snack, I will first drink a cup of coffee from now on before subduing to the urge to eat.

Starting up

I am 176cm (5'9") and 75Kg(165lbs). I am an amateur cyclist with Functional Threshold Power of 307 Watts which is 4.09 Watt/Kg. My goal is to increase this ratio to 5 Watts/Kg. I want to increase the power as much as I can and lose weight at the same time. I am obviously too fat right now, although not in a very bad aerobic shape. A good cyclist around my height should weigh no more than 65Kg IMO. Although I have a slight large build and some upper body muscle due to weight lifting in the past, because of nutrition (energy actually) imbalance I have put on 8 pounds since last year in spite of regular training. It seems like the pounds are not going to shed by themselves and I am obviously binging after workouts. The purpose of this weblog is to hold myself accountable for what I put in my mouth and how much I train. It is going to sound a bit too extreme to some but I am serious about my aspirations and I am willing to compromise and suffer to get there...

So strategically I am going to restrict my calorie intake for a while. I start with 800calories deficit every day and try to increase it a bit after the first week. I will also try to eat healthier, although I am not eating very unhealthy right now.

My basic metabolic rate is somewhat low and estimated to be around 2000 calories. I train with a powermeter and thus I will have an accurate estimate of how much calories I burn cycling.


Stay tuned..