Training's paying off

Well, the past few week's training has been working after a successful training run up and down South Stack Steps today.  A total of 1,600 steps up and 1,600 steps down, although the stopwatch was only timing the way up.  Average time for each set of 400 steps is 3 mins 40 seconds.  This time is a steady pace up the steps and not an all out rush.  

Here is my intro below, apologies for the poor sound quality though, recent videos have been much louder!

I met up with Richard and his family at South Stack, who came along to watch me train.  The weather was much clearer compared to last week and less wind too.

There were more people around, partly because of the improved weather, and I passed a few people on the way down as well as up.  There was one guy who went up and down twice, even his young son managed to go up and down once!.  My first trip down and up the steps was a warm up, followed by stretching the lower part of the body. After stretching the first of three timed runs up were recorded.  The heart rate was 185bpm but recovery was very good, with only a few minutes was all that was required.

The starting point for the steps is right at the base of the steps and I decided to make a short video half way down the steps to show how steep some sections are.


Aerobic capacity has improved over the last week, and this was demonstrated with a better average time of 3mins 40 on all three timed runs.

There will be another timed run in the next 7 days, after which specific training will taper and carb loading will begin.

Riding on the brakes!

Today it was time to improve the performance of the lungs after the step training at South Stack last Sunday, as it was evident although the lungs were strong, they needed a slight push to cope with the legs, as they were fine on Sunday, but the lungs were slightly behind. 

You may notice there are no pictures today, as time was running short, so will keep the blog to a minimum!

I'd already noticed that the turbo trainer resistance was still not working to full capacity, therefore decided to add my own resistance, by increasing the pressure on the rear brakes!  This had the effect of burning rubber (by slowing down the wheel rim, and increasing friction between tyre surface and roller surface) to an extent that rubber smell was clearly coming from the back wheel......and all this was done whilst the bike was raised at a 25 degree angle to simulate hill climbing.

This certainly has the dseired effect as I was able to increase the heart rate temporarilly to a new average rate of 165.  However, I still allowed for recovery to simulate 'cresting', before shifting to a lighter gear and spinning lightly.  This was mixed with sprinting for 30-45 seconds at 110-120 rpm, to create a good intense speedplay session.

This will help to increase not only speed but increase the lactate threshold and improve endurance.

Tower 42, Recce, London

Well folks, popped to London town to visit friends and do a close up of Tower 42 - looks epic when you stand next to it and look up!

I was going to go inside the main stairwell, to take photographs of the stairs to gauge them, but decided not to in case the security guard thought I was up to something lol!

We also passed the almost completed Chard Tower near London Bridge - this no doubt will be a potential event in the future!  
While navigating the underground, I also took advantage of some in-weekend training by going up the stationery escalators in the underground, much to the interest of some commuters travelling on the opposite escalator going up - where I was able to not only keep up, but pass those on the escalator!

My hotel room where I was staying was on the fifth floor, so I made good use of the stairwell everytime  (of course I could have gone all the way up, but at 12 storeys, it's nowhere near as 42!