The Doc's ' Week in Training' showcases his inventive approach to getting race-fit; just take the cycling stuff with a pinch of salt...
It seems incredible that in a long racing career no one ever asked me to do one of those “My Week in Training” features. It’s not as if my career was a total disaster – I fluked a few wins here and there. It’s not as if I didn’t train. It’s not as if no one had my phone number. It’s not as if I’d said no to such a request – it would have been a valuable opportunity to spread disinformation to my rivals. (“I spend an hour every day on the rollers pedalling backwards,” was a decoy I always planned to deploy.)
So any way, better late than never, I thought. Here’s what I did last week, in an important pre-season training block . I have no particular long-term or shortterm racing targets, and the weather wasn’t great.
doctorhutch.cycling@futurenet.com
Monday: Couldn’t be bothered. I woke up with some vague notion of “new-week ; new-me” in my head, but it ran into the sand around the tail end of breakfast. So I compromised by still taking the two hours off work that I’d have used to go cycling, and making a Victoria sponge instead. It was all right, but I need more baking training.
Tuesday: Two hours, with 40 minutes of tempo effort in the second hour. It went pretty well, although I didn’t actually do the tempo effort because I thought that might spoil the ride, which up to that point had been very pleasant.
Wednesday: Cleaned and lubed my bike. Then I tried to decide if cleaning a bike ought to count as training, on the basis that it takes up time I could spend doing something more useful, and ultimately it ought to make me faster. That sounds like training to me, but it does rather fly in the face of tradition. In the end I thought, “why not,” and entered it on my TrainingPeaks account.
I rode the Cycling Weekly Zwift time trial, and won, but was still a bit disappointed not to win by more. I reflected that if I wanted to go faster maybe I ought to train a bit harder. Then I tried to forget about this idea.
Thursday: One of the strangest features of the TrainingPeaks website, used by people like me to keep track of training, is that you can edit it. R ather than being limited to things that you can actually prove with GPS, like that global snitch Strava, you can retrospectively alter or even just invent any session you like. On this particular Thursday I did 90 minutes, which included three eightminute threshold efforts. I defy you to prove otherwise.
Friday: A planned rest day, and you can tak
