My January training progress – a great start

I’ve pulled together my metrics for January to measure progress since I set out of my Zone 2 project. You can find the details of my training plan here, my goals and metrics here.

Capturing the metrics has been really useful. It forces me to look at progress in more detail and keeps me honest when assessing whether I’m making the gains I’m aiming for. Some of the key items that this review has highlighted are:

• My volume has increased as I’d hoped. I do need to step this up in February to get to a level that will prepare me for my first long distance ride of 200km in March.
• My Zone 2 training progress hit a plateau. I made early improvements in keeping my heart rate within Zone 2 while doing a 1 hour Zone 2 training ride. I need to increase the power output to push my heart rate further to the top of Zone 2 during these sessions.
• My VO2Max has improved more than I expected. I’m now struggling to push my heart rate to greater than 90% of maximum. I therefore need to push the wattage in these sprints, I’m also planning on pushing the intensity by introducing shorter sprints in the session.
• I’ve made significant gains in strength. This was to be expected as I hadn’t done weights in years. I’m not really counting these gains, January’s progress has mostly been about getting my body used to weights. Which gives me a base to work from.
• My weight hasn’t changed at all. I also don’t have accurate body fat and bone density metrics as I need to do another DEXA scan to get these.

All in all I January progress was ok. I was ill in week 3 and had a minor injury which slowed me down a little. I’m happy that I’ve started ok in establishing my base fitness, increasing my aerobic capacity and improving my strength.

In February I plan on continuing the plan. Increasing intensity to increase strength and aerobic capacity as well as increasing load to improve endurance.