Winter Training 2019/2020

The first part of part of this Winter's training period is coming to an end.

I started out by eating a lot and enjoying chocolate and life in general and managed to reach a maximum weight of 78.9kg on the 11th of November

My big weakness is my homemade granola:

And chocolate:

Then I took charge of my eating habits and by December 18th I was down to 74.2

October was my "resting" month... With not all that much recovery actually. I really like to train :)

I didn't have any real cold but one there was one week I was feeling a bit under the weather and so that week passed without any high intensive training. I also skipped the race I was supposed to do that weekend.

By November I was hitting my exercise bike seriously. The bulk of my training consisted of intervals on my Monark exercise bike mixed with races in the weekends.

My training sessions from October 1st and to present date (December 19th):

Sessions  Type        Normal Power    Best Power
12        9 x 9 min   310W - 325W     332W
4         12 x 9 min  310W - 320W     324W

1         3 x 20 min  330W            330W

2         4 x 8 min   350W            362W

7 (+1)    Race

9 x 9 min is my staple session and my favorite. It gives me a very good Training Stress Score while still letting me recover quickly. I actually, for the first time, managed to do back-to-back sessions with only 48 hours of rest in between.  I only aborted two attempts at 9 x 9 (just doing 6 repetitions instead of 9)

Doing 12 repetitions of 9 min interval is a new one for me and this Autumn was the first time I tried it. It's really tough and you had better be well rested before you do it.

I'll do more of these shorter intervals the next half of winter training season (compared to 9x9)

With the very restricted type of LONG intervals that I do it's absolutely vital that I get out and do a more varied form of high intensity training, which is what the races give me. Without the races I'd be doing more shorter intervals.

So what happens now? I'm going to Chiang Mai to do my yearly training camp in the mountains there. I think that this will be my sixth year in a row that I make this trip with my mountain bike. I'm really looking forward to it!

This is what the weather is like there right now: