Well, I’ve got to the end of the 10 week training plan.  The last week I’ve had to adapt a little due to travel commitments.  When I get back home I’ll do another FTP test to see where I’ve got to.

I’ll then have 4 weeks to go to the Ride 100 so I’ll have to put a plan together to at least maintain my form.

Today I needed to do a 2.5 hour rolling ride.  Since this is the end of week 9 and I’m pulling some of my week 10 sessions forward due to travel next week, I decided to ride the 3 hills of the Ride 100 just to get a sense for how things will be.

I covered just over 66 km of the 160km of the full course at an average speed of 29.2 kmh.  If I manage the same speed on the day, then I will need to average 34.8kmh for the other 94km in order to meet my 5 hour goal.

Several things give me confidence that I can meet the goal:

1. I am a lot less rested than I will be on the day – I’ve had three pretty heavy sessions over the last few days.
2. The rest of the course is a lot flatter
3. I am hoping that I can work with some other riders
4. The adrenaline of the event will help me go faster

This is a light week after the last 3 week period.  Today’s session was a 30 minute “time trial” on the turbo trainer – The Long Scream Sufferfest video.  Training Peaks tells me that my 20 minute best average power during the session was 289 Watts – the last 20 minutes not surprisingly.  Based on that, my FTP is now up to 274 Watts.

The calculation for FTP is 95% of the best average 20 minute power.