S1E1: My Peak of 'Mount Stupid' 🏔
Watts are watts 😬
Welcome to my cycling diary! I am a woman in her thirties who decided to start taking cycling more seriously just eight months ago. According to my Strava data, since May 2023, I have ridden 10,807 km. In my entire life, I had covered a total of 11,893 km, so you can see that I truly embraced cycling only last year.
Anyway, I became so passionate that I bought a power meter and started exploring coaching too. My boyfriend Daniel had the same idea and chose a coach from the Education First Cycling Team — Zack Morris. So, we got pretty lucky and gained many insights into the science of cycling. We started to pick up some marginal gains, slowly but surely. I’m happy to walk you through that to provide some inspiration for yourself too. Then you can decide whether coaching is really worthwhile! ☺️
I’ll share both the theoretical and practical aspects of my training, such as simulating races, pacelining, and testing dynamic threshold power. I’ll share personal experiences, challenges I faced and also lessons learned during these sessions when we hit the road or analyzed data later.
I am not sure if there is any other sport all about marginal gains. I was blown away to learn that there are so many little, tiny things in technique, specific training with aerodynamic positions, physiological elements, and positions that can maximize the speed and power you can achieve on a bike. However, applying all of this in practice is not as easy as it sounds in theory. I am backed with data about how much I struggle and how much room there is left for improvement to be much faster and more efficient.
I have already written around 10 episodes (guess I am too excited!), so stay tuned for more spicy data on more or less powerful moments of my coaching journey and riding with the real PRO's.
Having previously been a part of the enjoyable Education First training camp in Italy, Lombardy, I kinda knew what’s gonna happen and was easily able to come up with some specific goals for this new upcoming camp in Spain.
But I did have slightly different expectations for the camp in Girona, though. I expected this camp to be more insightful, educational, and also physically very, very hard. Two weeks before flying to Spain, I watched my boyfriend, Daniel, taking it very seriously and training on the Zwift trainer like a crazy person — 4 hours of training on the in-house trainer in ONE DAY nonstop! Meanwhile, I had not sat on a bike in the past few weeks; excuses for the others were that it’s my offseason. The truth is that baby, it’s cold outside and I cannot stand cycling inside; the explorative magic of my favourite sport puffs away. It sure gives you the superpower to stop time when you’re pedalling on Zwift, watching your iPad with an ugly drawing resolution of the exotic Watopia road, all sweat, pain for a long time, only to find out that it’s only the first 5 minutes behind you, not 25 minutes as you thought it would be. The only other sport that gives you the same superpower to stop time is planking. 🥵 But stopping my own intense cycling training plan didn’t seem highly strategic before the upcoming challenging coaching week with the EF team.
The marketing director from the EF team, also Daniel, told me already that the Lombardia experience is like 150% dimensionally different from what we can expect in Girona, and Zack Morris, our coach, was already preparing some gamification for the Girona camp and a points structure that he was excitedly secretly sharing beforehand. I knew I could expect something like a race simulation and tactical training that I find particularly useful, as I have only experienced 3 races, Gran Fondo/L’Etape, in my life and did not know anything about nothing. I was the typical “Watts are watts” girl that you probably do not want to draft behind in your race because if you do — you probably get lost or will be confused about the inconsistency of my ride and get yourself hurt. 🤕
Setting realistic goals 🎯
Now, let’s get back to the important stuff — coaching. You should always set yourself a specific goal and then expect everyone else to address it during the coaching session, in this case, the coaching camp, right? Right now, I already know what will happen at the end of the training camp story. So, if I were to set my goals all over again, I’d start with something simple: let’s say, for example, “To survive the training load.”
However, our coach wanted us to be more ambitious. Zack wanted us to be super pumped about highly ambitious goals. He wanted us all energized and motivated to do these painful interval training sessions. So on his camera on our first day, I said, “I want to qualify for the world championships.” 😳 I still find myself grinning and facepalming myself in suspense just by putting this goal into writing. Because in a more humble, radically candid real-world scenario, I am just a beginner, a cycling baby. I started my proper training this year in June 2023 and bought a power meter in July. I still struggle with fixing a flat tire and have to walk home barefoot when it happens. My bar here is pretty low, so any information that I’ll learn will be new and will mark massive progress in my level of cycling, which is now at 0 or minus twelve… especially when comparing myself with the folks, the legends, that were attending this year’s camp with us. But huh, that does not sound ambitious, confident, or concrete.
So if I am to be a bit more specific, I’d love to learn peloton pace line riding, understand more about the important metrics, and learn what to look for in my head unit or how to structure my training to see real progress. And I want to lose my “watts are watts” attitude.
So do you think that I can make my goals happen by the end of this camp? Watch out for the next episode and find out if I am making any progress or if I get stuck in a spiral within the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Now, stay tuned for the Episode 2 and more insights into this training camp, especially sneaky peeks into the pros’ new kit and training routines, along with so much data.
