My own sojourn with suffering
Last year I surprised myself by completing a 10-mile time trial on Zwift with a 382-watt average recorded by my Wattbike. Weighing in at 86kg, the resulting 4.4W/ kg was by no means a special figure, but my proximity to 400 watts for a 20-minute period was such that I decided to make it an end-of-season target.
Eighteen watts doesn’t sound much, but after many years of training, a 5% threshold power increase is pretty significant. If I could reach that 400-watt goal, I’d kick off the cleats, grab my pipe and slippers, and plant myself in a comfy chair ready to regale my grandkids with how I was one of the most powerful cyclists in the world… or on my street anyway.
Enlisting the expertise of Precision Coaching’s Will Usher, I embarked on a training plan that kept the hurt fairly high from the outset. However, it was only when Usher introduced a block of sessions called Dastardly Dave that the real ‘fun’ began. These were essentially protracted VO2 max intervals of up to eight minutes, and they demanded all the concentration I could muster. By the end of the first interval I felt like I’d spent an eternity wading through fire and brimstone.
Keeping in mind my 400watt target just about allowed me to stay ‘in the zone’, and I also employed Usher’s coping mechanism of breaking the time into one-minute chunks, which slowly but steadily dwindled down to five-second chunks.
Halfway through the plan, I decided to go off piste and put my power to the test on the Bologna TT course. I achieved an average of 402 watts for the 13 minutes of effort – which confirmed I was making progress. The training was consistently pushing me into the red, to the point that the acute levels of suffering began to feel like normal sensations. I’d become wellpractised at training in pain, and I’m certain this contributed to my form.
As for the actual test… alas, it was scuppered by Covid. But after 12 weeks of pain-tolerance training, I’m more confident than ever that I can crack it. This could be the year…