So, I thought I would do a little recap of where I am at and where I ‘think’ I am going.
Now, as far as I can gather there are only about 3-5 people globally still looking at this page…and I am totally OK with that…there is Gus, he has to look because if anything goes wrong with this page he knows I will be messaging him to fix it. Then there is Garret, Paddy, Sully and Gra who I know only check in out of morbid curiosity along with a couple of girlfriends that still check in in the hope that my life is worse without them (sorry girls).
You guys are primarily my ‘brains trust’ and I would be genuinely interested in your feedback and opinions on what comes next…not that I will action any of it…but I would be interested either way.
So, where are we now, how did we get here and where are we going. In short we are now back ‘fit and healthy’ enough to actually start training. Back in June I was too fat, too heavy, too unfit and too unhealthy. I was doing bits and pieces of exercise and activity here and there but it was completely unstructured, inconsistent and unfocussed. I was close to 130kg’s and 35% body fat. My bloods were a mess and my blood pressure was too high.
One of the things that I have always said to people, trainees, athletes and to anyone else that will listen is that discipline is more important than motivation in that motivation comes and goes but that if you are disciplined then motivation doesn’t matter. So it was then that I decided to train everyday for a month…and it didn’t happen. So then I tried again the next month and I think I missed a day here and there and then it was I think September that I made it work and everyday that month I did 10km on the Rogue Echo Bike (18-22 minutes) and I did it no matter what. Then in October I decided to not miss a days training and did 10km on the Echo bike every non-rostered work day and did a gym session every rostered day and I did that as well.
As my discipline improved my motivation increased and I transitioned from the Rogue Echo Bike over to a Wattbike Atom X and almost immediately thought I would give Zwift a go…and one of the first things I did was an FTP (functional threshold power) test which had me at a pretty miserable 199 Watts. I then enrolled in the ‘Build Me Up’ plan on Zwift which is a 12 week intermediate program of about 5hrs/week which in the beginning I did as prescribed with rest days here and there put from mid November transitioned into doing sessions every day and just managing my recovery by alternating the more intense sessions with the ones that were less so. Which brings me to today. I am just about to do the last ‘real’ session of the program. There is a pedalling technique session and priming session both of reasonably low intensity and only 30 mins in duration and both of which I will do tomorrow. On Monday I will redo the FTP test to see where I am at. (So, I started writing this on the 14th of December…it is now the 27th of January…my FTP in testing was 222W an increase of 23W …and this was on the 16th of December)
Next task on my agenda will be the Zwift ‘Baseline’ series which is a workout and test session looking at measuring 3 different capacities…sprinting, sustained high effort and endurance to get more of an idea of where I am at with regards my physical capabilities.
(Hello…this is the 27th of January talking again. I did the Zwift baseline series and enjoyed it…it looks at your sprint power, your sustained attacking power and your endurance and measures all those)
While all this has been going on…my weight has trended down. As I said, I was up close to 130kgs and now I am down hovering around 118-120kgs.
My body fat has trended down from 36% down to 30% all the while hanging on to my lean muscle mass…all only measured via FitBit Aria scales…so not necessarily accurate but reliable and I am happy with the trend data.
What I am also happy with is that over this past 6 months is that I have worked to improve my health by improving my diet and nutrition and also adhering to a pretty rudimentary supplement regime.
So why am I bothering with this post…well. I have a few goals for the next 6 months and this is not a New Years Resolution type thing…I just happened to have got to this stage in December and the next stage just happens to be followed by January and a new year. So be it. I have a few things I want to do simultaneously and I will list them here in no particular order.
- I am going to keep up my indoor cycling with a view to racing.
- This year I intend on transitioning in some way shape or form to transition from indoors to outdoors.
Update: It is now the future and an the present.
I wrote the above back in mid December and then never came back to finish/publish it…because it really is just me rambling BUT you’ll be happy or not happy to know that I have continued on. I have still not missed a day of training and my training has gone from strength to strength.
I am going to make myself a bit of a list here because I am going to do a training recap on YouTube because one of the things I want to do in 2025 in learn how to record and edit video. So I thought…I can make a list here and then I would have something to keep me on track when I record.
So, I will do a recap of what I have done since mid 2024. That is transition from doing a bit here and there on the Echo bike to now Zwift’ing in a structured way every day.
I am going to talk about Xert which is the AI coaching tool that I use to design my workouts that uploads them to Zwift and what a fantastic investment that has been.
I’ll obvious talk about Training Peaks, Strava and Xert that I use to analysis and track my training and my progress (I believe all my profiles are public so If you want to go have a look at what I have been doing go to Strava and or Training Peaks and you can see the sessions there).
I will quickly cover what I have learned and who I learned it from…credit where it is due.
Then talk about my plan for the future.
That plan is to hang onto my muscle mass and to lose 5kg of fat in February and then to stabilise at under 115kg for March and then lose another 5kg in April and stabilise there for a month at 110kg…and then reassess. I will see where I am at fat wise and performance wise then.
That is the plan for now.
Will Heffernan 