Winter challenges

Hey,

I picked up two new challenges for this January/Winter.  The one that Cam served up is a 30min per day challenge for January(at least I think it's just for one month).  At first it sounded like the boys would be doing another running challenge, but I'm glad Cam changed it.  This suits me better.

I also joined one with a couple buddies from work.  We all have power meters on our bikes so we figured a winter FTP bet/challenge would be good.  The challenge is on who improves the most over the course of the winter.  So we decided to do the initial test together at someone's house.  There's a few different tests you can do to measure one's FTP and we decided on a shorter 2x8min test.  One of the guys couldn't make it so it ended up only being Reinier and myself.  It was a short test, but let me tell you it HURT a lot.  It may have even been tougher in a way because the two intervals were short.  Anyways it went really well, I think I did ok.  From the test you take your best 8min and take the average Watts, multiply that by 90% and you got the FTP.  FTP is the average wattage you can hold for an hour, or 40km itt.  You might think from this short test that it might not be accurate, after all why wouldn't we just do the full hour tt.  Well the full hour is hard to do inside as concentration is hard to keep, therefore it might not be as accurate if that makes any sense.  It's important to get your BEST effort no matter which test you do.

So the test was done, it was great to have Reinier there too as it really helped with the motivation.  My numbers were good, about what I expected and we are super close, within 2 watts actually.  I'm not sure if we're actually taking our FTP number or adding weight and using the Watts/kg ratio which adds weight loss over the winter.  I'll be at a huge disadvantage if we do as I'm at my lightest I've ever been outside of highschool, I'm not sure how much more weight I can loose.  I might even gain some.  Anyways good jog Reinier, we have our benchmarks, I'm sure you will do further testing this winter and we will do some trash talking, all in good fun which will keep the motivation and keep us training hard.  Let the cycling (and running and swimming) begin!!

DP