I track a lot of numbers. Commodities, companies, investment performance/portfolio, etc. Tracking them is one thing, but an early quote always stuck with me "if you're not looking at a ratio, you're missing the information". Work is proprietary, personal finance is private... but for a middle aged desk jockey, there's nothing too sacred about physiology metrics.
My growing bulk over the last couple years, and dwindling riding, especially in 2011, prompted a deep seated need within me for a reset. After tallying up my annual hours last year, I realized I needed to ride more (volume, regular and specific) to get some power back. TCR Sport Lab has been a part of that - an absolutely fantastic way to spend 90 minutes a week. Thanks Cory and crew.
Having said that, no longer riding with Shawn/Craig/Jon/Devin/Hooper on the hills (or flats!), and instead seeing their silhouettes crest in the distance (ok, they've always crested in the distance, but it got to the point where my myopic vision wasn't even seeing that anymore!), reminded me there's two factors at play - power/fitness... and weight. And if riding wasn't making that clear, the scale was. Enter the ratio.
From the early fall last year, I started picking my power up from the lows. Trish and TransAndes were the motivation. 270W felt intense for a while, and led to surprisingly quick shut down (ie. completing a 20 min solid interval was pretty tough). Now ComputTrainer TT's are back over 300W.
Christmas saw my weight peak around 185lbs. I haven't weighed that much since high school football, and the composition was quite different - from squat sets and bench press sets I couldn't even do one rep of now at half the weight... but that was what my time was spent at then. That's not what 185lbs look like after long bouts of desk sitting... which yielded a power to weight ratio of about 3.2W/kg on say a 20 min measure of Watts. Ugh.
Post Christmas, the TransAndes incentive really reared its head, and the Watts were pushed up to the 290 range before departure for a 20 mins, and the weight was around 175lbs (3.6W/kg) at that point.
TransAndes itself was of course beneficial - chasing Trish, eating more natural foods, etc. Upon return it was looking a lot closer to 170lbs and 300W for similar duration (3.9W/kg). Started feeling good - that ratio had improved just a snick over 20%. That's the right track.
Admittedly, that was the easier phase. Squeaking a little more incremental improvement was harder post that. How? Eat less, excercise more. Less consumption! Continuing to eat lighter, better food selection, sticking to the exercise schedule, consciously mixing up the weekend activities to not get burnt on riding senselessly at this time of year (snowshoeing, XC skiing, downhill skiing) took their course over February and March.
Approaching birthday time here is about 167 lbs, which is a decently optimized weight. With a while to go till I actually care for racing, that's fine. It's easier when the weather cooperates for longer outdoor rides. I wasn't always sure I'd get there - that's 18lbs since Christmas. Nearly 0.2lbs a day have vanished on average. I haven't been at that figure since '04/'05. I did race lighter than that in the past, but got weak, it only worked for me on sustained climbs vs. rolly terrain. Watts have continued on a trajectory of small incremental improvement. We'll say about another 10% improvement to the 4.3W/kg range.
Without doping, a magical skeletal figure that somehow maintains power, or other such fantasy, that's about it for me on the weight side. That's where the more consumption happens...
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