Tomorrow we officially hit the half way point of our 16 week Winter Training program at the Global Ride Training Center. We’ve employed the Keiser M3 power indoor bikes and Cycling Fusion principals to maximize our use of the indoor environment. We are preparing for personal bests and new levels in the great outdoors on two wheels.

Rather than give you my biased opinion of how good indoor training can be for your outdoor game, I’ll let the captain of our men’s racing team tell you in his words, and then I’ll discuss two midpoint New Leaf metabolic test results with you, one of which appears at the top of this post. Let the facts speak for themselves:

From Chris:
“Alright, I’ll be the 1st to say that I did not know what results to expect when we started the training plan this year.  I had my doubts that anything would be different in my performance once I hit the road.
 
Well, Sunday I finally got out to play for a bit.  I had 2 goals as I left the house:  stay under threshold and don’t wreck(if I did I would have had to hear “I told you so” from the estrogen based life form).
I achieved both goals as I expected, but what I did not expect was how I would feel.
 
It’s February and I felt like it was May.  The legs feel great and the motor to push them is huge. I stayed away from the usual low lying flats due to major snow melt runoff and headed away from the river.  Up.  Who doesn’t love to climb!

Now the climbing legs are not quite there yet, but the base building we have been doing showed.  Even while climbing I felt like I had more if I wanted it, but could then hear Gene yelling to stay disciplined and stick to the plan.
Even the last ½ mile climb to my house up the 10%+ grade of Logans Ferry I was pushing my usual 10mph speed well below threshold.  I pulled in the driveway feeling great. I can safely say my 1st climb of the year up that hill has never felt like that.  I wanted to go back down and do it again.
 
The training is working.  We all need to stay disciplined and stick to the plan.  The results will come.”

Fat Burning & VO2
Part of the requirements for our Winter Training program was to be tested with the New Leaf Metabolic system to establish our baselines. Our 1st goal then was to actually train our metabolism to burn more fat, and to burn it loner. Our 2nd goal was to increase our VO2 max – even before we begin the hard VO2 work. I’ve seen posts on various sites saying you can’t do that; train your metabolism and VO2. I think these posts are mainly done by those that have never been able to get definitive results in their own training plans, because the tools now clearly exist to validate that this is indeed very possible.

The two graphs here are for Nina – the captain of our women’s racing team – any myself. You will see a white line on both charts that shows where the 50% fat utilization is. What stands out is that most of the graph (and thus fat burning) is below the graph when we started the program, and now we are well above the line half way through. That is the burning more fat part.

Secondly, look at the shape of the graph. The deep diving of the first graphs indicate that our bodies were forced to burn glycogen even early in zone 4, where as now we are holding on to our fat burning machines longer, well into Heart Zone 4 before we have to tap our glycogen stores. This is good stuff!

In both manners, Nina’s results are better than mine – she is burning fat more often above 50%, and she is holding on to it longer in Zone 4. Last year she was also able to train with fewer training load points than I did, and still performed at a higher level in Italy. This may be partially due to age (I’m an old fart), but even so, it is a great example of our respective “Response to Training”. This is a training principle that can not be denied. Everyone will respond to training according to a sort of genetically determined response rate. Each person in our 16 week training plan will gain a different amount of benefit based on this individual Response to Training.

Finally, Nina’s VO2 increased 3 points, and mine increased 2 points. Our stated goal for the entire 16 weeks is 5 points for everyone. We are both well on our way there.