The bulk ended on September 30. It ran four months, starting June 4. In that time I logged 133 sessions and 106 hours of training.
The plan was six lifts a week, with easy bike and swim volume on top to build a base for Victoria 70.3 next May.
Here's what I actually did.
Six lifts a week was the plan
I averaged 3.6.
That's 62 lifting sessions in seventeen weeks. Six a week would have been 102. Those 62 sessions added up to 1,424 sets.
Lifts at camp
Camp block | Shifts | Lifts |
|---|---|---|
Jun 10–30 | 21 | 14 |
Jul 8–28 | 21 | 14 |
Aug 5–26 | 21 | 8 |
Sep 2–8 | 7 | 5 |
In that last block I worked seven day shifts and lifted five times. My plan has six sessions, A through F. I did A through E.
The bench went up 42 lb
Date | Working weight |
|---|---|
Jun 4 | 203 lb |
Jun 25 | 210 lb |
Jul 8 | 215 lb |
Jul 30 | 233 lb |
Sep 2 | 240 lb |
Sep 17 | 245 lb |
Those are working weights, usually for five sets of six. I've left August out of this table.
From 203 to 245 is 42 lb in fifteen weeks. On September 17 I got 5, 6, 6, 5 and 3 at 245.
A week later I worked up in singles. 245, 270, 285, then 295 lb for one.
The scale went up about 12 lb
I averaged 204.3 lb in the first week of the bulk and 216.5 lb in the last week of September. Both sets of readings were at home.
On August 13 I said I was definitely struggling to put on weight. I was at camp and weighed 212.9 lb that day, my lowest reading of the month. Twelve days later, on the same scale at camp, I weighed 220.9 lb. That was the first time I'd been over 100 kg since the bulk started.
The highest reading came in early September, a couple of pounds above that. It had come back down by the end of the month.
What the DEXA scan says
I had a DEXA scan on September 29, the day before the bulk ended. My last one was on January 7. So the two scans are almost nine months apart and cover more than the bulk.
Jan 7 | Sep 29 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
Weight (scan) | 198.8 lb | 218.5 lb | +19.7 lb |
Lean mass | 175.6 lb | 184.7 lb | +9.1 lb |
Fat mass | 14.9 lb | 25.5 lb | +10.6 lb |
Body fat | 7.8% | 12.1% | +4.3 |
Of the 19.7 lb I gained between scans, 9.1 was lean mass and 10.6 was fat.
About 7.5 lb of that went on before the bulk started. My own scale read 196.8 lb on the morning of the January scan and averaged 204.3 lb in the first week of the bulk. The scan can't tell me which pounds were lean and which were fat in each stretch.
Here's where it went.
Lean | Fat | |
|---|---|---|
Arms | +2.1 lb | +0.6 lb |
Trunk | +6.6 lb | +6.2 lb |
Legs | +0.1 lb | +3.6 lb |
Those three don't add up to the totals because the scan counts the head separately.
My legs gained 3.6 lb of fat and almost no lean mass. The lifting plan only had legs on maintenance.
Eight swims
I swam eight times in seventeen weeks. Two of those were in open water, on July 30 and August 2.
My last swim of the bulk was August 31. I didn't swim in September.
Ironman Barcelona starts with a 3.8 km open-water swim. My longest open-water swim this year is 1,003 metres.
Three threshold rides, all in September
About 52 of those 106 hours were rides, runs and swims. That's about three hours a week.
Garmin labels every session by how hard it was. It labelled three of the 133 as lactate threshold. All three were rides and all three were in September.
Date | Ride |
|---|---|
Sep 3 | 55 min, 27.3 km |
Sep 7 | 55 min, 29.0 km |
Sep 25 | 70 min, 36.3 km |
For the first thirteen weeks, the hardest label Garmin gave any ride or run was tempo. It gave that five times.
Of my 71 rides, runs and swims, 60 were labelled base or recovery. Most of the cardio in this block was easy, and the threshold riding started in the last month.
What's next
The next phase is a base build and a cut. It runs from October through January, and I start it at 12.1% body fat. Victoria 70.3 is in May.
The plan has 7 to 12 hours a week on the bike alone. During the bulk I did about three hours a week of riding, running and swimming combined.
Reply and tell me which number in this issue you'd fix first.
— Kiegan