Ok, this is different to my normal posts…Physically I am ok but mentally I am a bit weak if I am told to sit at a certain level for a certain period of time.
Warlow+1 just humbled me and I gave up after about 35 minutes… I just kept getting in my own head after I bodyswerved it on Sunday and Monday due to being on a training course away from home.
“It’s 5am, what am I doing”
“The garage door is open, my wife will hear me huffing and puffing and be a bit cranky today”
“can she hear the turbo trainer”
"Am I going to be finished in time to take the kids to school or am I going to have to get the wife to take them?
“My legs hurt”
“the suckage only stops for 2 mins between intervals and then the legs kill again”
“How is this recovery at 95% FTP???”
“My 95% FTP was my actual FTP last week!!”
“I need to blow my nose and don’t have any tissues nearby, I’ll stop and sort that out!”
“I’m sure I can feel a toilet stop coming on…I’ll just leave this here for a minute”
“My toe hurts” -I have arthritis and the toe gets squeezed by the cycling shoes.
When Chad suggested some cadence drills during the intervals that was the last straw and my mind broke
The levels are physically doable when I am up for the challenge but I was in my own head last night before I went to sleep and really wasn’t up for it. If I had been out on the road going up a hill with people watching I would have dug deeper and worked through it but I didn’t have the motivation to keep going.
Here is the workout of shame for accountability and hopefully I can get my mind in the right place for the next Threshold ride.
How do the rest of you get in the zone when there is major suckage coming up and the only person that you are accountable to is yourself?
Also, looking back at my post from 4 days ago where I had the FTP jump…I was already thinking about Warlow, how much it would suck and how to get out of it.
Warlow +1 shows as Threshold 5.0 for me but the above graphic is indicating a 1.9 PL for you.
I’m coming off of an Epstein Barr resurgence and am also on my way back up to a 290–330W FTP range.
I’m letting each stage settle in and not rushing it. My FTP also just bumped up, so I’m downgrading PLs a little as needed and as per the TrainNow/career recommendation. I’m moving up slowly but confidently.
Otherwise, I’ll be where I found myself most of last summer—riding on vapours, at least mentally. That may be what you’re experiencing.
I guess my question would be WHY you are doing a Threshold 5.0 level workout when your current PL for that level is 1.9? My current PL for Threshold is 3.2 and that’s a “Stretch” workout for me, I suspect for your current PL it would be listed as “Not Recommended”.
If your FTP is set correctly, I would expect that much of a jump to be quite a struggle even if you weren’t in your head talking yourself out of it!
I guess my question would be WHY you are doing a Threshold 5.0 level workout when your current PL for that level is 1.9? My current PL for Threshold is 3.2 and that’s a “Stretch” workout for me, I suspect for your current PL it would be listed as “Not Recommended”.
If your FTP is set correctly, I would expect that much of a jump to be quite a struggle even if you weren’t in your head talking yourself out of it!
The threshold 5.0 ride went in a week or so ago during an adaptation. Since the adaptation my FTP has been recalculated and the levels dropped according to my new FTP. The workouts didn’t update in relation to the FTP change.
If I had been working at my old FTP I would have been fine but this was just a jump too far, too soon.
FTP at the moment is 295 since last month and hopeful of getting over the 300w figure. Not bad since 242w in January. A lot of it will be general fitness and consistency but there is a certain amount of learning to listen to my body…Deciding which sensation is pain and which is just temporary discomfort is a big thing…so is blocking out the timer during intervals…motivation to push through the discomfort for 10 mins today was a big win…My daughter came into the garage around 35 mins to ask me a question hence the HR drop…I stopped for less than 30 seconds.
Will be interesting to see if I have earned a FTP bump tomorrow…
