Jeeeeeezus
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Gage:
I was expecting to be punished for taking the weekend off and playing video games, but that did not happen, which is not gonna help me not do the same thing next weekend 
Pretty high heart rate but RPE was chill.
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Ainslie -4 was in my diary tonight and although it’s been a good night I decided to do it on the turbo and on the relatively flat virtual Borrego course in RGT. It was actually scheduled for tomorrow night (Tuesday) but a Wednesday TT has come up so I brought it forward so I could have a rest or Endurance day on Tuesday.
Edit Oopsie, the original event tonight before it was postponed was on a Wednesday but the postponed event is tonight Tuesday. I could have done without a Threshold session the night before but hey ho 
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Continuing with my “week in review” for my own accountability’s sake:
Just got back from a week-long vacation where I was able to ride outside every day. It was a new area to me with some decent open roads, but no long climbs and no stretches of more than a mile or so without traffic or a traffic signal/stop sign.
Most days started with a family ride consisting of me, my three children, and my mother-in-law. Light on intensity for my legs, heavy on being the boss of a contrarian peloton with disparate ideas on pace, line, destination, etc. Not a lot of TSS, but nice to see the hours add up on the totally unscientific Strava Hours Goal.
None of my rides matched too well with any of the workouts TR plan builder called for, and I’m ok with that. Day 1 was a “get my bearings” ride which I tried to match closely to Dinara (6x2 @ 115-120%, with 4 minute recoveries). I got intervals 1-4 in the 120% range, 5 was in the 110%, and 6 was back around 118%. Oh, did I mention that my recovery intervals were all over the map, trying to track my 2 minutes of open road, ahead of me (guessing). I wasn’t happy about that missed 5th interval, so I did 4x75seconds on the way home. Those were all in the 115-125% range. I feel like I accomplished a workout.
Second day was an 1H 51m just trying to ride light tempo, high endurance. Open roads, MIL helping my wife take the kids to the beach… Just maximize my own mini-training camp while still getting to the beach after lunch. Same for day 3. I can’t remember which day it was, but one of these days I accidentally set a 1-3 second power PR when I heard a #farmdogsaresprinttraining coming at me from an unknown farm yard/driveway. Which probably isn’t a true power record, but its the record for what I have recorded. I love gravel roads and haven’t had a farm dog catch me yet.
Day 4 was a little lower in time, but mostly because I slapped a couple of 10 minute intervals in there on a mixed gravel/pavement loop that was all right turns and just about 12 minutes long.
Day 5 was set to be an endurance upping day since I didn’t want to stack intensity and I rarely get to go over 2 hours at a stretch. I went into the wind (low-ish endurance) for an hour-nine and came back with the wind and a little higher output (70-75%) in 58m or so, then added some cool down time to get to 2H13m.
Day 6 was an attempt to do 75 minutes, got 73 in the 60-65% range instead.
Day 7 we moved our vacation closer to some friends’ summer vacation and I got 68 easy minutes riding with my friend (he just had a kid and isn’t in the shape I am, and I needed a 38 TSS day anyway). Its been a while since I’ve tried to set an even pace for an adult, and I thought I was doing ok, but he told me afterward his HR maxed out two or three times as I rode gently off the front uphill.
Day 8 my daughter and I extended our stay up with the friends so I could slam down a 48 minute spin with some 9 year old girls. Was fun, and the kind of 9 TSS ride to loosen up and wake up before a traffic nightmare coming home.
515 TSS for the week proper, 13 hours (once you add in the pre-beach kid spins while my wife was getting her run in)
620+ and 15 hours+ over the 8 days once you add in kids’ rides. I would have liked to get in one really long (for me) 4-5 hour day, but in parenting and marriage, we do what we do.
Its another note in my “vacation planning” for future family trips that I have to pencil in the long ride in advance, maybe convince my wife to do her run outside of her routine time slot and commit to doing it on that day, rather than just hoping that I’ll find the time for one.
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Ramp
TR AT adjusting my progress levels which I’m enjoying, ramp tonight was done and levels have only dropped a little bit, did expect them to re-zero.
Happy to be at same level as I’ve increased other ‘activities’ and the indoor cycling I imagined might have taken a hit. Regardless I had the previous FTP target as my bailing point, maybe I could have done more but brain had other ideas, 1W more in the end
so I over cooked it!
Enjoying my return to doing some runs, also doing plenty of walking in between, keeping to 5km+ everyday…had a WaterRower delivered last week so that’s also being enjoyed too.
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Black Kaweah +1, plus an extended warmup and cooldown.
I’ve been doing most of my workouts outside lately so I must have missed this, but it looks like the average power dot and the previous interval summary has both shrunk. When did this happen?
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Stangate - 9 x 30s sprints @ 730w
The first 15 seconds of each sprint isn’t bad, so it’s really only about two minutes of real suffering. I’ll take this over a threshold workout any day.
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These are just killer when it’s hot. The power drop after the second set is when I realized I was gonna need another bottle, ended up finishing about 1.5L for the whole ride. But the legs had it no problem, soaked towel notwithstanding!
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Shasta was planned but replaced with this after not working out all weekend. Added 5% after warm-up to account for always being under the power target in ERG, still managed 500W+ for 7 of 8 intervals. Other than being sweaty and drippy this one went well. This one is almost my go-to workout.
See how I feel tomorrow, might add something from Workout Now.
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Sutton (endurance, 2h 30min)
In this final week of General Build (LV) I had three endurance-workouts lined up. But due to circumstances I only had time for two. So I figured : why not upgrade one of those to a double one 
?
This is the first time I tried such a long endurance-effort indoor. Luckily I could combine it with a good movie, otherwise it’s hard to keep focus for so long. Easy for the body, hard for the brain.
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Budawang +1, outside:
I’m not clear on whether AT thought that a success or not, but I thought it went great. Absolutely love doing these outside. Super blustery on the way out, huge whitecaps all over the fjord, felt like I was gonna get blown over a couple times, but my interval hill was calm and I had an amazing tailwind on the way back. Almost ran over a sheep but it kicked its heels and dodged just in time.
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Wasn’t really feeling up to doing today’s workout after a long and large lunch. After watching the final Tour TT and napping it was time to get the work done. Plan called for a 60 minute workout but I subbed this instead to make-up for missing things during the week.
Warm-up had me questioning things but everything felt okay once the main intervals started.
Weird how this was a Sweet Spot workout but AT thought it was Tempo. Tomorrow, Sunday, is a planned brick with a 60 minute Tempo ride. We’ll see how that goes or if AT recommends a change.
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I would like to only say that apparently your avatar is “climber” version of mine 
1 Like
Spruce Knob +2 yesterday
Was a little concerned about 30-minute intervals but Tempo (85%) was just right. Bumped up the endurance a little to just below VT1.
Percee today
This was a bit more challenging than it originally looked, probably because I set the recovery intervals at 70% instead of the 65% that I have been doing more recently. Really should get back to 70% for all Sweet Spot workouts.
7 Likes
More normal at home week, telework on the schedule. LV SSBase week 2. But I’m a consistency improver, and so I add what I can, where and when I can.
I added Whorl on Monday. But since the previous weekend was pretty easy ride-wise, and I was sick of looking at my 1minute power PR in intervals be the final minute of a ramp test, I decided to throw in a random late-ride 1 minute rip. Ended up setting all time (recorded) PR for 52 seconds through 1m16… At least I have a better idea of true capability for 1 minute, rather than 1 minute to close out a ramp test.
Tuesday, I added a ramp test which should have been completed while I was on vacation, but I didn’t bring a trainer. Oh, and even though it was a telework week, I got called in, so I did the ramp test right after commuting home. Added 3% to the FTP estimate. Season match says I’m 4 whole watts lower than where I was last (season) at this time (28th week), but my 2021 season started in January, but I didn’t join TR until March in 2020. So I’ve got time so surpass my own numbers from last fall. I’m 10 watts up on where I was last July 13th.
Wednesday off, lack of motivation, ending a 10 day streak.
Thursday Tallac -4 (SS4.1) which felt better than I expected. Also, I added some endurance spinning afterwards. I’ve run into the shown extend cool down glitch twice, but I’m on a fluid trainer so its a pretty minor annoyance. The bump on the last interval was to prove to myself that I’m in the SS5.0 range.
Friday no riding - work went haywire and I didn’t have a chance to ride, didn’t even have a chance to eat lunch.
Saturday was Reinstein (thresh 4.5) and I felt the burn, but felt good enough to tack on some spinning at the end. Think I might have also added a little at the beginning and ended up 105 minutes on the trainer, rather than the 90.
Today, my better half decided the family should ride one of the local creekside paths as a family, so I rode to the ride with my 9 year old, then rode the ride. We were kitted up in matching gear, and passed a couple of the group rides (passed as in, “saw coming the other way,” not “rode faster than in the same direction,” ) and my 9 year old was impressed at their speed. The 9 year old decided to take the car ride home, so I was solo on the way home.
Managed to somehow rack up 57 TSS, but it felt way more like a long super slow 20TSS ride. Whatever, kids enjoyed it, wife felt like she rode her bike, and now I’ll be fresh for a workout tomorrow.
Over 8 hours on the week, indications of improvement AND the kids getting some minutes in, that’s a victory.
7 Likes
Blue Cloud
Blue Cloud is a custom workout made up of 5x10-minute race-start intervals that each begin with a 30-second surge at 150% FTP and then quickly settles in at 90% FTP for the remaining 9 minutes. Each interval is separated by 5 minutes of recovery.
AT put Sloan +2 on my calendar again. I inserted a rest week half way through SSB I HV and I think AT sent me back to the beginning. After Sloan +2 and Sloan +3 in the first half, I figured out that I really don’t like those types of workouts. I’m getting the urge to do some more intensity, which means I’m mentally ready for the build phase.
30s @ 150% hard starts were too hard given that I’ve only done sweet spot work for the last six weeks, though. 30s @ 135% or 15s @ 150% would have been more achievable.
9 Likes