First workout since Saturday, somehow threw my back out doing a brick (I’m not even 30?) and took some time off. Still have some minor issues but just can’t keep myself out for too long. Might just bike till it’s better.
Managed to snag a gen1 kickr for a 100 bucks, this was my first erg ride. Kept it in the big ring, definitely felt better than the small. Won’t miss changing out tires for the Kurt Kinetic!
Feeling vindicated that I didn’t accept the lower FTP, this was a +0.8 PL increase for me, was worried about it. Almost switched to a lower alternate, but figured loud enough rocky 4 soundtrack would get it done.
I was expecting an all out, ended up feeling very hard as most threshold workouts do for me.
Well, that didn’t go well. Not a good way to begin Specialty. Legs were still tired from this weekend even though it was the end of a recovery week. Poor sleep, starting a new job, and some other life stress didn’t help either.
Planned a 6x4m Vo2. But didn’t feel great. So I called it quits after the fith where I already needed a break. My left quad startet feeling it already in the first 30 seconds of the first interval. My HR also didn’t come up as it should. Should have called it after the first or second… Oh well only one more session to go.
It’s interesting below threshold and around it i can hold more or less the Sam power as outdoors, but for Vo2/MAP indoor is 20-30w worse…
Bumped this up from 85-90% to 90-95%. The last two intervals required a fair amount of concentration, which surprised me a bit given that no interval was longer than nine minutes.
It was definitely nice having these short rests between intervals but I’m not sure how this “specializes” for my upcoming Gran Fondo, which has nine long climbs (15-30 minutes each). I might manually substitute these sweet spot workouts for those from previous plans like Hunter, Eclipse, Wright Peak, etc that have longer, more sustained intervals. I also need to take a bunch of these outside and just get more time in the saddle, ideally working up to 5ish hours 1-2 weeks before the ride, which I anticipate will take me 6.5 - 7 hours.
Aside from the fact that these thresholds are pretty long, I think the heat in the garage is what made this really hard. It’s gone from overcast, misty-ish amd cool to warm in about one day. I drank almost two liters of ice water while grinding out that second interval.
I’ve been working through a sweetspot progression indoors and it seems to really be helping when I get outside too. Fatigue resistance is improving and HR is down on my endurance rides
I did 3x25 @ 88% Sat, 3 hours outside @ 0.81 IF on Sunday, 90 mins of easy endurance outside yesterday, and still had legs for this today (2x35 mins @ 90%). I’m not a morning person so I’m downright suprised I got through this before work!!
I think half of this success was pancakes and lots of maple syrup before the ride, and the other half is watching TdF Unchained on Netflix during the ride