What workout did you do today? (2024)

Why? You did fine…

Thanks Joe. Because even though from a compliance perspective I hit all the numbers, It took an extreme amount of focus to do it. HR was elevated, lots of eyes shut, grunting and the like. It’s easier to find Chad’ anecdotal interpretation of survey ratings (:D) than an official guide but using the official ‘more cautious’ ratings fits my longer-term goals:

Even though I haven’t failed a workout in months, I have buried myself into a hole and become sick after overdoing it. No need to do that in training; I’ll save the overloading for outside :smiley:

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Those 150% surges at the start of the sweetspot intervals do take it out of you, especially if you aren’t used to doing hard starts.

Half Dome (a SS workout) was in my calendar for tomorrow night but I got home early enough so I decided to do it tonight and give me more recovery time before Thursday’s workout. My cadence wasn’t really high but it was comfortable in the mid 80s rpm for the first three blocks before falling to the low 80s rpm for the last three, and I think I’m happy with that after a commute.

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I’m finding Vo2 intervals a lot easier to improve average power when set against threshold sessions.

Day off tomorrow and then my weekly threshold interval on Thursday. Without doubt I’ll be meeting the man with the hammer…

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I think I needed that rest day back in my plan, whilst my cadence wasn’t ideal, tonight’s under/overs felt much more doable than last weeks. I decided to rate it as ‘very hard’ as that cadence wasn’t ideal but I think it was more of a just ‘hard’ effort :thinking:

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Since the heatwave crept up on me at the end of my last block I’ve taken a couple of easy weeks on the bike & today I got curious for some intervals again. I’ve been struggling with the heat & humidity on & off the bike so I decided to play it a bit conservatively with Zabriskie: 4×8’ @ 98%. It has a long warmup which is about right for my commute to the track. The 10’ recoveries seemed a bit excessive, my HR is typically back to baseline after about 4-5’ so I cut them down a bit. Also I stepped my cooling regime up a notch (air rushing across my skin @ ~40kph is no longer sufficient), with two 350mL juice bottles which I’d filled with water & frozen, then placed inside a spare pair of gloves & carried in my back pockets. (The gloves were to prevent cold-spots on my back.)

They lasted all of about 35 minutes, which was the warmup plus one interval. It actually felt pretty good for that time. But then, naturally, power started to drop off & I finished the last interval out at sweetspot. Didn’t reach VO2 max, no muscle soreness (yet :smiling_imp: - adding injury to insult I crashed on my way home because of trying to steer on a sneakily flat tyre, nice big graze on my hip but no other bodily damage). I just had nothing, as though I was trying to do the workout depleted, but I haven’t been neglecting carbs. To my surprise, TR wanted to pass me, but I marked it “All Out”, & considered putting it down to Other:Heat, but the heat is here to stay for many months to come so intensity it is. Threshold level was dropped from 3.7 to 3.0, but :person_shrugging: that’s the way it is for now.

Tempted to keep to a traditional-base-ish kind of program until autumn or the discovery of a better cooling solution, maybe with some sweetspot every ten days to touch up the sugarburners. It’s so humid here I finish all my rides (even the easy ones) drenched in sweat, so evaporative cooling systems seem to be out. The only thing I can think of is methylated spirits in a pour bottle. Or move to Canada & take up fatbike racing in summer kit. :cold_face: :laughing: Advice welcome.

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