The week so far:
The weather’s been nice… I’m hoping I can actually get outside this weekend.
I have a cross country race next weekend and in a month I’m doing the Sea Otter circuit race.
Here’s my workout from today, which was very hard:
And last weekend (I was pretty jazzed and this one didn’t feel too hard):
But what I get for finishing Cache is now on Sunday I’m supposed to do Hall, where those longer blocks are at 323w
New FTP following a bump in fitness that I could feel and a long-form test. Naturally, I’m now doing a threshold block to drag that out towards a TTE of an hour. Kicked things off today with 3 × 12 at 3 watts below the new number and happy with how it went, particularly with nailing the power targets on Zwift’s lumpy New York map.
I did nothing today, because I did a café ride yesterday. The café is 206 km away.
After a bad stomach reaction to something on Monday night I just cycle commuted on Tuesday and skipped my workout on Tuesday so tonight was my first workout of the week, Red Slate -4. I rode it a bit conservatively and never dug deep it shows in the last block where the threshold intervals were actually tempo on average. Importantly over 2hours later and after tea there’s been no stomach reaction tonight.
Between family visiting and bad weather, no chance to go outside this weekend.
Also, the last endurance set there at the end was painful; I was so ready to get off the bike after the cooldown.
A level 4.4 SS workout was in my calendar tonight. It wasn’t the steadiest of cadences but at that level I seemed to be able to up the rpm when I wanted without overheating despite the pain hall being 20deg C, so overall I’m quite satisfied with it.
Did 2x30m Threshold yesterday, didn’t feel to good bad sleep the night before and it was a real struggle especially in the second interval, only time I felt good was from 15-22minutes on the second one, the last 5 Minutes were brutal… Starting to feel the fatigue from this threshold block, happy to have a rest week coming up.
A proper sweatfest tonight during and after Ritter -4 (45 threshold/ 15 VO2 Max session). I says Threshold/VO2 Max but a lot of the sprints were more like anaerobic and after the first 15min block I had emptied the tank (dipping into the -ve W’ for the sprints at the end). This showed in the next block, when I just about kept it threshold and in the last block when I slipped into high tempo. I still kept the the TT sprints at VO2max/Anaerobic though and totally emptied the tank for the last one, which kept the IF high.
I think I will have to investigate a fourth fan
I had quite a hard 3 up paceline yesterday and part of me when I was asked wanted to see what RLGL would do and I went a wee bit harder (an IF of 0.80 for the 2hours including the 20mins solo either side). I originally had a 0.9IF SS session but it adapted to Harrah (an endurance workout with an IF of 0.65). Although I deliberately kept my front door shut and only used two fans so my hr drifted into tempo.
Finished specialty, now picking workouts ad-hoc. Think I want to have a bit of fun for 6 weeks then get back into some base training in June. Yesterday TR AI wanted to downrate my FTP by a few watts. A few watts is stuff all, except when you’re crossing a milepost. Then it means a lot. I was almost offended. I objected, & today I belligerently loaded up the stretch sweetspot workout Galena (at my old FTP). Commuted gently to the track, extending the warmup by 20 minutes. Arrived at the track & the work got underway. End of the first interval I knew I had my work cut out for me. Stretched out in the break, gingerly started the second interval, took about a minute to reach the power target but got it done. Third interval just did what I had to. No pauses, no freewheeling or backpedalling, just a few times out of the saddle on the rise to shift load from glutes to quads. At about 43 seconds per lap I was definitely counting the laps down! Finished, feeling that curious combination of pumped & stuffed, extended the cooldown 40’ to get home. On the 10% pinch that commences the 2km climb to my house my legs gave me the finger but at least complied. Naturally I rated the workout as “very hard”, but I was surprised to then be presented struggle survey. It’s a stretch workout, of course it’s going to be “very hard” because of intensity!
It’s a long time since a 1½ hour workout wrecked me like that. The price of being stubborn I guess.
So after 2 Days of the bike and 1 easy Z2 ride on Wednesday in my recovery week I already felt good again and decided to add a 5min Test to the Z2 ride on Thursday did 2 1 MInute openers a bit above what I would expect for the 5 Min. the 5 Min went pretty well set a Season best of 378W which is also my highest 5 min power Indoors which is normaly a bit lower then what I can do outside. So pretty happy with that. Not were I wanted to be but considering my bad Winter I’m really happy to be a bit ahead of were I was last year.
Yeh, I did Warlow +1 back in January, it’s pretty horrid. With 98% “unders”, you could do the workout without overs & it’d still be a decent threshold workout. You’re lucky if any of the burn dissipates in the unders on that one; you just have to be resigned to having periods of not adding to it as substantially as on the overs.
Today I upped the ante with Tray Mountain +1… according to PLs anyway. Seemed not as hard as Galena last week (which is 0.4 points lower), despite each of today’s intervals being 5 minutes longer. Certainly wasn’t counting down minutes or track laps like when doing Galena. Amazing what a difference today’s 4% & 2% lower targets made!
Last week was a recovery week for me and I just commuted so tonight was my first indoor workout for a few weeks, “Fiftymile” a 8x 5/4.75 SS workout. After my HRM appearing to work flawlessly during the weekend TT it was reading well low tonight! I think I need to wipe it down and tighten it again, either that buy a new strap. Every time though I think about replacing it though it behaves flawlessly for a bit.
Did 5x4m VO2 max second one this week, this was ok, relatively low power targets and messed up the start of the second interval and had to restart. Couldn’t hold the high cadence of the first 2 intervals, legs just wouldn’t turn that fast anymore… defenetly better then last week where I only managed one good VO2 workout, lets see how I recover maybe I have one in me on Saturday before the rest week.
I did Caltech -6 vo2 5.8 today. That’s way easier than other similar level vo2 workouts by far. I marked it moderate, and could have easily done a few more sets. I have a rest week next week. I’m wondering what vo2 workout will come next from that.
Visiting family & old friends up in Queensland, & it’s almost two weeks since I’ve done anything structured, & almost a month since I’ve done any threshold work. Picked Tweed +9 because of its intervals being short enough for a tar-&-gravel sealed road closed to general traffic, chucked the phone in a top tube bag as usual, & off I went.
26°C today, quite a lot hotter than I’m used to. I drank 1.4L of water over the course of the workout. Second-last interval I needed a ~20s bailout. Last interval was a fair bit below target but at least still around threshold. Too hot for this nonsense. Going for a swim would’ve been far more sensible. Or doing this workout around sunrise.