Back on the train… train. Prepping for my first marathon, but because I’m against establishment, I’m training for a self supported marathon called the Whale-A-Thon. 26.2 miles on the inside of a roundabout featuring a 23ft whale statue. 630 laps of pure excitement and fun!
I’m giving this stage of my life a name, “what do you run from? how do you hide?” because I recently developed depression. I’m running (among other things) to escape it.
Anyway, here’s my first workout.
Now that takes serious fortitude!! Ouch!
Hope exercise helps quell those demons. It sure works for me.
Different location today for hill repeats to bash out Kennedy -1, my final threshold o/u workout for the block.
Strickland Av is closer to home & meant a little less mental gymnastics to work out how much descending to do to place me in just the right locations. (On Monday I got it a wrong by about a minute so I had to start a sweetspot interval at 77kph. Today was a little easier in that regard.)
Unfortunately this climb has more pronounced undulations so it’s easier to slack off without noticing. The W’ chart was generally heading in the right directions, & TR passed me, so all good I think.
Definitely finding these threshold workouts harder than I remember them being (Warlow was my FTP sentinel), so either TR is overestimating my FTP by a few percent, or the last year or so of Z2 emphasis has made me soft… 
Last Tuesday I had a bad reaction to lunch and skipped my workout and with the weather cancelling my weekend group rides and that weekend looking the same I lost all motivation for my remaining workouts and watched European Football (aka soccer) instead. Luckily my Saturday group ride got rescheduled for the Sunday. There was only 4 of us out but I like the group and that gave me more motivation for this weeks Z1/2 sessions. Taking advantage of the mild and dry weather today I took the workout (Jumba Kanga recovery workout with an IF of 0.58) outside. I went out via Yaxley and down the Holme Road, across to the old A1, before going back up it to London Road and back home.
Took TR - Opheim workout outside in the Georgia Appalachian foothills this morning. It was wet and foggy this morning, so I put a fender and the bar mitts on my gravel rig, to smooth out the cadence on the climbs.
VO2 Max, Attacks
For those that know the Dahlonega 6 Gap event, you might recognize the Stonepile Gap Road turn, from R-Ranch.
Cool suspension idea with the mitts, but how did you change gears?
There’s plenty of room inside the bar mitts. That bike is SRAM Rival, electronic shifting. It’s just a tap of a button.
However, I also have a Shimano 105 mechanical shifting road bike. There is still plenty of room inside for the travel of the levers.
Except for my hands, I don’t have much trouble keeping warm. Something about the cold air, washing over my hands. The bar mitts have been a great addition.
The same as the last three weekends its forecast to be wet after a nice work week, fortunately I was working at home today and was able to escape for some Vitamin D 
Bald -1 was originally in my plan but I used alternates to shorten it from 60minutes to 45minutes. I still tend to ride 60mins but that gives me time to get to and get the workout done on roads which are more conducive to workouts, whilst not exceeding my lunch hour too much. The alternates function gave me Neige. Ive not got a PM meter on my commuter/winter bike but I’ve ordered Favero RS2’s on a Black Friday deal so it may have in future on days like today
Down the London Road cyclepath to Yaxley (where I started the workout). The workout went down Holme Road (to Holme funny enough) before doing a loop on the broken road around old Connington Airfield (now Peterborough Business Airport, a big name for what is a little private airfield). Before heading up the Old A1 to Norman Cross to finish. I was then able to take the cycle way all the way home and stay in the recovery HR zone. There was a gap up by Yaxley which meant you had to go on the busy and fast A15 (not ideal for staying in zone, but they’re building new houses with a good quality cycle path through it. Its not exactly direct so most of the traffic goes straight to Yaxley but it suits for a chilled-out cooldown 
Aah, my mistake. I totally misread. Here I thought your hands were on the outside of the mitts for a bit of bump-softening.
To the track for Disaster -1
Then up to the Domain for parkrun
Cloudy early but then the sun came out. Was nice on the bike but cooked a number of parkrunners. 
Edit to add: Sauce for Strava is wigging out because I haven’t put my weight in. Means it’s saying my run is worth infinity donuts. 
You ran three 7:29 miles immediately after doing Disaster-1? If so
Haha, thanks. But I had an extended cooldown plus 15 mins stationary at the start line. Also I think I didn’t properly trash myself on Disaster like I should’ve. 
The mountain was calling
And today was the first truly clear & dry day in the last six weeks in which I wasn’t
So I answered
With my scheduled workout, Monitor +3
The climb was longer than the workout so I finished it out at low Z2, & got my second-fastest time on strava for the climb. (My fastest time was when I did Monitor +5 & almost ran out of hill.)
Upon summiting I said hi to some rocks & some fine ozothamnus ledifolius specimens
Caught a bit of traffic on the way down. Everyone else not at work seemed to think it was a nice day too, fancy that! Popped a couple of sprints: one to dispose of some traffic, another to avoid being disposed of by traffic. 
As a result I got some totally unplanned power PRs in the 8-to-13-second range.
Looking very summery! 
Always a good hike!
Not quite the sunny escape from the rainy Portland winter I had in mind when I booked this trip to LA last fall, but the view didn’t suck.
2026 thread?
Looks like a few of us have been busy. Myself included. You’re welcome to start a new thread. Just copy & adapt some of the text from the first post. 
