Yawn... what a week. I'm tired and glad to be staring down the barrel of a semi-rest week while my parents are in town. Knowing I was going to get good rest this coming week, I really buried it this past week. Next week I MAP test for the first time since March. Looking forward to the 11 minutes of pain!
Monday, 3x20's... no problemo. I really enjoy this workout. 3x20's @ 91-93% are right at that intensity that feels hard, but doesn't make you want to puke. They're hard enough to get you threshold benefit, but easy enough that you can do the repeats without wanting to quit. This week I planned to take them a little easier. 2x20's on Tuesday meant I wanted to be as "fresh" as possible and still get a workout in on Monday. Rolled them @ 344, 338 and 339.
Tuesday, 2x20's for the first time since - hmm... March, I'd say. These were on the "I'm really tired and don't want to do them" day. I stayed up too late to watch the Giants lose, and turned around with a 4am wake up to get to work via bike commute. I still made the target wattages, even though I really did NOT want to do the second workout. 361 and 353 respectively. I do this to do a little bit of "pull" on the threshold training. They're definitely not a routine part of the training yet. Once a month is plenty to just refresh the brain what threshold feels like compared to the 91-93% I do when I'm doing 3x20's.
I was glad to just get on the bike and spin on Wednesday. Nice 2 hour steady ride. I'm noticing that I've lost some of my ability to just sit and spin at 90-95 RPM's for hours on end like I used to. I tend to stand and mash ever 4-5 minutes for a bit before settling back in. This won't work in TT world, so I'm going to get back to spinning higher RPM's on the long ride days and focus on sitting a lot more on short climbs.
Thursday I rolled about two hours before getting to the Wakefield group ride. Pace was pretty slow, so I just took off to get my planned VO2 work done. Once I got out of sight of the group I hammered 3 API's with full recovery. Just enough to remind the body once every couple weeks what that intensity is supposed to feel like - mostly as compared to threshold work. Total of ~3 hrs on the bike, but feeling remarkably good for having some really hard days this week.
Nice steady recovery day on Friday. Spin, spin, spin... not on the TT bike this week. But the headset was installed today! Now just have to cable it up and I should be on the TT bike Tuesday!
I hit up what quickly became one of my favorite long ride routes out to Bull Run Mountain, through Aldee, up to Purcellville and home. Today's mission was to max effort up Bull Run Mountain and see what kind of suffering I could get. Last month my time was 6:22, avg 380 watts. This month I pretty much crushed that time when you consider the length of the effort. Up the climb in 5:49, avg 418 watts. Windy day stretched my ride time out quite a bit, but I was still feeling pretty stinkin strong when I rolled in the house pushing nearly 6 hours on the bike. It was a beautiful day on the bike.
Monday, 3x20's... no problemo. I really enjoy this workout. 3x20's @ 91-93% are right at that intensity that feels hard, but doesn't make you want to puke. They're hard enough to get you threshold benefit, but easy enough that you can do the repeats without wanting to quit. This week I planned to take them a little easier. 2x20's on Tuesday meant I wanted to be as "fresh" as possible and still get a workout in on Monday. Rolled them @ 344, 338 and 339.
Tuesday, 2x20's for the first time since - hmm... March, I'd say. These were on the "I'm really tired and don't want to do them" day. I stayed up too late to watch the Giants lose, and turned around with a 4am wake up to get to work via bike commute. I still made the target wattages, even though I really did NOT want to do the second workout. 361 and 353 respectively. I do this to do a little bit of "pull" on the threshold training. They're definitely not a routine part of the training yet. Once a month is plenty to just refresh the brain what threshold feels like compared to the 91-93% I do when I'm doing 3x20's.
I was glad to just get on the bike and spin on Wednesday. Nice 2 hour steady ride. I'm noticing that I've lost some of my ability to just sit and spin at 90-95 RPM's for hours on end like I used to. I tend to stand and mash ever 4-5 minutes for a bit before settling back in. This won't work in TT world, so I'm going to get back to spinning higher RPM's on the long ride days and focus on sitting a lot more on short climbs.
Thursday I rolled about two hours before getting to the Wakefield group ride. Pace was pretty slow, so I just took off to get my planned VO2 work done. Once I got out of sight of the group I hammered 3 API's with full recovery. Just enough to remind the body once every couple weeks what that intensity is supposed to feel like - mostly as compared to threshold work. Total of ~3 hrs on the bike, but feeling remarkably good for having some really hard days this week.
Nice steady recovery day on Friday. Spin, spin, spin... not on the TT bike this week. But the headset was installed today! Now just have to cable it up and I should be on the TT bike Tuesday!
I hit up what quickly became one of my favorite long ride routes out to Bull Run Mountain, through Aldee, up to Purcellville and home. Today's mission was to max effort up Bull Run Mountain and see what kind of suffering I could get. Last month my time was 6:22, avg 380 watts. This month I pretty much crushed that time when you consider the length of the effort. Up the climb in 5:49, avg 418 watts. Windy day stretched my ride time out quite a bit, but I was still feeling pretty stinkin strong when I rolled in the house pushing nearly 6 hours on the bike. It was a beautiful day on the bike.