With few posts this month, I can assure you that the rest of the time has been on the bike (or doing college homework).

Training has been hot and heavy this month - except for 2 or 3 days where temps dropped that is. In fact, I thought for a moment that fall had arrived, then I rode outside today. Back in the 90's and 70+% humidity and I quickly found out that I was a little bit ahead of myself in my predictions for fall.

The month of September has been all about threshold training. It hasn't exactly gone as well as I'd like. Some of it has been choice of routes, a little more has been timing of workouts and simple mental fortitude. I've gone from miserable 2x20 workouts and turned around the next day to put out some great SST numbers on longer rides. I did a one hour stint a week or so ago at the beginning of my ride pushing 325 watts easy and then could barely hold 320 in my 2x20's this week.

These are all reminders that the body is a thing more of art than science when it comes to training.

The up side has been my VO2max intervals that are spattered throughout my threshold training. One of my new favorite workouts is a good 1hr 45min @ 310ish watts (91% FTP) and then toss in some 4 minute hill intervals along the way. A week or so ago I did this workout and nearly got a PB 5 minute time on a particular climb that's nice around here - nice and steady, very little change in gradient.

What's the difference in the last 9 months?

February, VO2max intervals.. when I could complete them, 380-400. Typically I was running the mid 390's into March. ( http://www.cycleiwakuni.com/blog/index.php?id=120 )

Last time I did them a week or so ago, I spattered them throughout my SST time, minimal recovery and got myself 2 intervals @ 420ish, and a third in the 360's after flailing about chasing a dragonfly out of my jersey.

Today however was good steady endurance riding. I had 3 spots in mind to do the intervals. I didn't even bother hitting the interval button on the powertap, I just cruised along and jammed the intervals. Came home and did the post ride analysis. What do you know... 426 watts for the first, 436 watts for the second and 423 for the third.

What's that??! 436 watt 4 minute interval?! That's 2 watts off my 3 minute TT back at the April 1st 2.5 km TT at Kirarahama. I quickly punched some numbers in to Monod's out of curiousity, and it's saying I might be able to push 460 for 3 minutes come November's Kirara TT. Ain't improvement great?

On other notes, I've dropped any priority placement of races in the coming months after Okayama's 2 hr circuit race. As none of the races in Japan will do me any good for upgrade in the states at this point, there's no sense letting off the gas to taper for the month of November. So, I'll finish up Okayama and turn right into base training for spring racing. In the coming weeks I'll start putting together my 2008 racing calendar. Some will end up being +/- a week or two next year, but the general plan should be laid out pretty easily. By the looks of it, the first races I'll take a shot at are the Quicksilver and Tradezone crits in the DC area in Feb/March. First "scored for upgrade" race is UMD Crit in March and then the Jefferson Cup down in Charlottesville looks to be my first "important" road race of the season.

I'm looking quite forward to getting through the 40km TT this weekend and then Okayama. I'm having so much fun improving, it's hard to get motivated for racing!

Came off a rest day this weekend looking forward to the 2x20's on the schedule for this Monday. The last couple 2x20's have gone well and I'm enjoying the progress on threshold that I'm making since July. My 2x20's have been @ 345-350 for about a month now. In July I was happy with getting them right over the 340 mark.

Mentally, looking down at the Powertap, round numbers are nice. It's so much easier for some reason on the mind when I am looking down thinking "keep it above 350" than it is to say "keep it above 353." Today I aimed to break that barrier. Today I went out with the mentality that I was going to keep it above 355. I got into interval one and off I went.

Let me say that my 2x20 interval route isn't the best in the world. It's got a lot of turns and some blind corners. I'm still looking for that "ideal 2x20 route" where I can sit in and crank it out for 20 uninterrupted minutes (that's not on the trainer). So, when I'm putting power down, I have nine 90 degree corners and one 130 degree corner to contend with. This coasting seems to be killing my averages because the power files show that I'm on the pedals a lot harder than the resulting averages/pNorm. The rest of this week is some long hours on the bike and I'm going to try to find a good place to do the 2x20's where I can get a good long effort in that doesn't require a 2 hr bike ride to get to.

All that said, I was pretty happy with the numbers I was seeing on the meter today as I was pushing through the first interval. I was pushing 360+ for the majority of the interval, so much so that I think next week's will just be "keep it over 360" for the sake of round numbers again. Finished off interval one and thought, man that was good. Average.... 349. HAH. Thanks to traffic and a couple long turns for that drop in average power. Pnorm 353 - so, not so bad.

I started interval 2 and I just plain quit. I did barely 5 minutes of the interval and mentally I just gave up. I really don't think it was whether or not I had the legs. Honestly, I think the legs were there. I just quit. Kinda blows, but it's interesting to know how much your body reacts to the mental. I reacted instinctively when my mind unplugged from the workout and the interval was TOAST!

Kinda bummed about it, because I don't get many good days of threshold work in during the week, and I think today was a good chance to "prove what I have" going right now in my legs. Oh well. The reality is that one bailed workout isn't going to make or break a season's worth of efforts, even though it feels like that when I'm staring at the downloaded powerfile.

Next week, back to "Keep it above 360!"

VW