Wednesday, March 2, 2011

3/1 -- Oops, no rests

I woke up pretty tired from Monday's masters practice... Wasn't that hard, but perhaps I need to focus on getting more sleep. I felt a lot better though after a huge breakfast and lots of apples during the workday.

Tuesday PM's bike trainer workout looked kind of easy at first glance: 4x(3min @ L3/L4, 30sec @ 65 rpm biggest gear, 1min L3/L4, 30sec @ 65 rpm biggest gear). But I realized after the warmup that there were NO recoveries for 20 minutes... essentially a zone 4 ride, close to TT. The L3/L4 is the "recovery" which isn't much of a recovery at all! So after the first round, I figured out this wasn't going to be easy! I stuck with it though and maintained some good averages (235-240w for the L3/L4, basically low L4 avg; 310-330w for the low RPM/gear minutes, basically mashing the pedals hard). After the 65 rpm minutes, 240w definitely felt easy, and kept the cadence around 95 rpm. I felt my glutes and other leg muscles being activated in the 65 rpm minutes, which I think was the idea. Overall, a short but intense workout that I definitely felt!

But what's the oops? Turns out I was supposed to take a short recovery after each round! A miscommunication between myself and Todd led to me not knowing. OOPS. But he said the workout looked good even without the recoveries... so it turned out ok! I'm looking forward to a time trial next week so I can see if I've gotten more POWERFUL over the past 2 months. I averaged around 260w (my current FTP) in the 20 minutes, so I imagine with a consistent effort and no shifts, I should be above that in my next test.

4 comments:

  1. I was about to say you had 30 sec rests after 3 min & after 1 min, which seemed weird. I think you must mean 30sec. in the biggest gear (53/{11or12}.) That would be rather annoying to do that with no rest between sets. Rest when it's time to rest, go really hard when it's time to go hard. I wanna see the graph.

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  2. Good point, Paul. I said lowest gear because the chain got lower and lower :) I'll send you the graph.

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  3. Why did you wake up tired on wednesday from mondays practice? Did I miss something? :D
    And while you were on the track you missed tese WONDERFUL 16 100s ;o)

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  4. Jacky Jacky, check the date! This is Tuesday's workout (written on a Wednesday... not very timely, huh?). I'm jealous of your workout, 16x100 is just what I need.

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