3/7 -- Feeling sluggy

Monday I woke up and knew it would be a slow day... could barely get out of bed, but not in pain... my legs just felt SLUGGISH. A weekend full of long workouts will do that. The normal Monday PM masters swim was postponed due to a showing of PREDATOR at Towpath's recording studio, so I moved Tuesday's prescribed bike workout to today. SERRRRRRGEEAAAAAAAAAANNTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Workout was 6x4 minutes @ L4, 2min recoveries. Short intervals, but Todd is giving me a slightly easier week this week as promised. So again I assumed this would be an in-and-out workout. No such luck. After a day of dragging myself everywhere, I clambered onto Sicar and began my usual 20min L2 warmup... by not being anywhere NEAR the L2 zone, barely hitting 170 watts at 95 rpm. Whaaaaat? It took a good 10 minutes to get pedaling normally in the 185-200watt range, but it really felt like a struggle. Toward the end of the warmup I was finally feeling OK, but still, muscles weren't firing quickly enough for me. The first interval was a sufferfest. It felt like it should've been my last one. I struggled through it but managed about 249watt average. WHOA that was tough. Fortunately, it got better from there, and each interval got easier and I got more powerful and was able to spin faster (did not change gears either). Finished the last 5 intervals at 251w, 256w, 255w, 262w, 271w, so the last two were into L5... which is OK as long as I don't force the effort. That's when I know my legs were finally responding well.

So yeah... this was pretty tough and I really needed a good cooldown spin. For a short workout (only 24min total of L4), this really floored me, but it wasn't that surprising. It was a relief though that I began to feel fresher as the workout went on.