Tuesday – Tempo day with the PCs. I hoped to do an hour and 45 minutes in L3, but I was still having some hip pain. I erred on the side of caution, though I still managed just over 90 minutes of L3 and lower L4 riding. A respectable 235+ W or normalized power for the duration and 225 W for the entire 2:07 ride.
Wednesday – Debated whether to even go out or not, but I did. Caught up with a pal on his fixed gear. I gave him pulls into the wind to give him relief with the fixie, and he took the tailwind sections. Even though it was a casual 69 minutes on the Powercranks, I still put in some L3/L4 time in the wind.
Thursday – I decided to do a “surge tempo” workout, which I credit with giving great race day fitness. Typically I do this workout in the big subdivision I live in. There are stretches of road anywhere from a few hundred meters to a mile. I ride in my upper tempo range, and each time I encounter a significant turn that I have to slow for or a stop sign, I ride in L6 for 20-30 seconds and recover in L3. After awhile this workout really starts to hurt. The prolonged time in L3 combined with the anaerobic efforts puts your body to the limit, but the payoff is enhanced race fitness. The different today, however, would be the Powercranks. I still haven’t mustered up the courage to sprint on the things, so all my L6 efforts would be in the seated position. I also haven’t done this kind of workout in awhile, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was hoping for 90 minutes in my zones. Didn’t quite get there. My legs started to fatigue and I could only manage 51 minutes of this workout. I rode in the country, so I timed my surges to be on the 3 minute mark for 20 seconds, so 20 seconds in L6, 160 seconds in L3, and repeat. For those 51 minutes I did hit 249 W normalized, so not all was bad. Plus the entire ride was 222 W normalized for 1:58. More TSS.
Friday – no riding
Saturday – Group ride, so back to regular cranks. I didn’t feel all that great, but sometimes perception is simply wrong. I was physically hitting on all cylinders. Because we’ve been going pretty quick lately, we bumped up the distance 11 miles. The extra mileage allowed me to set some all-time numbers for the longer times, and I also set some yearly bests for shorter times. All in all a fantastic ride. Too bad I always perform better this time of year when there are no races, but this form usually carries over to the late winter/early spring races before the weather warms up.
First the overall stats for the ride – 67 miles, 3:11, and 244 W normalized. That was a 250 TSS ride. I was totally beat by the end, and riding at nearly an IF of 0.90 for 3+ hours is good reason. Digging a little deeper, the portion of the ride where we really hit it (i.e., after warmup and before cooldown), 57.5 miles, 2:34, and 255 W normalized. Even had 230 W average. I spent 14+ minutes in L6, 27+ minutes in L5, 38 minutes in L4, and 21 minutes in L3. I tried to keep my pulls on the front half of the ride all above 320 W and 3+ minutes in duration. I set yearly best normalized powers in the 35 to 73 minute range as well as 2:12 to 3:06 (hours and minutes!). It’s created a nice little bump in my normalized power plot shown below.
Needless to say, I was worthless the rest of the day. My legs were like jelly.
Sunday – no riding as I flew to Japan for a few days. The time off will hopefully recuperate the hip. Slept like a baby on the plane.
PC time this week – 5 hours, 14 minutes
PC time to date – 75 hours
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