Monday – It was too freaking cold (low 30s) for the South, so a great excuse to not ride.
Tuesday – Heck of a 3 hour ride on Powercranks today. The workout started with a brutal VO2 workout. There was a reference posted biketechreview.com regarding an effective VO2 protocol. I typically do traditional VO2 workouts – 10x3, 8x4, 6x5, etc with pretty much equal work:rest ratios. This new protocol, which was shown to give slightly better performance gains than 8x3 with 1:2 work:rest periods, is to ride at max VO2 power for 60% of the time you can hold that power. Recovery is dictated by how long it takes your heart rate (an excuse to wear the HRM!) to drop to 65% of your max heart rate. For me, this all translates to around 330 watts for 3 minutes with the HR target being 110 bpm. Unfortunately for me my HR drops like a rock after the load is removed. Recoveries were between 90 and 120 seconds. The short recovery makes for a more challenging workout. The entire VO2 block of the workout was completed in just over 36 minutes. The plot below, with the line at 330 watts, shows how quickly things came and how well I was hitting my target (not very well as the workout went deeper).
Wednesday – I had limited time this morning as I had to make the drive up to Dallas to see family. I wanted a short and intense workout, which meant I dumped the PCs today in favor of the race bike with regular cranks. I did a quick 75 minute ride with 60 minutes of “surge tempo”.
Thursday – Was hoping for a solid VO2 workout similar to Tuesday, but the mind and body didn’t want to take part. Ended up just doing 65 minutes of PC riding with a variety of zones. A few VO2 efforts, some L6 stuff, threshold. You name it.
Friday – Drove back to Houston and didn’t ride.
Saturday – Usual blitz fest. I really humped it on the way out, but about 1/3 in for the whole ride I got a nasty side stitch which stayed with me the entire day every time I went hard. Still managed some strong numbers despite the limitation. A total of 4 hours on the bike racking up 284 TSS points. A strong day indeed.
Sunday – Given Saturday’s hard ride I wasn’t expecting much today, but I felt really, really good. My pals asked what I was going to do, to which I responded “Not sure. Depends on how the first interval goes.” It went well. I did a “race winning interval” (see the Dec 8 blog entry) of 30 seconds in L6, 4 minutes in L5, 4:30 in L4, then another :30 in L5, and finishing up with :30 in L6. 301 watts for interval number 1. OK. I’m good. 9-10 minutes of rest and go again – 300 watts for interval number 2. Some more rest and I hit interval number 3 at 301 watts. A little more rest and I go into the fourth bit of hell. The wheels came off on that one at only 291 watts, but it was a good workout nonetheless. On the way home it started to rain, which really sucked since there was a headwind and the temperatures were hovering around 50 degrees. My core was cold and it took a warm shower, a cup of coffee, plenty of clothes, and lunch to warm my body. The discomfort was worth it as this was a quality 2:10 workout on the PCs.
A great week overall. The volume wasn’t particularly high, but the intensity was. The average IF for the week was over 0.85 due to the high amount of VO2 work. Things paid off at week’s end with some new yearly bests and bests with the Powercranks. I equaled my 5 and 8 minute bests with the PCs though not beating my yearly best numbers. I set new 30 and 40 minute normalized power numbers by 4 watts.
PC time this week – 6 hours 15 minutes
PC time to date – 150 hours 10 minutes
Weekly status of power progression – I continue to be on a workload pace higher than last year. I’m currently averaging some 60+ TSS points higher per week. I expect this has something to do with the small gains I’m seeing. The plot below shows I’m still running ahead of my performance for the same period as last year but still haven’t bettered my historical power in the durations that count the most in mass start road racing.
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