Holy F!#@$. If I thought the endurance workout I did Tuesday was intriguingly challenging (at least from a cognitive perspective) and sufficiently worthwhile to at least continue with currently developed training plan, tonight I'm rueing the day. It was brutal!
I did my regular 15 minute warm up and began the 60 min endurance workout. I found that spinning 39-25 in the high 98-102 rpm range kept the HR steady at about 68% and I settled in for the spinfest. I'm watching my movie, keeping a steady cadence, my HR steady, legs feeling good and fluid. Everything was going great.
I started to feel the burn around 40 minutes and it started to get harder and harder to stay focused. By the time I hit the 50 min mark I was seriously considered just packing it in. I wasn't breathing hard, the legs were barely burning, but my focus got so bad my cadence and HR went to shit. I dropped from my steady 100 rpm, 68-69% HR and started putting up random rpm and HR numbers like some lonely decaying uranium atom. RPM dropping to 85, up to 105, down to 90 then 88 then 95, up to 101. HR dropping to 60%, back to 67, popping over 70% then back to the mid 60's. I just did not think I was going to be able to hang on. I was under the evil control of despair and there was nothing I could do. It was going to ruin this perfectly physically reasonable workout.
I lowered my head, closed my eyes and refused to stop. I suffered through 6 more minutes of despair whispering those oh so seductive words, "You did well today. Stopping now is almost like to doing the whole workout. You're just a few minutes short. Not enough to make a difference in the long run. Well done. Just call it a night." These siren songs filled my head for 6 long insufferable minutes. Around the 4 minutes remaining mark I was able to latch onto a memory of what I now realize was from my LTHR test a few days ago. I saw the 3 minutes remaining mark approaching and told myself that once you hit the 3 minute mark you knew you could drive it to the end. That tiny glimmer of hope was sufficient to keep me going for the next 60 seconds.
3 minutes to go. My cadence steadied at 95. My HR settled down to 68%. As I approached the end I watched the timer tick down, calling out (both in my head and by the end out loud) the time remaining to keep despair at bay. The 0 second hit! I did it. I fucking made it through!
Wait. What? Well bitch on a stick! I still have to do my 5 minute cool down.
Normally my cool down is welcome but today the cooldown was exactly like my workout! 5 minutes @ 95 rpm and getting the HR down to the 60's (which it already was).
Oddly, this time seemed to quickly pass though as did this offical end of Week 1, cycle 1.
Distance: 25.55 km
Speed: 19.16 kmh
Cadence: 96 rpm
AVG HR: 133 bpm
Weight: 211.6 lbs
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