Thursday, January 20, 2011

Stand and Deliver

Week 2 of Mock's indoor turbofest last night. Another evening of spinups, TT and climbing intervals. A bit harder than last week. We had two 2 minute TT intervals @ 80 rpm then added two 3 minute TT intervals @ 90 rpm with just 2 minutes rest in between each interval. Did well on that part. I'm pretty well dialed in to how hard I can go and not blow up during defined efforts. Currently I can do these in 53-17 and finished each interval with a HR of ~95%. 

The toughest part for me was the 5 minute standing interval. I had a really rough patch @ around 2 minutes. The legs went a little wobbly, and I lost my rhythm. The dreaded Despair Demon came for a visit and I thought about sitting down but shortened my time horizon from 5 minutes to "just do 15 more seconds" and worked through what was probably going on. I figured I started too hot and was focused on keeping my weight off the bars rather than on finding a sustainable rhythm so dialed back the effort, slowed the cadence, focused on breathing and found the sustainable zone. Back Despair Demon! BACK! It wasn't a pretty 5 minutes, I leaned on the bars quite a bit, but I actually detected improvement over last week. The interval was brutal but bearable while last week if was brutal and almost unbearable. So on the "unbearable to joyous-happy-days" scale I moved up a notch. What made it even more satisfying was that I even made it through the two 15 sec sprints thrown in @ the 2'45" and 4'45" marks. To be fair, I would not call what I did during those 15 secs sprinting but I did increase my cadence so I'm calling that a win.

ILT's were better as well. Smoother and more consistent for longer periods. I'm still using 39-25 and cadence is still on the low side but I want to get the stroke right before increasing the cadence and gearing.

Distance:  22.99 km

Speed:  21.49 kmh

Cadence:  80 rpm

AVG HR:  164 bpm

Weight:  210.6 lbs

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