Saturday, February 26, 2011

Not quite what I planned

Well that was quite the recovery week. Scheduled 3 rides and missed all of them due to having to take the bike in for maintainence, the MOB turbo night being cancelled and having to take the bike back in for maintainence (right shifter finally needs replacing so I'm upgrading from Mirage components to the new Veloce's. Ah well, if it had to happen, this was the week.

First day of the next mesocyle started today. It called for 3x10 minutes on a steady uphill @ 91-95% Max Hr @ 80-95rpm.

For the first day back I maybe took on too much. I wanted to recon the TT route while doing the workout. Unfortunately, I watched the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad this morning and was rushing to put together the workout for this afternoon. I slammed the workout together too quickly and forgot to make it road friendly. It kept making annoying beeps which lead me, for the first 15 minutes before I realized what I was doing, to keep shifting to try and keep the rpm's and HR's in range. It made the whole thing very ragged and clunky and contributed to my decision to only do 2 of the intervals.

The intervals themselves were very revealing. I started the first one way too heavy. I went from 68% to 90% in less than a minute and it really hurt. My legs burned and had no strength, I lacked rhythm and my breathing was heavy, and laboured. An unpleasant experience all 'round. The warmup + the 10 minute interval got me from the start of the TT to the turn around point of the out and back course.

Turning around I did the 5 minute RI and started the second inteval almost at the low point and heading up. A great place to start. This time I ramped up the HR over 2.5 minutes and had a much better time. I was breathing hard but I was smoother and felt like I could hold the effort. Had a little hesitation @ the 7 minute mark but the pain was nothing I haven't felt before and just rode through it. Finished at the TT start location. Soft pedaled for 5 minutes up the road a bit to cool down and decided to forgo the 3rd 10 minute interval and call it a successful first day back in the saddle.

Tomorrow I do a planned TT test so will try to get into a smoother rhythm.

Distance: 16.39 km
Speed: 28.07 kmh
Cadence: 84 rpm
AVG HR: 164 bpm
Weight: 206 lbs

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