Hey you all,
This is an update on my training and observations. I posted a month or so ago about how I'm getting ready to start racing again. I thought my first race would be in September (a nine-day stage race!). But luckily, I'll have a couple tune up races before then in August, a short road race and a hill climb.
Since my prep time has been short, I've been doing blocks of L5-L6 intervals on the trainer in the morning before work. My schedule has settled into a 3-day block of these on M-T-W, with Thursday off and Friday a 30-min spin. Saturday is a team ride, which generally turns into a race, a long one.... Sunday is off. Block training worked well for me in the past. And I'm getting ready for a stage race. That's my reasoning.
For the intervals, I rigged up my trainer bike with a rear-wheel computer. So I'm tracking my effort by speed on the trainer. Not watts...but good enough for seeing how I'm doing and being steady. I also found someone who used a power tap on their cycleops to give me the watts at the different speeds. I know they aren't exactly the same, but I think I'm in the ballpark enough to talk about them.
Here are the numbers.
This month I started at 5X2-min. intervals on the trainer. Power was at @285 watts for the duration of these. I thought it would have been higher. Man, that was a humbling experience. I gradually increased interval length and repetitions throughout the month. Torture! But this Monday I handled 7X3 min. at @320 watts. Of course, duration and number decrease as I progress through the block, but power increases. This morning I kind of surprised myself by riding 6X2 min. at @360. A few times I went a little too hard and was doing @380-390. It really hurt at that power and I only stayed there for a little bit before settling back down to a sustainable (yet still vomit-inducing pace)
Some observations. The body can go harder than we think sometimes. But sometimes it can't go as hard as we think! When I can't hold intervals, I find that it is either diet related (I'm only eating carbs post ride and for lunch) or that the recovery interval wasn't long enough. Sometimes I had to significantly increase recovery-interval duration to be able to finish the workout. But I was able to complete all the work I had planned out.
I'm starting a rest week after Saturday's team ride. Next month, I'm planning on continuing this block training, extending interval duration and repetition until I'm doing 32-35 minutes of work at L5, probably 4 to 4.5 min. intervals. I had thought about getting into the 2X20 stuff, but I think I'll save that for September after I'm done with the stage race. I'm not sure what the racing schedule will be like here after that, but there's bound to be something.
Since I plan on continuing my racing and training indefinitely, I want to have a steadier progression in training next year. But for now, I'm trying to make the best of the situation I have. I'll try to post more about this all next month.