kensuf

smoke in the air. smoke in the eyes. some in the lungs. cough cough.

mollusk

I just might skip riding late this afternoon if it is still like this.

ridethecliche

godshammgod

What's your typical recovery period like in between the repeats? Just the descent? I only ask because I actually have a nice 4 minute hill near me that I try to do repeats on but I feel like the descent down isn't enough recovery.

Or maybe I'm just really weak. That is a real possibility.

echappist

lack of sleep and the heat is getting to me. SST's went lousily this morning. Taking tomorrow off to recover a bit.

jwible

It looked like there was rain down that way yesterday afternoon. We're tinder dry up here.

Ultraslide

Lungs are still recovering from a cold. Sprint intervals were weak and cut short.

ridethecliche

Wear those goofy blinds over your eyes. The ones they give you on a plane.

echappist

i may have to given that Columbia will probably fine me for drilling holes into the wall. Eff them. I want thick curtains like the ones i have at home.

mollusk

Just a touch of rain and enough lightning and wind to make things worse overall.

caloso

I just coasted down the hill. It's a four lane boulevard with a median in the middle and after the top I had to go around a median to get back to the down hill side. I worked out to be about a 3 minute rest each lap. I actually was trying to mimic Nevada City.

caloso

Velcro?

JohnKScott

60 minute TT/FTP test this morning. 10 minute warm up before and limped home after. Almost puked twice.

Ended up with 233 watts which included one unlucky traffic light incident where I had to slow way down. That 15 seconds of low power cost me 2 watts off my average power which I recovered by the end. I'm convinced I would have ended up at 235 had this not happened. So there it is. FTP will be increased from 225 to 235 (last test was 224) or 3.3 w/kg. So hat means an almost 5% increase since 2/21. Plus I'm a bit lighter so that translates into an 8% increase in w/kg. Progress.

What was particularly rewarding about this was that I really stunk up the State TT Championship a week an a half ago. This course today was EXTREMELY similar to the State TT course (in fact it was on the same hwy just in a different town) with identical gain per mile. Both out and back courses. Speed was 1.1 mph faster and I held 24w more power or about 11% higher. That tells me it was something else. Maybe I warmed up too hard? Maybe I didn't eat enough? Maybe it was the temp difference?

Anyway, happy with today's test.

GirlAnachronism

TheKillerPenguin

1) buy heavy-ass blanket and/or blackout curtains.
2) open top of window(s)
3) stuff the end of that(them) heavy-ass blanket(s)/blackout curtain(s) up in that sheeiiiit.
4) close window
5) profit

mollusk

Good news/bad news: wind.

Good news: Wind can blow all the smoke away from your training route:

Bad news: Headwinds can be a bad MF.

On balance today was a "win".

And it is nice to be spinning an easy Z2 and go 26 mph coming home when the tailwind was aligned.

bostongarden

50 minute ride with my oldest son. I put conti grand prix (1 1/8) slicks on his mountain bike and he can fly now. He attacked me a couple of times!!! He is looking good. I see a road bike in the near future for him now that he is sprouting up and he can get a regular size bike (maybe mine, hee hee, and I get something new).

tallmantim

Headed out for a group ride this morning - a fun fast training ride.

Was struggling at some points to hold the wheel of the guy that was pushing the pace who continued to do the lions share of the work and I just never felt good this morning. Power etc was pretty similar to last weeks for the ride, but I think I am still fatigued from a big ride on Sunday (https://www.southernvets.com.au/clubnews.php?newsid=266).

Stats below against last week show heart was working harder for less power with the assistance of drafting more - but with higher heart rate decoupling (which can be a sign of poor aerobic fitness) - which I think is telling me that I need a break. Wasn't planning a big ride this weekend, but I may just do a quite light ride one day over the long weekend and get back into training next week.


MRR:
Duration: 49:54 (50:02)
Work: 926 kJ
TSS: 87.5 (intensity factor 1.026)
Norm Power: 380
VI: 1.23
Pw:HR: 11.98%
Pa:HR: -0.98%
Distance: 27.525 km
Elevation Gain: 277 m
Elevation Loss: 269 m
Grade: 0.0 % (6 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 1015 309 watts
Heart Rate: 106 179 164 bpm
Cadence: 19 130 96 rpm
Speed: 0 70.4 33.1 kph
Pace 0:51 0:00 1:49 min/km
Altitude: 36 135 84 m
Crank Torque: 0 183.9 31.6 N-m
Temperature: 9 10 9.3 Celsius

aicabsolut

Crit on Saturday. It was hot and windy. I wasn't feeling so hot. Helped bring back some breaks (didn't really have the energy to bridge, though I tried that a couple of times to one break that was doing pretty well). Launched some counters that went nowhere. Picked the wrong wheel for the final sprint but still managed to stay on the front end of what turned out to be a pretty big split in the field on the final lap.

Sunday was much better (cooler!). 70mi ride with the elite men with some sprint drills (scrimages) thrown in the middle. That was tough, but I felt capable (though I wasn't anywhere near the front end of the sprints, I managed to not get passed by everyone when I launched an early attack on the last one). They weren't going super hard on the rest of the ride, but at least it didn't feel that hard to me anyway.

Fat Boy

Did you suspect any of this? With the limited time you get and the 'all out' nature of most of your riding, it seems like this would almost have to be the case. Do you notice it's hard to keep enough food in you during race days with multiple races? Just curious to hear a little analysis from your end.

AlexTaylor

First go on the turbo since my crash yesterday, doc said it'd be ok as long as i don't put any pressure on my bad side and if back pain worsens to stop.
My legs wanted to go for it, heart and lungs not too happy but thought they'd go with the flow, back and shoulder said "freaking stop it now you ****," after about 15 mins. Happy but frustrated. Going to give it another week I think.

waterrockets 

The switch to a longer ride every week is certainly no surprise. When I've managed to work one into my training plan in the past, things like "Cat 2 upgrade" start happening. What was interesting was hearing how my recovery would be quicker after tough efforts. I associated that with FTP directly, and figured that anything that raised FTP would decrease recovery time. I'm sure that's true to some extent, but it was interesting learning about how you can train your low-power lactate cleaner.

Nutrition-wise, I race like I train: not as much as most of you. I did have one two-day race back in February, and I won my category in both of those (mixed masters). The night between the races, EDR, who was my roommate for the weekend, was freaking out about how much I was eating. No problems during the 2nd race though. I've never had the opportunity to do a stage race (just due to prioritization on my part).

The switch back to pushing FTP rather than pulling was a surprise too. Mostly because I had forgotten to alternate in May. I got into such a great groove with hard intervals in Feb-April, that I didn't realize that I was peaking and it was time to change up in May. I had gone back to more tempo rides though, rather than just hitting intervals of some sort every day. I just hadn't internalized that this was exactly what my next step should be. I was doing it more because I was sick of all the hard work that wasn't raising FTP any more, and I was discouraged by several week-long trips I've had to take off of the bike (which haven't affected me as much as I'd anticipated, due to hikes and suffering through hotel exercise "bikes").

JohnKScott

Good job getting back at it sensibly!

caloso

Left the house as the sun rose and was able to get in almost 2 hours of SST. I love my Quarq/Garmin: it kept me from chasing down the triathlete ahead of me on the bike trail.

pjcampbell

recovering from a dumb long ride in the heat yesterday. smart move.