Grotug

This post is more for my own record keeping; basically I try to rationalize how fatigued I am based on how my ride went last night:

Resting HR this morning was about 44 avg and last 30s standing avg was about 59. I was going to stay in zone 2 last night, and of course I didn't.... I actually don't really know what my zones are by watts, but my Zone 3 by HR is 128-142. I decided I'd do a 30 minute zone 2 effort, and was going to stay at 120bmp, but 125bpm felt good, and then it kept creeping up to 130 so I decided I'd keep it between 120 and 130, but spent most of the 30min around 130bmp. I put in a small hill that brought my HR up to just above 140bpm briefly and by the end of the half hour (actually ended up going 34 minutes and averaged 192) my HR was 136 and I was feeling pretty good; my breathing was super relaxed and my legs were starting to get a bit tired, but I was by no means suffering. I finished the workout and my HR quickly recovered to about 112 (very briefly) before I decided I'd hit the hill again. I managed my effort going into it so that I felt good and wasn't going anaerobic at the start, and as I approached the top I realized I had basically slowly been building my effort the entire ride with that half hour creeping zone 3 effort, which is partly why I think I felt good and why it was a low perceived effort to bring my HR to a max for this short climb of 145bpm (I was a bit surprised this was as easy as it was, since I just spent a solid amount of time at 130+ BPM). At the end of the climb I went pretty hard, but didn't really push it; breathing was controlled, legs felt good (1:37 for the climb; 282 watts avg, 130bpm avg) and 3rd place on Strava for all time.

I went back down the hill and decided I was still feeling good and that my body was kinda telling me "hey, this is interval day, we like intervals" so I decided I'd see how I feel on the last climb and I hit that, controlling my effort more than the last time I took the KOM and beat my KOM by 7 seconds with less perceived effort, and also held 500+ watts for longer than I expected at the end of the climb: my max watts for the ride (the last steep section of the final climb of my ride) was 551W and my 30 second power based on the Elemnt power curve was 498 watts. I pushed myself at the very end of the climb, but didn't go out of my face; definitely went hard, though; and hit a max BPM of 163). I've never seen my power curve be so flat for so long; usually it's more 45 degrees for the first 30 seconds; this was pretty much a table top. Pretty sure that was a new record for 30 second power of any ride I've done to date (not including leg opener/sprint days). Here's a crazy stat: my highest 30s power for any ride I've done with a power meter is the first ride I did with a power meter; that first day when I went soooo hard on the sprints to see how high I could get the power. Hmmmmm... interesting. Although I think it's the highest because I did 9 sprints (about twice of what I normally do), not because I put out more power per sprint as compared to later sprints.

Today is the long ride. Should I try to stick to zone 2 for the entire ride? I usually start out zone 1 and 2 for awhile, then some hills take me to zone 3, then zone 4 on one or two hills, then zone 1 for awhile, then struggle to zone 2 / zone 3 the rest of the ride. I think I'm going try to stick to a relatively flat route and see if I can control myself and stay in zone 2 for the whole ride (with maybe a couple short punch efforts).

TL;DR how I felt and performed on ride last night indicates to me I'm not fatigued enough to take it easy.