esammuli

I'm very, very, very far from being an alien. I've raced with aliens, I know what they look like.

umd

No, I towed the pack up

mollusk

If the secret to bike racing was "bridge" i would kill all of you. I am a MUCH better Bridge player than I am a bike racer.

ZeCanon

3 hours on the loaner bike (cervelo with record. I have good friends). Felt pretty good. Little bit of back ache, just need to mess with the position a bit more. Not quite long enough for me.

Finished it off with our team practice crits. Got in a few hot laps, felt good in the corners. Probably going to take the campy off and put on my Sram though, kept accidentally shifting like 4 gears at a time and shift lever placement on campy is just effing moronic. Don't want to have to think about that while racing this weekend.

Speaking of racing this weekend, I'm going to tired as hell going into it. Here's to hoping I'm strong enough that it doesn't matter. Two more weeks of base...

Apus^2

Taking a second day off. I'm going to hold off on an actually training plan until I have enough fitness to do two decent rides on the weekend and be recovered enough for intervals on Tuesday. Then it is Carmicheal's TCTP for me. Bought the book last year and realized how close it was to what I was actually doing. I'm going to start with the Experienced Century program.

ldesfor1@ithaca

did my explosive pulling pushing program in the weight room yesterday. recovery commute too (25' @ 82watts, 3.3 TSS )

today begins the biggest mini-cycle since last summer:

SST this morning 2 hours, max.
Saturday: 2 hour GR (want to treat it like a vo2 workout, and I know the few places in the ride to make this happen, sitting in otherwise to recover) + 2 hours with GF @ z1 (gonna make her hurt, though!)
Sunday: flattest century in the east. 5 hours z2 with teammates! should be a gloriuos weekekend!!

kensuf

Felt like a human for the first time in two weeks yesterday. This is good, allergies had sucked the life out of me, but now I'm coming back.

substructure

Time to train my confidence.

fordfasterr

doh... I realized that I missed a week in this plan...

wk1 Build 1
wk2 Build 1
wk3 recovery
wk4 Build 2
wk5 Build 2
wk6 TAPER corrected...
wk7 Peak


Now I'm really confused... what should I do in the taper week? And how is the taper week different from a rest week?

ljrichar

Do you treat these races differently because you're still in base or do you still go all out? I know that some of these are "practice" but say you do an official race during base.

ZeCanon

I just train through them, and usually do a big ride before or after. Yesterday I rode for three hours, then did 1.5 hrs of practice crits.

I have a crit tomorrow, but I'll double up and do the p/1 as well. Sunday is a TT and I'll throw in a few hours after. Definitely more intensity than my usual base weeks, but I keep things under control during the week. It ends up being a nice smooth transition into build.

Bullseye

Thailand cycling finished. rode 24 of 28 days, 865 miles, 42 hours; CTL up to 85. also known as hell of a February. had 2-3 days of really good intervals there that gave me confidence I wasn't just building CTL.

back in Colorado now and putting out some decent numbers. this next week will suck [altitude readjustment], but I can say that I'm faster now than I was during my peak of last year [yay for year-over-year improvement]. hope to do my first race soon.

... I think I'll be the only one there with a good base tan

ldesfor1@ithaca

SST.

50' or so @ 94%. All I know is that the last 19' was 342AP. Computer time when I get home. Not quite a PR, but very solid workout. 2 hours total.
This workout had been worrying me for the past 2 days, I'm glad it's over with.

jonestr

That is a lot of time near FTP. What were your numbers for the total ride if you dont mind me asking?

kensuf

Openers. Nice, I'm really starting to feel human again. I did a 5 minute interval at just enough intensity to remind me how to hurt, which is important since I've got a 3.6km prologue first thing tomorrow morning. The power was higher than the 3 minute suffering on Tuesday (but RPE and HR were lower).

I think the pharmaceutically jacked up HR incident from Tuesday was good training for reminding me the pain cave is really a warm and happy place to be, and not something to be feared (blue line is hr)

jonestr

kensuf

Is that your usual opener, or did you do more work in addition?

kensuf

That graph was a Tuesday vo2max interval. I've been on clariton-d for the past few weeks and my HR went over 200 in the middle of my interval session, it's normally only 190-192 not 200+. Stupid sudafed.

My normal "openers" are basically ride around for an hour real easy but during which time I'll do two minutes of high cadence then one 5 minute interval, one 1 minute interval, and two sprints. It seems to work for me.

kudude

3 hrs, 49 miles, 212 TSS, still can't hit the 1300W peak on my sprint. God, I want that, but I don't really know why. Maybe max sprint is like **** size, and FTP is more a "motion in the ocean" thing.

I have a migraine now, so feel free to write this post off.

Apus^2

Tucker tomorrow. Will I be dropped on Farmers?

umd

Had a no chain type day today. 2 hours "easy" by PE (and HR) but skirting tempo by power. Of course I haven't adjusted my zones in a while... Even then it was much more power than similar rides a the same PE over the last few weeks.

jwible

IF .95 TSS 159. Nice hour and a half. Windy as hell.

mollusk

Took the kludged together TT rig out for ride #4 on it. This time I did 20 km straight in the bars with a 10 mph crosswind. Let's just say I was very happy with the time considering that I didn't push it and had no other aero equipment other than the cockpit. All I will say is that it was less than 30 minutes and I was nowhere near "cooked" at the end.

Coming back to town I did a fair amount of JRA along with numerous "mile at a time" easy efforts in the aerobars just to get more accustomed to them. Rolling into my driveway I had close to a PR for that circuit and I felt like it was an overall Zone 2 effort.

I think that I am getting the hang of this TT position thing vis-a-vis control of the bike. Of course I still have a lot to learn to wring every last second out of a TT ... and seconds do matter. And I was putting out way fewer watts than what I could put out on my road bike, but was still getting a little ragged in my breathing at times. It will take me a while to find the optimal aero position/power output position configuration.

ldesfor1@ithaca

sst:
Duration: 51:40
Work: 1036 kJ
TSS: 76.3 (intensity factor 0.944)
Norm Power: 340
VI: 1.01
Pw:HR: n/a
Pa:HR: n/a
Distance: 18.215 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 479 336 watts
Cadence: 35 141 96 rpm
Speed: 0 35.4 21.2 mph

bostongarden

Please tell me you're staying in Massachusetts this weekend.

I believe what I did is called active recovery, on the computrainer for 33' at 105ap (and 92rpm).

jwible

That's it.

I quit.