First trainer ride since beginning of March. Feels awkward.

There's no "un-training" thread, so I'll post here. Binged. About 5000 calories. No clue why the f*** it happened, but man do I feel horrendous. Never again. (Just like I vowed when I did this 6 months ago).

Sometimes a dude just needs to eat a wheelbarrow of chicken wings, no shame in it.

Because it is. Beats freezing your butt off in 45 degree rain. Try Zwift. It's not too Fredly.

About to get on the trainer, Zwift.

I'm 4 lbs heavier, consistently, than April 12th. That's 12,000 calories of stuff, give or take. Buying steak on sale and then eating it all before it went bad was probably not a good idea. There were at least a few days where I ate 1-1.5 lbs of steak in 3-4 hours. "I'll just eat another of the petite sirloins. Three isn't that bad because I spread it out between 5 pm and 9 pm. Right?"

Fortunately, or not, I'm actually 3 lbs lighter than I was a short time ago (2 weeks ago?). I've gotten back on track, sort of. Plus I was off-cycle on the weighing time for a bit.

Also the place we go to after team meetings had, for a while, half price wing specials. A few months ago I managed to eat 15 wings on my own. Our table of 6? ordered something like 85 wings (15x5, one guy chickened out - lol - and ordered only 10 or so). Next month we went there was no more wing special. The waitress explained: "Some guys came in here a while ago and just ate a ton of wings so the owner stopped the special."

Oops.

Recovery Ride, 700 kj, 55 TSS. My frustration with the recovery ride is it always goes too far, some guy pulls at 23 mph, we go up some hill, etc. Its more of a social ride and I remember why I stopped doing them last year.

Today: 60' z1 with a few sprints, combined upper/abs workout PM
Tomorrow: 3 x 10' as detailed:

2' is ON at 120% FTP
3' back off to 90%
3' back to ON -- at 110% FTP
1' @ 120%
1' @ 150%
5' rest between

I'm excited to try these out tomorrow. This is not the best time, as my FTP is in flux and my test value from one week ago is almost certainly too low as I was over ambitious and ended up with a positive split.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to giving these I try - I bet that last minute won't be so fun, however.

Add a sprint at the end and that's a variant of a race winning interval. Have fun.

That's never a bad idea.

What? My recovery rides are hilariously easy in comparison. Just checked mine from last Friday before the stage race weekend...17.8 TSS in 53'.

It's a group ride that's supposed to be a recovery ride, but half the time they go crazy on the routes as 80% of the people that show don't need recovery and are just there to socialize with the pros or girls. I try to hit under 40 tss, so that's probably going to be the last time I do it.

Well I failed pretty hard on that last one - but I trucked through, albeit at lower wattage. I attribute my failure to execution/pacing rather than fitness; it took me two of these to realize that you do NOT want to start any of that first 8' too hot. This workout is really about that last minute - the rest is fairly easy.


I'll try this next time - I thought to myself last night that capping it off with a sprint would be a good idea, but no dice today.

A variation of 5x5' superthreshold intervals formerly named for a past member of this board who now writes for a cycling publication.

You failed during the 5' Rest interval?

Did my usual hill to see how bad the leg really is and ease back into training. Usually do 4' repeats, today I did 3 and each took about 4:50. No wonder I got dropped on Sunday!

On Zwift I saw Mike McCarthy and he was rolling around pretty hard, getting the one lap orange jersey, a little out of the KOM jersey, but he hadn't gotten the green. Then he eased and "soft pedaled" toward the sprint part of the course. "Soft pedaled" means 200-250w, which would kill me in a couple minutes if I tried to sustain it. I'd just gotten the green jersey so I was like, ah, bummer, he's gonna do a 21.x and annihilate my time (23.06, decent for me).

I watched as he got going, 700, 800, 900w, and I thought, crap, he's doing it, he'll hold 900w through the whole thing.

Then 0w… 0w. Then 50w, 180w, 210w. Then 0w.

I didn't ask but I'm guessing something happened, like he pulled out of the pedal or the tire slipped (if he has such a trainer) or chain jumped or something.

I was a bit disappointed because I didn't get to see what he'd do. It'd have been nice to see what a pro level rider can do in the sprint on Zwift.

Congrats on your hardwork and you deserve it. Can't wait to see your future podiums

Evaluation Ride - Its going to be a rest week. Body just felt wrecked and I just kept yawning.

Planned 3 weeks of training 1 of rest but thought that may be a stretch. Last two weeks I'm around 30 hours and 1600 tss so I'm good with it. Hopefully I can get off work early on Thursday and race in the OC.

Thanks dude. But the plan was to get to cat 1 within 2 years then retire! Just kidding, it won't make much difference as most races here are P12, but I will pick and chose races from now on instead of chasing points at crits :)

never responded before because I thought you were already cat 1, but congrats!

Probably because you're training too much.

And you're a 4? Are 15 hour weeks a normal thing for you?

Moreover, I think he has been dealing with chronic injury, and that he doesn't have the CTL to handle that much riding.

Ha!

In ways, I probably could have stood to ride even easier or slightly extended the RI's... this coupled with going too hard during the first portion of the earlier segments resulted in me failing during the final 1'.

Probably, then again others will say I'm not training enough.

Yes, I'm a 4. I tend to put in a lot of hours, usually 13-16 (when I'm not hurt) the difference now is I'm coming back from injury and I'm putting more hours over at or over tempo.


I have an issue with my femur that took me out for 2 months and its something I have to deal with still but doesn't keep me off the bike. Started with a CTL of 20 in April. I'm up to 65, and have one more 2-3 week block before I start racing again.

I'll be racing in July in front of a friend of mine who is terminally ill, so even though its a crappy race in the middle of nowhere winning it is a big deal to me.