Today was supposed to be 3.5hrs with 18x90'' 450-550W, but my chain snapped during the 14th rep and I was only able to get in ~2:10. Still fit 160TSS into it but I'm bummed because I was feeling ridiculous and was on track for my highest TSS workout ever.

Nice @tkp - That is some shredding right there!

Nice - and good luck!

Seriously, figure out what's up with your chain. Bad things can happen in races.

1:15 on The Zwift feeling like The Suck. There was a Tuesday Night Worlds race going on with A,B, and C categories. I need to figure out how they are doing that.

I just replaced it, I don't mess around with that sort of stuff. Link snapped, I'll pretend it's due to massive wattage.

Wow that's hard. Also, thats a pretty broad target wattage, no? The bottom of that range would be pretty smooth sailing for me (but I weigh a ton more than you), but I suspect the top would be insanely hard. When I do openers, I'll occasionally do 2 or 3 550w efforts for 2:00. They get hard, like to the point of failure, fast. Also, I find efforts late in long workouts insanely harder. Two weeks ago, I did 4:00 with 15:00 at 330 & 5 at 375 each hour. For comparison sake, I do 60 & 90:00 efforts at 330-335 on the regular. Well, that 4th 15:00 effort was one of the single hardest intervals I've done this year, maybe even the hardest.

Yeah, when I do 5x5's they're typically around 400w. For these things 450 is the floor and the ceiling is basically whatever but it was called 550 for posterity. My worst one was #1 @ 450W because I was trying to figure out if it was too hard or not and I was also still warming up a bit, and the best was #7 and that was 523W. The rest of them were 470-500. I also varied the rest periods so it was sort of unstructured structure, the hardest "block" was 10min with #7-9 (I wanted to test repeatability) for a NP of 390W and intervals at 523, 492, and 471, respectively, and "recovery" at 190-210w.

The point of this type of work is, naturally, to win races. But I'm in a weird spot where even in 4hr rides I can do 3x15s at 355-365W starting 2hrs in and I can do today's sorts of crazy 90sec things over and over again but I find I am sometimes left wanting toward the end of races and my legs don't respond how I would expect them to. I suspect given the numbers I spit out when training I'm still not conserving energy properly, and so the softpedal game is one I'm still working to grasp fully.

10 mile training TT. Power was 15 watts lower than my last time out there, but the time was 30 seconds faster, so that's nice. Felt super sluggish on the bike though.

Wait, so you can do 18 sets of 500 watts for 90 seconds over the course of a long ride? In my bad Cat 4 math, then you should probably be able to ride the last mile of a flat crit in just under 2 minutes. If that's the case, I feel like you should be able to take off in the last lap and win and get your upgrade to Cat 2. Or at least take off with at least one other person, trade pulls and win.

I'm still figuring how to use my power at the right times. The plus side is I'm making different mistakes every time so I am learning.

This is my power file from last night until the chain snapped. AP was 220ish, NP 298.
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=455549

What program is that and how are you not pro hitting Supra Max so often? The next level is plaid and I don't even think Cav hits that.

Poweragent.

I mean, even at Cat 3 level you don't accidentally just become state champion.

I'm putting it all together, slowly but surely. It's like I've said a bunch of times before, you spend a long time sucking and forget how to win, and the past couple of months Stella's been getting her groove back. It's easy to misuse power in a race, and it's easy for people that know what they're doing to take advantage of it.

Keep on trucking!

about to head out:

1hr today, all z1/2 save for three sprints and 1x4' climb at high VO2. I normally would do something harder on a Wed., but I'm racing on Sat and don't wanna go too hard.

Manhattan Beach?

(actually its probably that one in Chula Vista)

Nope, Adrenaline Circuit race in Chula Vista, 30mi. cat 3 circuit race on a rolling course.

It's early (8:30) and close to home (20min drive). I don't have the fitness to warrant driving up to LA right now. I just want to roll the dice, test the waters and have some fun.

Last interval session last night before my target Omnium this weekend.

1:45 139 TSS
5x5 minute 15sec over-unders with a 30 second sprint to open

Amazing how easy it feels to do these outside versus the trainer, but it just seems so much more inefficient. I could have done the same workout in 1:15 indoors and really hit my over-unders better. However, I wouldn't have hit the sprint power numbers I achieved outdoors. Easy spin today and openers Friday while I tinker with the clip on bars.

another thought, maybe you're better rested for workouts than you are for races. i think you're working with a coach, this is definitely something to communicate to him/her and ask if they've got you out of sync on the recovery cycle. fwiw, i've experienced this self coaching where I was ready to rock for wednesday intervals but tired on saturday, and it didnt really show in my CTL/ATL/TSB continuum, it took a coach to diagnose and assist me with working through.

That could be, it's something I have been really bad with on my own and my coach has been pretty involved in making sure I rest enough before races as he identified that as an issue as well. There's the possibility I'm still messing it up a bit though, maybe I'm doing a bit too much with my openers or something.

maybe you race tense.

You're a teepee, you're a wigwam, you're a teepee, you're a wigwam...

You're two tents!

I think your race bibs are too loose. Or your helmet is too tight.

Is Mercury in retrograde? I get all bloated and slow when Mercury is in retrograde.

You may just choke.:D

Ask me how I know. I have found that in golf, tennis, football, skiing and cycling that I have to try to simulate mentally race situations in my mind when training. Hitting power numbers is not enough. I love to train and many times have great training sessions but not so hot racing sessions considering my training results. Racing for me, creates some anxiety and mentally, I can defeat myself before I start while some athletes crave competition but hate training.

Try to visualize the race situation with competitors with less focus on power per se when training. In other word, try to make training more like racing and get your mind to really like the situation and visual yourself on the next race course having success. When I golfed in tournaments, I would warmup on the driving range and imagine playing the first few holes of the course.

I asked my wife what she thought about when motor pacing at track. She said, she visualized herself at a world championship riding for the win. Maybe that is one of the reasons she is 3 time national pursuit champion. What was I thinking about...god this is hard...but I am hitting speed and power targets. I think hers is better.

IMO, the connection between racing and training is a problem for many athletes and much of it is mental but that does not mean it is not real. YMMV

Or you could just do more toast intervals.

Toast aside, what Hermes said is really good. I love daydreaming about specific race situations while training.


But we shouldn't load up TKP with too much "what you need to do is..." I mean, the guy is having a lot of success. Nobody wins every single race.