Yesterday was a rest day and today an easy ride on the rollers that felt hard.

Today was a 1:24 endurance pace ride with 4x12 minute threshold intervals, with the first eight minutes of the interval normal cadence and the last four 55-65 rpm. NP for the first three intervals was identical, with the last one four watts down. I ran out of gears occasionally on the slow cadence part while going downhill - 50-11 wasn't tall enough. Felt pretty good on the bike.

I definitely would like to ride with you over the break. Laura and Al live about 1 mile from me so we could try to meet up all at once. I'd be interested in tagging along on the SoC Saturday ride if old, slow interlopers are allowed. My only days that are booked are Christmas Day and December 30th. Otherwise my ride calendar is fairly open.

Great, that's one more nail in my OTB coffin. ;)

Am I detecting a pattern here? You seem to know a lot about a lot of local specialty drinks. :)

Perfect.

Spent 4 hours on Monday riding abandoned rail road beds in Western PA with two buddies. I rode in fixed gear mode and they rode cross bikes. I never expected 30' climbs on a rail road but we encountered it.

^^^ AJ, this plus your training video that I saw in the other thread -- you are crazy!

Carry on.

Training video? Link please?

1 hour on the trainer last night in Z2.
Opened the fridge and saw my legs and lungs on a milk carton :mad:

Rest day Monday. Easy roller spin on Tuesday. Wednesday, leg strength, jumping and core work at the gym followed by a one hour on the trainer at tempo or higher. After the trainer work, set up rollers and did a cadence burnout on my track bike. Thursday, 1:20 noon ride with my wife with 5 minute VO2Max intervals on Mount San Bruno. Legs felt great and I set a new 5 minute power record.

Way to go, Hermes!

That hurt me. Well done

I've learned something about myself over the last few months. Warmup. Before I'm fully warmed up, I can't sustain a hard effort for long. The lactic overwhelms my muscles and they just shut down. After I'm warmed up, I can do the same hard effort and sustain it for much longer. I hurt just as much, but my muscles work though it. I'm still searching for that magic warmup key, though. Sometimes it takes 35 to 40 minutes, sometimes it takes over an hour. Most of the time I can recognize whether or not I'm there, but there are times where I read it wrong and end up cramping out of an effort. And too, I might feel lousy early in a ride after a short effort, but that doesn't mean I won't warm and be able to really push and hold it later on. My old lady body is still a mystery, but not as much as it once was.

Have you tried the step warmup in your plan?

For events I use a plan coach wrote. If I understand it correctly, it is a step warmup. When I'm training, I do it a bit differently. During the warmup period I start easy, then do some short efforts, recover, then ramp up, recover. That takes twenty minutes or so. I check to see how I feel after that. Coach build a twenty minute warmup into each of training rides. If I have to do intervals, usually the first set adds to the warmup, and then I can do a better job on the following sets.

So your warmup can take between 20 minutes and an hour? Forgive me, it's hard for me to understand because I am warmed up after 5-10 minutes for training, 20 for races. I'm sure it has to do with the miles in my legs.

Shovel, I wish! If I try to go at 5 - 10 minutes into a training ride, I might as well shut it down and call it part of the warm up. I just load up. I can get away with a 20 minute warm up for a mass start race, but not a time trial. That's what I get for not being a life long athlete, I guess!

There's no point to comparing your warmup with anyone else's... just do what works for you.

Mine is 50-60 minutes for crits & TTs, i might go a little shorter for a RR if I think there won't be any moves right at the beginning.

Training for Racing All Disciplines
 

Valygrl, yeah. I got a little off track from what I wanted to ask. That was: is what I experience after warmup, that is riding through the same level of pain that would shut me down prior to warmup, is that what everyone experiences?

And then....

Yesterday I felt something going on in my upper respiratory tract, and I had some mild body aches. Today, the body aches were about gone, my chest felt good, so I did a programmed training ride at tempo on the TT bike. I got 38 minutes into the hour and had to shut it down. I was gasping for air and couldn't sustain FTP, or anything like an effort. I did make some more little adjustments on the TT bike, I'm still chasing the fit, so the ride wasn't entirely a bust.

I can't do much of anything until I'm warmed up. It's not so much the pain it's that the muscles just don't fire well.

I hope you feel better. You might be coming down with something.

Typically, I perform better on the second interval of a series after warmup.

My "magic" number is around 25 minutes and longer may be better. However, that must include some z4/z5 and z6 efforts. And even then, I may still do better on my second interval.

Leg strength training last night plus core. Today, 2 hours, 3 laps of the TT course. Did the actual time trial distance on the second lap and set a PR for time and power. I rode my road bike in the drops but transforming the Merckx time to an aero time would result in a 45 second improvement. I negative split the segments and rode VO2Max on the climbs and the last 5 minutes of the course which finishes uphill.

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, for me, if i go hard before I warm up it takes forever to recover.

MTB rides both days this weekend. Yesterday was brutal, winds blowing 40+. Big gust on a muddy uphill blew me to a stop.

2x15 with 3 RBI at what used to be low power but a higher cadence than I am used to.
TSS 67 based on a FTP I think I can sustain.
Avg cadence 100

If my legs and lungs ever show up I'll do a FTP test or I'll just get that nice set of golf clubs and be done with this mess.
Woods are not really wood any more and graphite has replaced steel shafts. Who knew!