Hermes

That is Hermes first law of weight. The conservation of weight... one man's (or women's) loss is another ones gain.

revchuck 

And in the "no good deed goes unpunished" department, my coach emailed me today and congratulated me on the good work for last week and gave me instructions to the effect of, "Since you're not having any problem with an hour at Z3, let's change that to a half hour at Z3 and a half hour at SST." Luckily, it's just for one day this week, but sheesh!

Allegheny Jet

Coach took me off resistance training and is allowing me do track starts on the street in front of my house on Mondays. Our Cul-de-sac is about 1/2 mile long and we live near the end, and after the 18-20" efforts I noodle around the street on my fixed gear bike. I made a bike holder and use a countdown timer app on my iPhone that is secured to the bike stem when doing the practice starts. The street is about +1.5% grade for the first 100 meters and smooth concrete. I did the first three reps in a 49/14, just under my usual 500 TT race gear but with the incline it is an over gear. The last two reps were done in an under gear 49/14. The 5" PP was nearly the same on all 5 reps even though the cadence differed significantly. I'm still working on the transition from OTS into the aero position. I feel smooth and fluid on the transition but there is a hitch in the power output.

revchuck 

I did the workout above yesterday - 30 minutes Z3 plus 30 minutes SST - with no problem, in spite of feeling pretty puny at the beginning of the ride. I could tell I was getting towards the edge most of the way through the SST part, had to drop down to Z3 for about 1:45 for a break, but my AP end up at 92+% anyway. Part of the difficulty is probably fatigue, I'm supposed to start a rest week next week; that rest week is going to start this Friday due to an unplanned trip to see family in Alabama this weekend.

ETA: did 1:15 in Z3 this morning with 60 minutes at SST. I slept poorly last night and didn't feel too chipper, but just got into a groove. New 60 minute PR. WTF?

Hermes

Did a double workout yesterday - track and road. I went to a noon track session and after the traditional 30 lap warmup, I changed to race gears and did a couple of 1/4 lap standing starts. I have the holder time me and I keep track of times. We had the motor available so I did three flying kilos. The motor wound me up to the goal speed which I held for two laps and then did the last lap by myself.

I met my wife at the time trial course and did a VO2Max pyramid on my road bike with complete recovery between efforts. I followed that with 15 minutes of high tempo power.

I think that covers all the metabolic systems.

Allegheny Jet

Great work Hermes! You should feel wasted today from all that effort.

Last night I went to the track for the usual Tuesday evening intervals. It was really hot in the velodrome with 91 degrees and almost no wind. I rode 30 minutes with 5 others who wanted to ride in close quarters and in a pace line. Three of the guys are Masters roadies who want to morph into track mass start races. I used the group ride time as my WU. Main work was 2 sets of 2 laps (350 meters) at +425 watts followed with 2 laps of recovery x 10 reps per set. After a full recovery, finishing up was supposed to be 20' of 270 watts at 90 rpm. I was really struggling on the tempo work just to hold 250-260 watts and ended up getting a flat at 14 minutes in. At last Saturday's workout and doing only the 20 minute effort it started raining at 13' and I had to bail out. I think I'm cursed and should avoid all Z4 intervals.

Hermes

z4 is overrated anyway. My legs do not like going up stairs.

sarals 

My training partner and I did our usual Wednesday sufferfest today. She's been on me as of late about being lazy. So, today I went into TT mode on the climbs and did pretty well. My legs still hurt! I think if I filled the tub with cold water and put them in there they'd sizzle. TSS was 197 for 24 miles and 1 hour 47 minutes.

revchuck 

Dang, Sara, IF >1 for almost two hours? Whoa!

revchuck 

2:00 at endurance pace today, with 5x8' threshold intervals at increasing cadences; first one at 70-75 rpm, then add five rpm for each additional one. Due to a tailwind, I ran out of gears on the first one...tallest was 50-12, had to take it to 77-78 rpm to maintain power in the desired range. OTOH, the fourth one was into that wind, and I ended up in the 34-12 with the bike making unhappy cross-chained sounds. Still, no problem with the workout.

Recovery ride tomorrow, then family visiting intervals in Alabama over the weekend.

sarals 

Chuck, family visiting intervals? Sounds like fun!

Yes, two hours!

Today, 2 x 20 minute mock TT's, once again striving for smoothness and consistency over time and speed. It was windy today, a good steady wind, not gusty. I'm trending more towards climbing into the pain cave and staying there, and I find the more I do that the deeper I go. The interesting part is that the HR seems to be decreasing for a given steady state power output. It's a little more than subtle, too. One of my fears, I'm finding out, was the pain cave - not going into it, but staying in it and then going deeper. The hurt would scare me into thinking I was going to blow up or lock up or whatever, when in fact that rarely happens. I have this little voice in my head saying "this hurts, don't go harder, this hurts, you need to stop..." Sort of like a devil on my shoulder. I'm starting to ignore it. Progress.

revchuck 

Sara - My wife was on the phone with her sister when I was typing, and the trip was postponed so no family visiting intervals.

You and I seem to be on parallel learning curves, at least in terms of learning to get comfy in the pain cave. I think the big "Aha!" moment of my breakthrough was going from "This hurts, I gotta stop!" to "This hurts...yup, sure does." I'm guessing that this is a common experience among new racers, with Master's racers also having to smack the s**t out of that devil on our shoulder telling us that we're too old for this.

Moyene Corniche

Schedule for today is 120+km with 994 meters of climbing.
Tomorrow will be a NoHo group ride, which i don't expect to be easy,probably at least 110 km.
Sunday will again be 120 km... fun 3 days scheduled.

Moyene Corniche

One of the best advice I can give for that is to program yourself to visualize and focus on a completely removed scene or in other words, you are always aware of the pain, but it can be nullified by taking your mind elsewhere. it will take practice but it works.

IBOHUNT

It's like... Hey, if it's gonna hurt anyway might as well make it worth while and turn yourself inside out. No reason to keep a full stomach.

IBOHUNT

Went to a group ride last night where a bunch of stinkin CAT 2 and 3 folks showed up to. Looked down one time and I'm 370W in the draft That didn't last long.

IF 0.96
TSS 108

sarals 

Moyene, IBO, Chuck....yes!

Moyene, I find myself doing exactly as you suggested, except I can't "hold that thought". Something will come along, like a roller, where I get snapped back to reality and the demon reappears. I know, I know - it takes time. This, my second full season, has been full uncharted territory. Descending so deep into the pain cave is part of that. Mental demons are, too. It's a been a ride this year!

Chuck - agreed - I think we are parallel!

nacler22

First time in almost 2 months on the road bike, and it was good.

Felt like I had hero legs.

May have to do this again............soon.

sarals 

Nacler, good to see you back!

Openers and Form Sprints today. The ride went well, the time was spot on and the TSS was 44. I hit all the marks and kept disciplined. Cat 4 crit tomorrow, we'll see how it goes. It's the kids, so......

AzTallRider

45' @ 97w, keeping the cadence up and torque down. No pain - so far so good!

Racer Ex 

Inching up on the magical century mark!

Hermes

I got a Specialized S-Works Evade helmet. A man cannot have too many helmets. So far, I like it a lot. It has been hot the last couple of days and today I did a tempo / threshold workout and took my Garneau Course helmet and the Evade. The Course looks like it would be a lot cooler than the Evade. I started with the Evade and switched to the Course. Granted the temperature was slowly increasing over time. I would rate them about the same in level of cooling.

revchuck 

Finished with this build phase. My coach has been assigning me "upper end of endurance range" workouts. For context, for me (according to Carmichael's system) the max endurance watts would be 223; Wednesday I did 60 minutes at 226, Saturday 60 minutes at 221, and today 90 minutes at 214 and two hours (including those 90 minutes) at 209...shoot, AP for the whole ride (2:56) was 189. Traditional zones for my FTP would be Z3 at 190 and Z4 at 230, so I've been at mid- to upper-Z3...AP for today's ride was only a watt short of Z3, and NP was 200. I think I'm tired. Recovery week starts tomorrow!

Allegheny Jet

30% closer to being back.

IBOHUNT

No pain is a beautiful thing.