Saturday ROP Ride

Today was the epic ROP (Ride of Pain), which is 93 miles of rolling hills on a route that circumnavigates Lake Wateree in a clockwise direction, passing through Ridgeway, Great Falls, Camden, Lugoff and Elgin. The last 20 or so miles probably has the most climbing and some rough pavement and is often into the wind as you head west.

Five of us rolled out from LL's house at 9 am with the temp at 31 degrees, but sunny. It warmed up to maybe 50 by the end of the ride so the cold wasn't a big deal. About 40 miles in LL anounced that his prescribed workout plan called for a 20 minute threshold effort, so he went to the front and hammered along at 351 watts while the rest of us hung on.

For most of the ride I was content to take 5 minute or so pulls at about 85 to 90% of threshold, then sit in for several minutes. It never seemed like I did a lot of work, but after 4 hours I was wearing down and couldn't wait to get off the bike. At mile 82 or so, Nick, Marc and Stephen(who had joined us in Lugoff) peeled off and headed to Stephen's house to end things there. RW, LL and I continued on. I managed to take the one sprint of the day at mile 87. I am far from being a great sprinter, but my odds increase greatly after everyone is tired.

This ride ended up being harder than I was expecting. The IF was .74 and I was thinking it would be in the .65 to .70 range. As a result I had the highest TSS I've seen on a ride since 2007.

Midweek Update

Today was the second day of a two day block on the trainer. Yesterday I did some 15 sec sprints followed by 36 minutes of SST. Today I did 32 minutes of SST followed by 3 sets of 4 x 30 sec on, 30 sec off. Check out the graph of this workout. The 30 second efforts averaged about 475 watts and I was really hurting by the last one. The idea of this workout is to train anaerobic capacity after first pre-exhausting yourself. The training plan I used to religiously follow, suggested doing these sort of intervals towards the end of a two day distance block. In a race the hardest part is usually at the end, so I think this workout helps simulate that to some extent.

Monday SST

I rode over to Hwy 269 and did a 22 minute interval at 91% (287w). I rested for a few minutes. Then I knocked out another 22 minutes at 91% on Peach and Syrup Mill. After that I cruised home at a steady pace between about 240 and 260 watts. I opted to push the pace and keep the time short for the ride, rather than doing a real distance ride. This is the 8th day of the last 10 that I've done an actually training ride. I'm gonna take Tuesday completely off the bike. Then if I am recovered enough I'll pick it back up on Wednesday.

Sunday Distance Ride

Yesterday was a recovery day, and I ended up going downtown with my wife to the PE Center to lift. Later in the day I got in a one hour recovery ride on the trainer.

This morning I planned to ride outside regardless of the weather, but much to my surprise it wasn't that cold and it was dry. I hooked up with WB for a good steady ride on the Syrup Mill, Peach, Ridgeway loop. I did one 25 minute interval at 95% of FTP and felt pretty good, but not good enough that I wanted to do another one.

I ended up getting 659 TSS points this week which was a little more than expected. Hopefully my body will adapt to the extra load. So far so good.

Let the Long Rides Begin

The CTL building has begun. After spending the early part of winter just maintaining fitness and lifting weights, I'm ready to kick up the training now. I did back to back SST workouts on the trainer on Wed and Thurs worth about 82 TSS points apiece. I had planned to take Friday as recovery and ride distance on the weekend, but with rainy weather looming, LL and I decided to take advantage of the balmy 60 degree temps and ride on Friday afternoon.

I thought I'd be a little tired, but instead I felt great today. LL really wanted to punish himself. He did a 22 min threshhold effort before meeting me. Then he did a 21 min threshhold effort with me in tow at one point. Most of the ride I did long 5 min or so pulls at hard tempo. We did a couple of sprints and I had 5 sec at 1099w on the second one.

Tomorrow is going to be a short easy day. Then I'll do a two day training block. I've got more time on my hands lately than I should. I've got Mondays and Fridays off from work now. That's good for training, but not so good for the budget right now.

MLK Day Ride

I met LL at Food Lion this afternoon for a steady endurance ride. Neither of us had a real goal, other than just earning TSS points on a Monday at a time when most would be working. The weather was awesome. Well maybe it wasn't, but 48 and cloudy was way better than the last couple of days.

LL beat me by a whole bike length in our one sprint of the day, on the slight downhill headed south on Grover Wilson. My 1163w max and 1073w 5s didn't cut it.

Sunday Inside

It was rainy and cold, so I opted for a trainer ride to satisfy my training jones for the day. I wanted to do an hour and half, so I set up the laptop to watch a couple of Hero's episodes on Netflix. I did 3 x 20 minutes with short breaks to get off the bike and stretch. Lately I've been getting off the bike in between SST intervals instead of spinning to recover. It might be better to spin to recover from VO2 max efforts, but at sub-threshold, why not just get off the bike and relax for a minute or two?

Saturday in the Cold

I feel good about getting outside to ride today. I started at 1:30 so I could enjoy the warmest part of the day. It was still only 34F, but at least it was sunny. I rode mostly L2 for the first hour, then mostly L3 for the second hour. I'm going to start ramping up the training next week, so I'm hoping for some warmer temps.

Sunday Ride

I did about the first 45 minutes today at L2 wattage (low 200's). Then I kicked up the pace to the SST level, with the goal of holding that for at least 45 minutes. I wasn't really getting tired, so I extended the effort to 1 hour (271 watts avg, 274 watts normalized).

Sprints & SST

I rolled out late this morning with my wife under beautiful sunny skies, with some wind. She prefers to do her on thing rather than sit on my wheel, so we parted ways as we left the neighborhood. After warming up for about 20 minutes, I did eight 10 sec sprints. I stayed in an easy gear, and spun up to 130+ cadence on most of the sprints. Most of the efforts averaged around 800 watts. After the sprints I rode about a half hour in L2 to fully recover. Then I rode about 50 minutes of tempo/sst at 85% of FTP. I felt pretty good today, which I expected since I only rode an hour or so in L2 the last couple of days. Earlier in the week I did some trainer sprints, one short day of sst, and lifted weights twice.

Sunday Inside

I was planning to go do Toby's annual ride around the lake, but I made the very easy decision to bail, since it was raining and foggy outside this morning. I stayed dry and did some SST on my trainer in the basement. I got in about 1 hour at 91% of FTP, with one short break in the middle to get off the bike and stretch a bit.

I haven't had much downtime this offseason, and my CTL stands at about 70 right now, which is probably 12 to 15 points higher than the start of 08. I'm going to ramp up the training in a couple of weeks and try to add at least 20 more points to CTL by early March.

Saturday Solo

It was wet and foggy this morning, so I wasn't exactly motivated to ride. I spent the morning packing up Christmas decorations and doing a bit of cleaning. Well, actually my wife did most of the work, but I did take part. I went out to ride at noon. It was still wet out, but there was zero wind. I felt really good, but decided to just ride endurance pace. Since I didn't push myself and I rode less than two hours, I'd say this ride didn't have much training benefit. That's no big deal. I rode outside on a gloomy day and had fun.

SST in the Cold

I did the exact same route Friday morning that I did the day before, but at a faster pace. I was pressed for time, so I rode hard, with a one mile warm-up and one mile cool-down. It was 34 degrees at the start, but not windy. I don't really mind this kind of weather, but going hard helps stay warm.

New Year's Day Recovery Ride

I rang in the new year with an easy bike ride. I was trying to stay around 200 watts, so it looks like I nailed that. My other goal was to do one brief acceleration to hit 1000 watts, just to see if I could.