As I said earlier, tonight was scheduled to include some hard intervals.. but as I was warming up, soon after getting on the bike path in Cranston, this twisted evil grin appeared on my face, kind of like The Grinch.. which is ironic because lately it's Solobreak who's stealing my fire with his Nega Coach alter ego.. At any rate... after 20 minutes of warm-up I reset the Powertap and started to accelerate.. Set the display to show me distance (speed and watts are on there too). Put my hands on the hoods and resolved to increase the watts gradually, beginning just under my FT (275) and working my way up. By the time I reached the one intersection which I'd have to cross before completion, I had the average up to 290. Then as you can see, I needed to coast for many seconds before grabbing the breaks and checking for traffic. By the time I crossed and began to accelerate again, I had lost quite a bit of momentum (speed dropped to 9 mph), but I made some of it up by getting out of the saddle for a few seconds on the other side. Back on the hoods and trying to make up time.. until an obstruction clipped my wings again. Dang. I wasn't worried too much, as all I wanted to do was give a nice sustainable effort the whole three miles, slightly over FT. The path is pancake flat, but the last minute or so of my tt I had a very gradual downhill. I was able to keep adding watts until the very end, which is a good sign. A half-hearted effort? Not quite. I worked hard, sort of. But if you examine the average heart rate and compare it to my Bob Beal TT chart from 2006, there's a huge difference: 161 bpm versus 182. Add to this the fact that riding south (per usual) means going into a slight head wind, then the results are even more interesting. Granted I didn't do a 42 mile road race beforehand, but a tough day at work might be the equivalent. It's seems pretty conclusive to me that I am fit enough to take 30 seconds off of last year's time, which was officially 7:12. Add some niceties such as a skinsuit, tt bars, aero wheels and helmet, and it would appear that a top five result is within reach this September, especially considering that I still have about 6 weeks to improve my form. Thank you Nega Coach for lighting a fire under my ass. I am more motivated than ever.
After about 30 minutes of recovery pace I did my three intervals without as much difficulty as last week (same workout) and without losing many watts at all on the 2nd and 3rd tries. Even did a gratuitous 4th interval after 30 minutes of zone 2. I call this a good day of training.
6 comments:
Last week you did not do enough warmup before your intervals. The more miles you've been doing, the more time it takes to warm up. 30 minutes is not enough for hard intervals. Doing a cruise interval like you did is good preparation for hard intervals.
I have an extra pair of old Scott bars if you want to borrow them. They are size Large.
ya both need to show up at the Bikeworks TT tomorrow ;)
No, real race on Saturday. Maybe next week.
The Cranston path is slightly uphill all the way to Coventry. Not sure how that effects things.
Never used such bars in all my life, so I don't know what size would work for me.. Thanks for the offer. Very neighborly. I may accept. I might also build my 21 year old Torpado SLX into a TT bike..
Ge my training program for tomorrow was established weeks ago, if you can believe that. Would like to do it, but no. I'm a shitty time trialist, and it's only the very short distance at Bob Beal which makes me interested in doing it.
Brucie the Cranston bike path doesn't begin to go uphill until you reach route 113, I was riding before that. My tt ended just before the tunnel. (the one where I crashed and ended my 2003 season because some punks laid a 6x6 piece of pt lumber across it in the center- the lights now come on in there at night because of my correspondence with the State of RI- still not powered up during the day, and it's pitch black in there at dusk)
According to my pal at RIDOT ther is a 1% gain starting from Park Ave. I'll have to double check.
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