PM: 4 hours 11'. 70.9 miles @ 16.9 MPH. 219W. HR 134.
20'-20'-25'-20' Race Efforts
It was pretty cold and moody outside, a sharp change in the weather, so I was going to jump on the trainer, and I went back and forth, but decided I wanted to get out. I also thought the roads might be a little sloppy. I was scheduled to do some unstructured intervals at close to race intensity. I decided if I felt like crap I would just do zone 2 for about 4 hours.
Well, I felt like crap. Legs were heavy and I just felt very slow. I wasn't sure if it was a pressure issue, or if I had too much weight from my oversized bottles, or the gravel was just slow or what. But even going down the Polly Ann, which I ride several times a week was very slow and I was into the wind. I almost turned around. But I decided that I have felt generally very good on the bike and feeling a bit off was bound to happen.
I started the first interval 1 hour in and that felt pretty decent. Hard, but I felt without predefined recovery I would do a handful more. I had a segment I wanted to try that was about 20'. I missed by a lot and was even 30" off from my time I went through it during a race, but I knew I was lighter and my power higher. That's gravel though. A lot like ski conditions. Sometimes it is so fast you cannot imagine and other times it is so slow you just can't slog through it.
It ended up being a good ride and I enjoyed it. The intervals were hard, but my HR never got very high. Peaked at 163. Part of this is fitness but I think a lot of it is fueling as well. I took a few Beta Fuel gels, which were 40g of carbs and my typical 90g bottles of Flow Formula.
20' @ 284 watts (290 normalized) @ 153 BPM, 21:43 @ 276 watts (280 normalized) @ 152 BPM, 25' @ 276 watts (280 normalized) @ 150 BPM, 20' @ 266 watts (271 normalized) @ 147 BPM
I would like to see somewhat higher power numbers and a higher HR. I did 264 watts for 2 hours last weekend. It seems 285-295 would be doable for 20' with longer recoveries between. Volume has been very high this week again and I thought I had cut it, but it looks like a PR for the year.
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