TR Lamarck (@95%)

TR Lamarck was scheduled today. It's a 4x 10 minute @ FTP workout. However, I chose not to do it 100% FTP, but slightly below that, 95%. Why? Because at this time of the year / this part of my build up I do not want to ride @ FTP too often. I do my Kurt trainings at SS or very slightly above, but not 100% FTP. My focus is on high cadence and sometimes on muscular strenght with low cadence drills.

 

So I just did Lamarck on 95% and tried to combine both high and low cadence. First interval high, second low, third high and last one low (only in the last 1.30min I wanted to finish with high cadence).

Here are the results:

1) 288W,HR 151,cad 100

2) 292W,HR 150,cad 77

3) 286W,HR 153,cad 100

4) 291W,HR 156,cad 80 (last 1.30min high cadence)

In every interval you see HR going up. Only in the second interval in which I did the low cadence work you see my HR being very much lower than in the first (high cadence) especially in the beginning. Why? Because I relied more on muscular strength in the low cadence. When not fatigued this is no problem, but when you already have some lactate in the legs this is of course much harder. It is also good to see the difference in HRs on high and low cadence work. High cadence just puts more stress on the cardiac system. Although there were other things that helped Lance he sure was a master wrt high cadence and if you can ride on higher cadence and put out the watts, just do it. In the final you will still have some extra left in the tank (legs).My HR recovery rates right after the intervals were done:

 

 

Basically at the end of the last two intervals my HR was higher than on the first two intervals. That is not really strange since I start to warm up quite a bit in the shed (no fan). Also the HR does seem to hold a bit longer at a higher rate after interval 3 and interval 4. After that they do drop at a faster rate than the first two intervals. After 115 sec basically only after the first interval my HR was quite a bit lower than after the other 3 intervals. Dashed lines are the low cadence intervals. Below you see the recovery rates (in absolute terms and relative % terms) 

In absolute terms my HR dropped approximately 40 beats per minute after the intervals. Only the second interval it was less. after analyzing it I have seen that in between interval 2 and 3 my average wattage was a bit higher than in between the other ones. This might be an explanation for this one. Both in absolute and relative terms interval 3 and 4 do match interval 1 on 115sec. O yeah, why 115 sec? Because the last seconds of every rest period I already ramped up and so did HR.

 

What does this tell me in all? That my recovery rate of the intervals is quite good. There is not a significant decrease in the rate of recovery in terms of HR which is a good marker.

 

Tomorrow I have TR Gayley on the program. This one is similar to Lamarck but the intervals are 8 minute instead of 10 minutes.