Only two

Last week was a terrible week in terms of training. I did not have much time and I felt being 'hunt at' all week. The weekend I went away with the family and I was not allowed to bring the bike ;) So only two days of TR trainings: Palisade and Gray.

Palisade it a very nice workout. It's 90 minutes of interval. "5x9-minute intervals spent slightly above or slightly below FTP via a combination of 1-minute under-segments (95% FTP) followed by 2-minute over-segments (105% FTP); 6 minute recoveries between intervals.

It's to develop the ability to handle changes in pace during hard, sustained efforts by improving capacity to tolerate & buffer lactate accumulation & to gradually improve sustainable power (FTP) by riding slightly above my current sustainable power for brief but relatively longer periods.

Cadence should be in the 85-110rpm range and can be varied depending on resistance. For example, spend the over-segments spinning quickly at 100rpm and the under-segments grinding at 85rpm or vice versa. (Source: Trainerroad)"

In between the 'overs' I tried to maintain a higher cadence (around 105) and the overs I did at a cadence of around 96. They felt really good.

1) 319W, HR 152, cad 97

2) 319W, HR 154, cad 96

3) 318W, HR 157,cad 96

4) 318W, HR 157,cad 96

5) 319W, HR 157, cad 96

Decoupling % were also very good (low 3%). At the end I was happy it was over though. My bottom started to hurt. 90 minutes on the trainer is just not for me.

Maybe it was because of Friday the 13th but I my legs felt terrible. I was in a hurry and could't do the full 2x20 sets. The first set I managed to do at FTP, but for some reason it did not feel good. I chose to ride at a cadence at around 92. I wanted to ride at a higher cadence, but my gearing is not OK to do that though. If I want to ride with a cadence of around 103/104 I am riding at 280-290 watts. I really have to pull it up in terms of cadence to push 315 watts and that cadence level is too high for me to be honest. And riding with only one gear higher puts me at a cadence of 92 at 315 watts. While in fact I would like to ride around 95-100. This is something different from last year because I have been focussing more on cadence since October. My self selected cadence is (was?) 88, but now it just feels like I need a higher cadence, it feels better and more relaxed. Let's see whether that's also going to be the case when I do FTP trainings on the road.

 

The 'bad' feeling was something which was also 'shown' in my first 20 minutes. My HR was rising constantly at quite a high pace. On average it was 164. The decoupling rate was just below 5 which would be OK and if you look at it differently like: your HR was going up and at least it wasn't at 172 within 5 minutes you could say the effort was OK. Maybe this is a good example of: 'O, I feel bad and I just can't do my training', but you're still capable of producing the watts. Anyway, hopefully next time it feels better. as I said I could do 2x 20s; the 10 min of the second interval I did at higher cadence of 101 and 290 watts. PW:HR was 3.15%. That interval also felt better despite being the second (OK, lower watts...;)

 

This week I also posted on some forums to get some more interaction/feedback from people wrt to training with power. Also I posted a short survey on my blog (in dutch) on powermeters (which brands people have, do they do all analysis themselves, do they consider that they know everything from training with a powermeter, are they self-educated to do the analysis, people thinking about a powermeter do they know some ins and outs already, what are their barriers to buy one, what do they think of quality of lower priced brands, etc.) I made the survey in Survey Monkey (free) so I had only 10 questions i could ask and a max n of 100. Also analysis will (I think) be limited afterwards (probably i do not get an excel to do my own filtering, etc...) Anyway, that will only become handy when i have 100. For now (16 dec) I 'only' have 22. Thank you guys for now anyway!!!

 

This week TR Donner, TR Hackel, TR Jepson and a longer endurance ride are planned. Hopefully I get my CTL on track again....:)