This was a strange week. For one thing, it was stupid hot, even for south Louisiana.
Wednesday was supposed to be my big climbing day. I got up at three and ate and got ready, did the two-hour drive to my climbing route and got out on the bike about seven. I ride a 34-mile loop which gives me ~1500 feet of elevation altogether and has a two-mile long climb at about 4%. For around here, that's pretty heavy. The plan was to do one loop, hitting all the climbs at ~105%, and then do repeats on the long climb at the same intensity to get the required 45 minutes. The first loop was fine. The first time up on the second lap was okay, hard but not "I can't do another one" hard. I rode back down and started up and two minutes into the repeat the numbers on the Garmin started falling, seemingly regardless of how hard I was pushing on the pedals. I decided to try again, drifted to the bottom and started up and the same thing happened. I tried a third time, switching from my usual 70-80 rpm climbing cadence to 85-95 rpm, same deal. At that point, I threw in the towel and rode back to the car.
It's rare that I don't successfully complete a workout. This one was hard but within my wheelhouse. Intellectually, I knew that this happens sometimes. Emotionally, I was somewhere between despondent and
effin' pissed off. I spoke with my coach on the drive home, and we figured it was probably due to two nights of lousy sleep leading up to it plus having been on my feet almost nine hours at work the day before, with the heat contributing to it (heat index was 100).
Thursday was supposed to be 1:45 at an IF of .75, I came in at .74. Friday was 1:30 at an IF of .80 and I came in at .84.
Today was supposed to be a relatively easy group ride, 3-4 hours. An announcement went up on the local Facebook page for an 80-mile ride. I figured we'd do it in about four hours, 20 mph in a paceline, no problem. I showed up and it was me and two strong local guys. They had driven in together and decided to do 100 miles instead. We started out before sunrise and the heat index was 91. I ended up getting back in 4:35 moving time, I turned around early at one point so I only got 96 miles in. I felt relatively good, so whatever was bugging me Wednesday has apparently resolved itself. TSS target was 213, it turned out to be 277. Oops.
Tomorrow's ride is also supposed to be 3-4 hours but solo, so I'm going to aim for the short end and will still end up with >900 TSS for the week. CTL is 98, ATL is 122.