Kai Winters

I love going fast and seeing how hard I can push myself and how well I can do competitively.
I'm in 'winter training mode' now and ride about 12 hours weekly, mainly zone 2 and 3. I also participate in the Zwift ZRL league and WTRL weekly TTT. I don't push to my limits but use it as higher level training.
I also do yoga twice weekly and will start weight training this week to increase my power.
I'm not a big person nor do I push a lot of power...only 5'4" and 140lbs/63.5kg so big power sprints are not a strength lol but I do want to increase power and see what weight training will do in that respect.
I'm also 68 so the clock is ticking but I'm going to see how far I can go...it is so much easier to train when you don't have to work every day...

procrit

Two hours of zone 2 today, and I felt so good during and after that I got emotional about it. Endurance and power continues to improve more than I could hope for.

TMonk

"Stage 4" of the Zracing series, Sprinter's Playground course in Neokyo. 1st / 12 starters. Last time I was the nail; this time I was the hammer

A typical hard start dropped two and then we were 10. I attacked hard over a little rise and dropped two; to my surprise, I wasn't countered. This gave me confidence to attack more. I attacked hard a few more times and dropped a couple more until we were 6 going into the sprint, which I won handily. Yay


on the offensive



please ignore the work Teams chat

hubcyclist

today was gonna be the start of more sweet spot, but i did a zwift meetup with some online friends from a different community for a ride up Alpe today. I was trying to go for a PR, I felt something was off with one of my good lasko blower fans but it wasn't until after I was finished that I could tell it was not blowing any air, which makes me feel better about overcooking 25mins into the threshold effort before dialing it back to tempo the rest of the way lol No PRs today, and one guy in my group did it in 39mins I probably would have been happier having done the sweet spot workout lol

TMonk

I've never tried to give it a big effort up the Alpe. 39 min is probably near 5.0, yeah? Impressive.

TMonk

Off day today. About to start my strength routine while I listen to the news. Might go for a brief jog after work if the ladies doth permit.

hubcyclist

yeah, i'm fairly certain the guy was over 5w/kg, my time ended up being 47mins for 287w, my best alpe effort recently was 297w and the 2nd best a few weeks ago was 293w, so wasn't on top of my game yesterday. hopefully in a few weeks once I get my fan situation back to normal I can take another stab and get an over 300w effort in

procrit

Couple more hours of zone 2 today with some 20-30” intervals at the end. First 30” I did ~900 watts standing, went to seated for ~500 watts for another 5 of them, then finished with a max effort 20” for ~1100 watts. If I could double my time at those numbers before crit season it sure would be nice.

procrit

1 hr zone 1/2 easy spin. Tomorrow I get to rip another 2 hours though!!

TMonk

and how'd it go? What did you do?

TMonk

Canopies and Coastlines race, 3rd / 12 starters

Short Version: Some dude was on a higher level and attacked early and solo'd away. Then I got beat in the sprint.

Longer Version: We were already down to 5 after Titan's grove section. Well, four plus Mr. beast mode Bazley. I thought I had more juice than the others in our group so I attacked on the first rise of the Southern Road. I dropped all but Rossi. Turns out Rossi was worth his salt AND he beat me in the sprint. Damn.


aftermath of my attack



coulda been a 2nd but hey I just got beat today

procrit

2 hours total with a tempo effort (275w @ 150 bpm). Kind of a tough day though, barometer dropped a lot, temperature got warmer, very wet roads and foggy, and I had a bit of a headache for some reason. All in all a good training session, just felt a bit blah.

hubcyclist

i did 3x35 sweet spot yesterday, it was good until it wasn't in the last 15mins or so lol it was another ride without one of my fans and it makes a big difference with airflow. thankfully the replacement arrived late yesterday so all is right.

i'm gonna vent a bit about my trainer though lol I have a first gen Hammer and got it 7 years ago, and for a while now it's been consistently underreporting power, it's grown over time but the other day it was 48w lower compared to my pedal power. It's not a huge issue since I use my pedals but it's annoying and makes me wonder if there are other changes to the trainer experience I'm not noticing because I've just been so used to this one.

TMonk

what??? 48w is huge lol. i actually haven't tested my Saris H3 wrt my Faveros... maybe ill try that soonish.

hubcyclist

it used to be way closer! it's just been a gradual drifting over time, i've opened it up to measure belt tension and all that jazz but everytime I dual record it seems to be growing lol I'd say I hope it's not a matter of my faveros overreading but I ride in 50-17 a lot and I doubt that would be under 200w!

I actually keep a kurt kinetic fluid at my parents and started using it recently so I don't have to take the hammer back and forth when we go down, and it's surprisingly good feel. I already don't use erg and I turn down the difficulty in zwift a lot, i could probably live with a fluid trainer!

procrit

Finished the week out with 10 hours. I hit 320w for 20’ about two hours into the group ride today, and still had solid legs the last 90 mins. Now i’m trying to get my appetite up to refuel for tomorrow!

TMonk

Went outside today and thought I'd try a proper VO2 max workout. Total of 20' in zone as 3', 4' and 5' intervals between 5.0 and 5.5 w/kg. Crushed it.

I've been having this weird psychology since Lilly was born, where like I expect my power to just disappear since my riding volume is about 50% down. Like I get a little spooked when I try to execute efforts that I was doing in my peak form of 2023, thinking that I'm biting off more than I can chew. That is not happening. I think I am doing enough to hold my power for these short durations.

What does that mean for next year? I will not being targeting road races as the endurance and depth is not there. But, for local criteriums, time trials and circuit races - the confidence is there, and I'm ready to tighten the screws on the Masters fields.

procrit

That’s great!! Given the added stress and less sleep, you probably right-sized your training load by decreasing volume and it shows! And this is only temporary, once Lilly is a bit older you’ll be sleeping much more consistently and should be able to crank it back up.

TMonk

In-laws in town so I got the hall pass to ride for a few hours. Bookended some endurance miles around a local hammer ride. Felt great to get out, feel some real world speed, and catch up with some local racers. Had good legs too and helped stretch things out a bit. Scale at 143# last weigh in.


group ride on Fiesta Island


middle chunk of the group ride

hubcyclist

did 1x90 @ 90ish percent today (280 avg/281 NP) felt good not a lot of HR drift it was harder to stay on top of the power toward the end, resistance kind of fades on my trainer and with 8 speed it's hard to fine tune it, but we did it. previously this block, my longest interval was 45min, so mentally it was a little bit of a challenge to stay with it without a break but I know from past experience 90min is doable too. I did it on ventop in zwift and got 1h12min and the KOM jersey, which was a nice bonus

procrit

2 1/2 hours of zone 2 today. Gradually working up to two longer days per week, with one mid week and one on the weekend. Tomorrow is TBD. I had a huge day at work today, and I’m feeling a bit mentally wrecked. Crossing my fingers I can squeeze in a recovery ride and be ready to do some intensity on Thursday.

burnthesheep

Been building back from a tough family year last year that reduced volume a lot. Seeing the gains back. Zwift has seemingly cleaned up their workout library and like how it's now simpler as defined by target zone for workout. Not all the "noise" and confusion of mixed up crap like before.

Still, some workout makers don't seem to "get" it totally. Last night wanted to do some 30/30 without making it myself, just load and go. But had to highly highly alter my Z-ftp and use the +/- buttons in workout to get it the way I thought it should be. At my true current ftp, the workout just seemed like it would have been WAY too easy. An honest current Z-ftp for workouts in there for me would probably be 285. I had to set it to 325 to get the 30/30's themselves to seem to make sense. My vo2 sets are usually 320w each for 3min. But their 30/30's were only at the same thing. If a set of 30/30 only sees like 4 or 5min of total "high work load" time, you should be able to do more than your 3min vo2 power. So set it so the 30's were 365w and the rest 30's were 205w. THAT seemed to fit the bill of a 30/30 workout to me.

procrit

My top end power went missing today on the group ride. I just couldn’t put down the power and was on the struggle bus the last hour or so. I had two off nights of sleep which probably didn’t help, and I switched to a different source for carbs which may or may not have made a difference. I also may have had some lingering fatigue from Thursdays workout or maybe some blocked legs from taking yesterday off. Does anyone else over analyze this stuff? 😆

himespau 

Oh yeah. Did a race on Zwift this morning as part of my workout, and, less than 5 minute in, I knew my legs weren't in it. Spent way too much mental energy on the rest of the race (and the 40 km afterward), trying to figure out what it was. Thursday night my "Z2" ended up being more like tempo (and a little more at times) because I was short on time but stupidly wanted to get the full distance in. Couple poor nights of sleep. Lots of stress at work. Not great nutrition Friday night, though my usual early morning pre-race snack before the start. Of course focusing on why my legs just felt heavy and lethargic meant I was focusing on the lethargic feeling and couldn't push it out of my mind to fight through it. Thought about just pulling the plug because I wasn't getting what I wanted out of the workout, but this was the time I had today to do it, so I didn't want to lose out. But yeah, overanalysis for sure given it was just a Zwift race.

TheKillerPenguin

Caught covid at the tail end of rest period / vacation

Basically 12 days of vacation and R&R, followed by 4 days of decent workouts, followed by a week of off time because of covid. Paxlovid does seem to be helping speed things along, at least, but this is an awful lot of downtime for something that isn't technically a season break.

It is only December, but I am so completely demoralized by yet another setback. 2023 has been an awful training year with so many stop/restart points.