This past week has been...interesting. My grandson apparently caught a stomach bug last weekend and was home from school M-W. It looks like that bug tried to get me too, but my body successfully fought it off. There was a cost for that, though. Monday's workout was 3-4x10' sweet spot intervals, and I barely made it through three of them. Tuesday's ride was 1:30-2:00 at endurance pace, and I made it through at the bottom end of my endurance range with stupidly high RPE. I just took Wednesday off from the planned gym day to rest and did the gym workout Thursday. Friday (yesterday) was another endurance pace ride and it went much better than Tuesday's; I'd like to say my power was up again but the battery in my SRM died six minutes into the ride. :rolleyes: I broke down and finally replaced the bottom bracket in my Allez Sprint yesterday so I'll be using that for tomorrow's 3x12' sweet spot intervals; my coach said if that's not in the cards to just do another two-hour endurance pace ride.

We've had multiple reinforcing cold fronts come through and I've been getting my money's worth from my leg warmers and thick gloves. Gotta love it when, in south Louisiana, you turn on your Garmin and the first thing that pops up is a freeze warning.

revchuck do you train indoors at all? I love my smart trainer.

I've got a dumb trainer that I haven't used for years. One of the reasons I ride is to be outside, about the only thing that'll keep me inside is icy roads or days like yesterday - rainy, windy, windchill in the upper 30s. The rain is gone and I'll come back with my base layer damp with sweat, so it's not too bad. I've been riding my Look 585 with the SRM because the bottom brackets in my other two bikes were squeaky and I was procrastinating replacing them; now that the SRM needs a new battery I'm looking forward to riding the other bikes.

I'm starting almost from scratch on base building. Coach wants to build back some power first before concentrating on endurance, but at any rate, I'll be spending lots of time on the bike this winter. I just can't see doing that indoors.

I'd like to join the gang. Sharing my training work in the Fifty and Over section is the wrong place.

After a year back on the bike, I feel like I have a base. Now I'm training for my first Fondo, the GFNY, May 21, '23. Signed up for TrainingPeaks and starting a 24 week GF plan Monday.

I got through the 3x12' sweet spot intervals with no problem, so last Monday's fiasco must've been due to fighting off that stomach bug my grandson brought home. I think the SWAG we're using for my FTP is pretty close; if it is, those were in threshold territory rather than sweet spot.

20-minute test coming up on Tuesday. I haven't pushed hard for that long for about four years. My plan is to start at about 20 watts over the SWAG for the first ten minutes and then see if I have the juice to push harder. My coach told me it's okay if I blow up at some point; that in itself would be a valuable data point. Part of me is really curious about how I'll do, the rest of me is not looking forward to the suffering. :rolleyes:

Renewed my Camp Pendleton visitors pass for bike riding through the camp and rode to San Clemente and back on Thursday. Friday was upper body strength training.

Saturday was 2x20k TTT with wife at Fiesta and today was a SDV workout of 2x20’ efforts with my wife where we rolled for 3 laps and did one fast lap taking turns leading each other out.

We are having great weather in SD.

3 more hours on the hamster wheel this morning. Chained together a couple Tour de Makuri Islands group rides, then watched more of the 2022 track worlds on Youtube for the last hour. The final points race in the omnium was just fantastic to watch, total omnium points came down to the final sprint of the final points race, and a lap was taken nearly right at the line, with dramatic placings changes. Not gonna spoil it beyond that - do yourself a favor and watch it!

Tomorrow, 3.5 hours on the road to build up a caloric deficit before I stuff myself with food and wine. Have some fine Pinots and Barolos on tap.

Some more volume over the weekend and this will cap me out between 15.5 and 16 hours for the week, ending base 1 with my highest volume week since January (most likely). All z2 intensity, minus my TT bike workout yesterday, which got a little racey at the end of my second interval. Good times.

P.S. The new Zwift maps sure aren't hard to look at!

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Well, I made it through the 20-minute test, albeit not perfectly. The first five minutes went okay, then my breathing got hard and ragged. I psyched myself into stopping the effort at ten minutes, then realized that I wasn’t *that* tired and started back. This time my breathing was deep and even and my body just composed itself and got it done. AP for both segments was 231. 95% of 231 is 219.45. My coach’s SWAG was 220, so we don’t have to change anything in Training Peaks. :rolleyes: I’m going to be living in sweet spot for a while, I have two days next week which are 3x15’ workouts. It feels great to be able to do this again. :)

My 6 month Fondo plan kicked off with a FTP test on Monday because of course it did. B-b-but I just did one 4 days prior, when I was deciding on the GFNY! 😓 I guess loving The Test is step one. 😉

Down 6 watts from the previous, which makes sense. I was feeling great and psyched on the first test and a bit weak (post weight training) on the second. Inters yesterday and today, and two 3 hr rides over the weekend.

Fantastic revchuck, enjoy! Sounds like your body recalled what it was doing in the second half.

Beast mode.

Week 1 thoughts.
The TrainingPeaks plan I picked seems to be On The Money. The workouts so far have been doable, but really suck at the end. Today was Aerobic Endurance, 170 minutes at z2...and the last 30 minutes I was not happy, but felt great after a shower; not dead. Perfect.

Missed the start of the local ride but managed to get out for a 2x20’ sweet spot workout before settling in for an afternoon of football.

edit: Heh. Looks like I managed to get a KOM. Yay me!

Saturday Fiesta 5 laps TTT. We were planning 6 but the wind was difficult and at the edge of blowing debris. Sunday was a track workout warmup and 4x 3km flying team pursuits. The problem with a two person team pursuit and 9 laps at the track is someone has to do 5 laps in the lead.:D Weather at the track was perfect.

I am now in base training ie base mode versus beast mode.

Yesterday was my strongest endurance pace ride in a few years, three hours with an IF of .75. Okay, it was my first ride since before Thanksgiving, but it was still good. :) I felt strong throughout the ride and could've gone longer, but coach capped it at three hours.

TANSTAAFL applies, though. I had a strength workout later in the day and I was dragging.

I had to shuffle the schedule for the first part of the week. Today was supposed to be a "free" day where I could take it easy, tomorrow was supposed to be an endurance pace ride with 3x15' sweet spot intervals plus a strength workout, and Wednesday was a 2-3 hour endurance pace ride. Mother Nature threw me a curve ball; tomorrow is supposed to be heavy thunderstorms with the possibility of severe weather (hail, strong winds, etc.). I did the endurance pace ride today, a shorter version (2:13); the first half was strong, but then my legs decided they were tired and the second half was about the same TSS I usually do. Just the strength stuff tomorrow and then the intervals on Wednesday.

Things are going in a good direction. :thumb:

2.5 hrs on the hamster wheel this morning, high z2. Longest ride of this rest week. Ramped it up into tempo zones for a while during a couple of the Tour de Makuri group rides, but otherwise spun low z2 in the desert flats and watched cycling vids on Youtube

Fiesta 2x20km TTT in z2 with 10 mph headwind on the back stretch. I guess we let the old people in because we planned 3x20km TTT and only did two. The wind just sucked the life out of us. So it goes.

3x15' threshold intervals today during a wind advisory, the first one started in a place that funnels the wind so the first few minutes were ~13 mph. :rolleyes: It felt rough starting out but got better as I warmed up. I was tired but not trashed at the end. Progress!

I was supposed to do strength training yesterday, wasn't able to get to the gym until around 5 PM. It was packed, with most of the folks being women, and most of the women being young, fit, and attractive, and who apparently got their workout clothes out of a spray can. I made it partway through my first circuit when I ran into a line waiting to use the machine I needed, so I left. Concentration would've been difficult anyway. I'll try it again this afternoon prior to rush hour.

The gym is just so time inefficient... Scenery aside, I get bothered by having to wait around. Shame, b/c I do value the heavy olympic lifts (squats, deads etc) and think they are great for whole body strength and wellness. Maybe someday I'll have a setup for that in the garage.

For now, my 1x/week lower body routine involves dumbells, a platform, and some resistance bands for lighter stuff. Abs twice/week. Upper, not doing anything formally, just peppering in a few sets each of 20 pushups and 10 pull ups per week.

My winter plan is to do a TRX workout plus burpees twice a week. So far so good. Today I put up the Xmas lights so my upper body workout was setting the ladder. Went for an unstructured ride afterwards, and took a little detour down a dirt road to look at the hawks and the clouds.


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This week I added legs to my upper body and core workout and the squats hurt more than I expected! About 40 minutes with the massage gun got me unkinked, probably started with a few too many reps.

I am such a baby. I thought it was too cold to go outside so I set up the Smart Trainer and did a z2 workout. And it still feels like I am putting in 25 watts more than the trainer power meter is reading. I am going to put my power pedals on the trainer bike and compare the pedal power to the trainer power.

Today was supposed to be 2-3x15' at threshold. The first two went about like they were supposed to; when I started the third, it was like my Power Tap had a hole in it and was leaking watts. :mad: I got two minutes into it and stopped, gave myself a minute, and re-started it with the same result. I figured I was done with the interval and finished the ride...with tired legs into a strong headwind, of course.

CTL is up to 44, ATL is 65. My coach told me her goal for me is to get my CTL to at least 50 by the end of the month. Based on the schedule on Training Peaks, my projected CTL will be 52 at the end of next week.

Am I the only one who gets a bit salty when a website calls a week's training "Base" when it sure felt like pretty high intensity work to them? Log into intervals.icu, to see my load for the week and am thinking, "Base? F, base. Tuesday night was a ZRL race with 13 sprints (sure I didn't go 100% on all of them because that's not possible for me when they're that close together and there was a lot of easing between sprints), Wednesday was long Z2 (so ok base), Thursday was a TTT, Saturday was 3 hill climb races with 30 minutes recovery between each and warm up and cooldown, Today was tempo. My legs shouldn't be feeling so wrecked if I had just been doing a week of base." I mean looking at what I just wrote, I can sort of see why it'd be called base as there was a lot of time spent recovering between efforts, but just seeing "base" pissed me off like the algorithm was disrespecting my efforts.

😀 😀 😆
Yeah. 175 miles doing base this week. Hamster wheel, indeed.

My “base” algorithm is coach saying DO NOT GO into Z3. Then he looks at the post ride data. And I get a totally laughable result from my Garmin 830 at the end of the ride. Sunday after an 1:45 ride, it said I did recovery. Yeah baby. I am all in on that analysis.

I find the app based stuff and analysis kaka and not indicative of the workouts I have been doing for the last 15 years. So it goes.

Saturday 2x20km TTT in z2 and Sunday a 1:45 coastal ride.

The applications are wacky at the other end of the cycling spectrum too. After one year of good cycling work, I'm just now turning a corner on heart rate; I can do much harder work at a lower heart rate. Very very cool!

Except Strava says I'm dogging it because I'm not blasting off over 150 bpm all the time. :)

Opener efforts today on Z, I make a 2 hr ride out of it with SST up Epic KOM (~24 min), threshold+ across Fuego Flats Reverse (~9.5 min), and a leg burner up Zwift KOM (~2 min). Felt like garbage during w/u and on the first interval, almost chose to bail on the remaining efforts and just ride z2 for a bit. I have a big block coming up here so I wouldn't feel bad about dialing back my efforts a bit.

But, I soldiered on and wasn't pleasantly surprised to feel my body respond nicely when I ramped up to threshold+ at 50 watts higher during the second interval. Good stuff. FTP test tomorrow.

FTP test, second consecutive time indoors. We do have Fiesta Island nearby, and my power is slightly higher outside, but I've been wanting to develop an indoor protocol for a while as it is more repeatable, reliable and convenient.

On Tuesday mornings there is a 3R iTT series on Zwift, featuring a 12.2 mile TT. So it's longer than the 20' protocol, but at least consistent. I find it somewhat motivating to race against other avatars, knowing that they are being powered by other racers suffering in their respective garages or spare bedrooms.

Today, I started on the back foot near the end of the 12 rider group. But, I rode a great negative split and a few other riders seemed to do the opposite, so I finished 4th overall and felt good about the effort. Moved the FTP dial up 4 watts since last time. I am up against my largest volume block now, and some intervals in January, were I expect similar gains after each month.

TMonk Were you riding your TT bike or road bike and if the road bike where were you on the handlebars - tops, hoods or drops for the test.

We are doing termite intervals today. We are doing a thermal fumigation and waiting for the heat team to arrive and heat up the affected areas. Once they start the process, we are out of the house for 8 hours. Plenty of time for them to cook some crystal meth -Breaking Bad.:D

We are riding our bikes, working out and hanging at the gym or Starbucks.