TMonk Are you racing VOS?

Hermes I am. We will have a group of four (including me) in the 35+. Two of the riders (including myself) should put up decent times in the TT. The other rider (who is actually 45+ but choosing to race 35+) is an excellent time trialist and should be in competition for the top time. If I have a good ride, we should have two riders in contention and some cards to play in the road race, along with two supporting riders.

Looking forward to it! I booked a sweet vacation home as well with pool, hot tub, putting green, pool table etc. So we will be nice and rested/relaxed between stages.

Sounds like a great place to stay. i want to tag along and just hang out. Good luck racing

Tuesday and Thursday, Fiesta, TT bike, Intervals R Us. 3 laps of Fiesta 4X 20" max efforts per lap z2 the balance of the time and rest between laps. Great weather and very little wind.

Fast legs are back. One always wonders where they were. On vacation? Chainless day.

Track week at Velo Sports Center. This was pursuit training with harder shorter intervals on Tuesday and longer slower efforts last night. After a 40 lap warmup, we did 2x40 laps (10Km) at 23.5 mph spaced out on the track and the 20 lap at 24.3 mph and then 10 laps at 25.3 mph. Goal was being totally smooth, perfect aero position / posture and black line control.

Pretty good week of training; 4 hrs of intervals and 7 hours of endurance rides (though a "Z2 ride" with 4 x 20 min hard pulls is NOT a Z2 ride 😀 ).

Trying to get my food intake more disciplined during the days of awesome hunger, but ate half a blueberry pie last night...along with a gigantic amount of healthier food.

Please ignore my rant but I need somewhere to vent. I had dreams of a sub 1 hour 40k this year and doing TT in general every few weeks, cush a time isn't very fast but for 65 is decent. CP was really good at 309W (I push a lot of air) last year before getting wacked by Covid at Thanksgiving weekend with CP wilting to 231W and now back to 247W. Awful. I cannot assimilate a workout nearly 3 months later. I suck. Almost think I need to hire a coach to whine to. Apologies.

Maybe look to a Dr. to see if you have long-haul Covid. I know of a couple guys that were taken out of racing fitness for nearly a year.

When you do get back - have you done any aero optimization? 309 is a lot of power, and I'd think that you should be able to go well under an hour at that wattage.

Damn this bug.
Your coach idea is probably a good one. A 309 CP seems like a pretty elite number to me, and we know Covid affects people's CV systems...in very different ways. I think the training to get back that 25% loss might be different from the training that got you there originally.
Damn this bug.

Coach wanted me to do a 5 min power test today (puke). Going into the next block, I'm supposed to do 3x VO2 max workouts per week and solo z2 endurance, and nothing between. So, the idea was to set a baseline for myself to see if this training will have a meaningful impact.

I am coming off of two weeks with some racing, including Valley of the Sun stage race over F/S/Su, but not much overall TSS. So my head and legs are kinda in a weird spot where the overall TSS hasn't been high, but there's been some racing in there. Report on VoS to come soon.

Anyway, just didn't feel like I had good power today and finished the effort at around 5.4 w/kg, or 350 w. Had to coast for a couple seconds towards the end too when someone cut me off on Fiesta Island. It was kinda weird, like my HR or even RPE didn't get sky high, like I just didn't have the power. I wasn't sure what to shoot for since I haven't done a test-level effort in this duration in like, ever? I feel like on a better day, with the same fitness, I'd have another 10 watts on my performance from today

At any rate, not too worried about it. If I get through this block, rest up and then test 20-25 w higher after for 5 minutes, I'll consider it a win. Doing a 20 min test tomorrow (also puke), and then otherwise decrompressing this week outside of a long ride on Saturday. Training more formally for my mid-season goals starts next week.

20 min test also didn't go well this morning. Bailed at 10 min in. I wasn't into it mentally.

Really, resting a day or two and having an easy ride in my legs would have been better before going out for some test level efforts after a stage race. But, the weather forecast didn't agree with my plans (stormy all week) so I tried to take advantage of the dry window that we had forecasted early in the week. Didn't want to test indoors either since I want my efforts to be specific to how I plan on doing my VO2 intervals next month - outside.

Not too worried about it though, Looking fwd to decompressing with some easy days, going long on Saturday and then training again next week with some renewed energy.

While true that being rested would better prepare you for the 20 min test, there is also a benefit to testing while mid training to see how you are able to hold and push things.

Ya I hear ya. I think it was mostly mental, like I didn't really want to and was lacking motivation. A day or two of taking it easy would have had be rearing (raring?) to go.

EDIT: I'm also just kind of in this weird place with race level intensity (two back to back weekends) but not a ton of TSS. It may take me a week or more before I get back into the groove of routine training and adaptation.

Yeah, I hear the mental part. There are workouts I generally don't like and don't want to do, and I find it's somewhat inevitable that my performance in those cases is poor.

Road bike on the smart trainer for some 30on/30off. It was brutal. And I have another set tomorrow.

Took the USA Cycling survey about racing and training. Interesting.

Popped my back a few weeks ago doing a big jump. Back is crooked again, 3rd time in about 2 years, and 2nd time in 8? months. So since popping it my back is getting more straight, doing aggressive PT, asked the PT guy to just fix my back. He's aggressively needling my back, doing some "hinge" and "twist" type strengthening work as well. It's almost straight, went from about 20-25 deg off to about 5-10 deg off.

The bit that bugged me about this one was I felt strong core wise before my back popped. I could lift my son comfortably (70-75 lbs), had no achy back, no issues, no nothing. Then I did a monster jump on the trainer (recent PR, 1300w) and it just popped.

Found I could't make any jumps since getting back on the bike. Will try again today. I go to jump and I can't apply any torque to the pedals. it's like when you just wake up from a deep sleep and you're a bit weak and can't pick up that heavy thing that you can normally pick up, and you do pick up 10 minutes later. On the trainer I pull on the bars and feel no effort, no tension in my arm. I might as well be lifting a cup of coffee.

Seems my non jump is capped at about 1000w on the trainer, just with bodyweight and a coffee cup worth of pulling lol.

I did my third trainer interval session in a row this AM. My legs felt very solid. I am ready for my upcoming ski week.

An OK week; 10 hrs on the trainer and 2 hrs of exercise. Arranging next week's time so I'm fresh for a FTP test March 7.

C'mon good weather! Enough of the long Z2 trainer rides!

The Covid bit is something I might need to look into. I did a trip to Mallorca in October and started to get sick the last day. That sickness then hung around for weeks, and included coughing. Never really put me down, and my CTL never dropped more than a normal winter, but the numbers aren't there to the point I'd say the PM is off.

^hope you can get your situation sorted out before too long Yep.

Despite a +20 TSB, I am now very tired and hungry. I spent ~20 minutes this morning in VO2 zone power and HR, doing 4x5' min intervals with hard starts. I think this means that I did them correctly. I am doing more VO2 tomorrow (and Friday....), so I will need to be focused on nutrition and recovery, Coach wants me to add a bowl of rice in the afternoons on top of my diet. Hopefully that helps.

A second day with 20 minutes in z5. Today was a mix of 3', 4' and 5' intervals. Despite higher average power over the 20', I don't feel quite as wrecked as I did yesterday. 5' is a really long time to go deep.

Finished a ski week at Deer Valley, UT and now back to the mines.

Big surprise, I'm in another sweet spot block lol. To be fair, I did a block of vo2 and another block with threshold and vo2 in the preceding blocks. For funsies, I've just gone ahead and changed my sweet spot target from 90% to 92% (basically treating it as if my ftp were 300 rather than 295). I did 2x45 at this number and my HR stayed at or below 160, which is what I generally see at 90%, so maybe my ftp is 300? 2% isn't a lot of course, but at this point I'll take whatever I can get lol I also did 3x40 @ 85% during a 3hr ride on Sat, so that was fun to do 2hrs of high tempo/SS in a ride. I only have one or two road races targeted for this spring, my big thing the past couple of years is doing a local century route as fast as I can, I've done 80% for 5hrs the past two times I've done it, so if I can do it averaging 240 instead of 230, then that would be pretty sweet

FTP test today @ 218, up 2.5% from Jan 10. Not too bad considering I had the covid flu during this training period.
BT-not a racer-inNYC

So there's a flat and straight section of road about 500 meters long at the entrance to our subdivision and people are really crappy about speeding on it, so one of my neighbors put up one of those radar speed display signs so people can see how far over the 25mph limit they're going. My 3 year old son LOVES it. Every time we're out on his balance bike, he kicks his feet as fast as they'll go to see how big of a number the sign will show him, our best (with me running and him balance biking) is 14 mph.

Anyways, the training part now. I was coming back from a chill ride today and for ***** and giggles decided to see how fast I could go so I jumped and sprinted as hard as I could. I found that the sign stops reading after 35 mph, and just says "too fast", which is a bummer. Strava says I did 36.8 though. The crazy thing is that when I looked at my data after the ride, it shows I put out a max power of 1513 watts, and the whole 10 second sprint had an average wattage of 1280. Admittedly, I'm a biggish guy (200 lbs) and I have been doing some weight lifting over the winter, but these numbers surprised me a little bit. I've never been a good field sprinter, but now I'm wondering if that's something that I ought to be practicing.

Those are solid numbers! If you can get fairly aero during your sprint, that should get you some good speed.

Last VO2 workout of week 2 this morning, 3 more to go next week.

I didn't have the "oomph" this morning and hardly saw and HR above threshold. Weight is low, I wonder if I'm under-fueled. IDK.

Usually, I go for a hard start with high cadence to get that oxygen recruitment and HR going, then slowly plateau down towards a reasonable power. Today, I just didn't have that punch or surge, and my HR and power halfway through wasn't super impressive, but still I was able to hold it and hit similar average power numbers as to what I have been over the last two weeks. Maybe that means I'm getting fit? IDK. I think on a better day, I could have crushed them with higher power and HR.

I have some race goals in April coming up, and am getting a bit tired of training all the time TBH. All work and no play makes Tmonk a dull boy, and all that. Just another week or so to get through, then I'll be relaxing, doing group rides and races, and letting my fatigue come down a bit. You know, having fun! Looking forward to it.

Rain on the forecast tomorrow in San Diego, so my 5 hrs of z2 will likely be on the trainer. There is a solid C pace group ride in the AM that goes for around 2.5 hours, will probably bookend some cruising around that.

Great story, thanks for telling it!
36 mph on the flat is Flying in my world. Nice pull.

I unlocked new levels in this game lol I did 1x90 @ what ended up being 93% but I did 70mins at 94% and 20mins at 92% as the slog was getting to me. I highly suspect my FTP is slightly higher (300 vs 295) so I had been doing stuff at 2% higher than I normally would. This is based on general trends in what my power is at around 160bpm, which is where I normally expect 90% to be.