TT bike IRL this time, heading out at 6 AM with lights for Fiesta Island. 1x15' and 1x25' by feel, right at the z2/z3 edge. Cold, cranky and stiff! Should have stayed inside. I plan on a similar ride on Friday, we'll see what happens. My weight is a bit on the lean side at the moment, and things generally feel colder rn.

Termite intervals day three. We put the place back together.

Gym work today and tomorrow more TT work on Fiesta. Since I am a baby, I will go after it warms up a bit.:D

It was pretty windy already by like 6:45 AM, hopefully it dies down a bit for ya

Yesterday I felt weird before starting the interval training, HR was high and I was a bit woozy. HR remained high for the whole workout and TrainingPeaks showed peak HR for most of the time slots.

Told my wife and she said "I think you've been taking my antidepressants instead of your blood pressure meds". Oops. Looks like I mixed up the pill bottles for about 2 days.

Well, shoot. I started to feel crummy last Saturday, skipped my strength workout. I felt worse Sunday and didn't do the scheduled ride, and haven't done anything else since. The symptoms were fatigue and nonstop draining sinuses. I finally broke down and went to the urgent care Wednesday and was told that I have a respiratory virus and was given a steroid shot. Things have improved since, I'll probably do an hour's hike on the trails in the local state park just to get myself moving again. I'm pretty ticked off about the speed bump, but it's not much in the long-range plan.

Yesterday Fiesta 20k TTT. We got the sweet spot of the weather. It was warming up and light winds.

In spite of my disgruntled TT ride on Wednesday, I opted to go outside (vs the trainer) on it against today, with an even colder start of 41 F. This time, I did a 25' by feel and ended up at z4 power, feeling quite smooth and comfy in my tuck on the front and back stretches. I then rested and did a 10' at 30 watts higher to get a feel for (nearly) race pace, and my legs were def a bit stiff and sore for that one. HR was fine, but I just need some more training and adaptation at those power outputs. I'm going for big volume this month, but I'm thinking January will have some time going hard in position, so I can be ready for Valley of the Sun in Feb.

Good 3 hr ride, 1st and 3rd hr at Z2, sub-threshold intervals in the middle. HR back to normal.

I did a 50-minute hike yesterday and a recovery-pace ride today, felt decent, not 100% yet. The snot faucet is about shut off and the fog from the meds is dissipating. I think I'll live. ;) If I can find a big enough hole in the predicted rain tomorrow I'll try a 1:30-2:00 Z2 ride. I'm ready to get back on this horse.

I'm just starting to try our Trainerroad, and so far I think AI FTP detection is amazing. Not so much for it's accuracy, although that seems to be good, but just as much for the promise of having a consistent track of FTP changes, even if you miss or never do tests. I have patches of my training history where I can sort of infer how well I was going, but I might be lacking in tests.

I could certainly keep self coaching at this point, and I don't need it for workouts or tracking training load, but I do like that it keeps track of progression through workouts. Up until now, I've ramped CTL and intensity through the season, but it feels like there's something beneficial in doing progressively harder workouts, even if it's just the mental benefit of seeing I'm capable or tackling more and more.

Kicked off a big week (18 hr target) today with 2 hrs on Zwift, split between road and TT bike. Yes, I'm actually stopping half way through and switching bikes on the trainer/IRL. I'll be doing the same tomorrow, but a bigger emphasis on the TT bike. PTO day Wednesday, going to spend 6 hours pedaling around and looking for fitness out on the road.

It's going to take some moderation of intensity, and good sleep hours to survive with enough energy to have quality workouts next week (week three). Maybe time to skip that extra glass of wine after dinner. Easier said then done in the season of holiday parties!

Cheers all.

Took the day off to go big, ended up with 6 hours. It was cold AF for San Diego at the start (41 F), so I did a smaller 2.5 hour loop first through my old uptown neighborhoods, then looped through Fiesta and Mt. Soledad before heading home to peel off some layers and top off my bottles. After that I took an inland route to Rancho Sante Fe and rode back down the coast.

Kept the average power/pace conservative at the z1/z2 and finished with tons of power and energy left in the tank. Even raised my AP by a few watts in the final hour without really trying to.

Today, off the bike but I will do a lighter version of my strength routine, then get more volume in over F and S.

I'm new to using W*bal. I mainly use it while riding on Zwift and usually in races to help me decide when to try to make a move or how well I'm recovering by sitting in - things I've always just used in the past by feel, but I figure, if the data is there, why not use it.

I've been noticing though that on sustained efforts like TTs or hill climb efforts that I'm almost always ending the effort with a negative balance. 10-20 minute efforts usually have me ~-2-3 kJ. Today, I did a ~20-ish minute hill climb effort and ended it at -8.6. Is it normal to be ending efforts in the negative? Should I try resetting my baseline to a higher level, or is that just how these things work?

Finished the first 4 weeks of base training (4 of 8) and feeling optimistic about riding the Gran Fondo NY in May. I'm no racer - just over a year back on the bike - but I like it here because you guys train like crazy. :) Low cadence sub threshold intervals today.

Saturday we did a 2 hour endurance ride through Camp Pendleton to San Clemente and back. Sunday, we went to the track and did 3x (z2/z3 TTT on pursuit bikes). It was a perfect day at San Diego Velodrome and we had the track to ourselves. Temps were in the low 60s with very light winds and blue skies.

it's been a min but we've been training! 14hrs a week, usually. some recent highlights

-did 1x90 @ 90% (266)
-did an 'ftp test' where I rode 35mins at 295w on zwift's time trial course, could have gone 45min but cut myself off at 35 because of work, was definitely good to know my ftp is where I think it is!
-did 5min power trial on Sunday and set an all time PR at 340w (that's not saying much).

started a vo2 block today, since threshold is 87% of 5min power, I think I'm prob due to for some vo2 stimulus vs ss/threshold work. today was 6x3 @ 325w, i know I should be going non-erg and trying to go like 340 but 325 def kicked my butt too and I barely survived the last interval. Will try for 7x3 thursday and hopefully 4min efforts next week

never heard of the metric. care to explain it?

Basically, as I understand it, it's a rough (at least when determined by algorithms), measure of your capacity (in kJ) above your lactate clearance threshold. Or how much energy stores you've got at any given time to go above your FTP. The more time you spend above FTP the more it drops. The higher you are above FTP, the faster it drops. Hang in the draft for a while and it builds back up again (the lower you go below FTP the faster it builds back up). The estimators I've used for it don't seem to do a great job at factoring in long term fatigue (i.e. most of them seem to go back up at the same pace no matter whether it's your 1st or your final effort and always go back to the initial starting value if you recover long enough), so it looks like you could still hit the same power again, when, at least for me, after I've taken it down to 0 (or below) the 2nd or the 3rd time, I can't get it down anywhere near that low again. And yes, I know that means I need to do more intervals.

Last week, I'd done a bunch of 1 off efforts of varying lengths and just about every time I was going well below 0 (-2 to -8.7), and was wondering if an accurate estimate would have a hard stop at 0 or if the metric was based on having already depleted your creatine phosphate stores or whatever and it would be expected that a single effort would be able to get below 0. Then I noticed that after a week of those efforts, my W*Bal value had changed and I needed to enter a new one into my computer. That done, only one of the efforts would have been below 0.

So, it's trying to quantify how many matches you have left?

Yeah, that's the goal. To be able to look down at the computer and get a number (or to look down during a computer and get an idea of your burn rate to see if you're meeting your plan).

It's been a shyte show at the house. Doing my best on all fronts. But it's been distracting and tiring.

Somehow, managed a 20min PR on Zwift up the climb. 305w. 30min at 302w. Based on outdoor power weeks back, I believe it. Been running at lunch, already back to where I was right at the duathlon win last year. The VO2 says faster, but not tried. I 'could' break 6min for a mile, but don't care to vomit. Doing 400's at like 5:15/mi.

Riding Umstead gravel recently on the less technical stuff I'm averaging with elevation nearly 18mph in there. Tempo rides. Pretty sure I could do a 20mph hour in there if I had to, which is smokin.

Otherwise, I finished the shed for winter pain cave use. Window hvac, floor heater, fully insulated and drywalled and plastic/rubber fake wood floor. My Kickr Core, stellar deal on a Climb, a $230 Costco 55" television, wifi router, and an Amazon fold out couch, two fans mounted so I can keep them off the floor. Man cave.

I miss chatting ya'll. Maybe it'll calm down soon.

Holy cow, this training has an addictive quality.

I truly need the scheduled rest day today, last night I was totally wrung out; tired, leg aches, and almost pre-flu. Yet, this morning I want to ride and feel a bit bummed about it being a rest day.

Jonesing for a ride. 😉

Are you using and software (training peaks, cycling analytics, strava premium etc) to track your training load and fatigue?

I'm using both Strava premium and TP. I think yesterday's hurt was magnified by overdoing leg-strength training on Wed plus bad sleep.

My ATL is 60 today, expected to ramp up to 84 with the long pulls this weekend.

It is a cool metric, but I would caution against leaning on the data too heavily. I easily break the W* algo when I give enough of a **** to go all out. You may be holding yourself back unnecessarily in Zwift race scenarios.