hehe yeah that's a fun one. I have a theory that he actually does know how to play piano better than he lets on!

His piano music sounds like the jazz equivalent of Arnold Schoenberg’s compositions.

3R Zwift "San and Sequoias" race, about 30 min. About 4.2 w/kg for the duration, huge negative split due to the harder (undulating) nature of the second half of the course (Sequoias) with it's rollers and mini climb. Ordinarily I would double-up and go for some segments or do another race, but I took my time getting started and now I think I might just get into work a bit sooner. Ahhh... the off season.

Some crazy dude rode OTF at the onset and held ~6.0 w/kg to win solo (crazy, also suspicious...). Another rider shot off with a couple miles left and held it to the line, lower total avg w/kg and w than me so he's doing something smart. I took up the normal sprint a bit early from 0.5 mi and held it for 3rd, 20 something A's, 100-something total starters.

Same flattish windy lunch TT bike spin. Tempo outbound. At the turnaround I saw my time and was like "screw it, hammertime". Hit it hard the 5mi back and hit my 10mi TT PR with just road kit and training wheels. Looks like my 10mi target power can now be right close to 280w. That's some good stuff. Especially since hitting the PR on not super fast pavement and not race kit.

So, good stuff. I'm going to say skinsuit, 90mm/disc, and TT helmet would give me a single mph also. So, gotta give it another go soon.

My TT bike training rides are starting to get comments on Strava.....like "is that for real?".

oh boy, today was a tough one for me, it was a vo2 type workout 4 sets of 3x2.5min at 118%, got through the first set but I could tell from the last interval that the intensity was going to be a lot to sustain for 3 more sets, dropped the intervals to 113%, but cracked at the end of the 2nd set, then dialed it down to 320w (110%) and did the last 2 sets. I'd love to have finished it the way it was designed, but I'm happy to have been able to adjust and still get in a great workout. I think in some other times I'd just abandon it completely and fill in TSS with something easier. I'm already dreading next week with 3min at 120%, I think I'll be starting it with the target dialed back! lol

Topped off yesterdays lunch ride with giving the road bike some love after dinner. 30mi. Rode tempo the whole time and managed 21mph at about 60ft per mile elevation. I got the green lights where it mattered where a hill feeds into an uphill while riding out of town. Then was able to ride mostly nonstop the rest of the way. Surprisingly few riders out. Traffic was mostly good. Got back home before dark but took the light anyway.

The old crap Stages power meter said like 205 or 210w AP for that.....lol, no. 21mph would be closer to 225w for that route. Whatever, just hate how it throws off my TSS.

I've been doing the 16/8 (8pm to noon) intermittent fasting for about two weeks now and I've lost 5 pounds. I thought I would be miserable in the mornings, but it hasn't been too bad. The main challenge is that we tend to eat fairly late, so sometimes we're pushing up against my 8pm cut-off. I'm going to keep at it for at least another 5 pounds.

5 pounds in two weeks is huge. I'm trying to lose 1-2 pounds a month right now lol.

I've been doing IF at some level since med school. Lately things have been a bit all over the place but I lost almost 15-20 lbs this spring because of IF and also likely stress from being in the hospital during peak covid here in nj.

Sitting at like 165 now and I'm hoping to get back down to 155-160. Id like to end up staying at 160 but hoping to go down first so I can add a bit of mass when I start lifting again. 5lbs upper body muscle should be easy when I touch the weights again vgiven that I've only done yoga since March lol.

The sky is finally starting to clear up around here, so I'm going to try and get some miles in outdoors next week, maybe even test on my favorite strip of road.

Tropical storm about to hit and rain on us for 3-4 days. Guess I’ll have to ride the stupid trainer lol.

Set PRs for a 10’ then a 5’ effort at the end of a solid z2 ride yesterday. I’m down 10% weight wise, and my power is up 50+ watts for both since March, 5’ just broke into the Coggan cat 2 range. I have another 5kg to go weight wise and I’m certain another 30-40 watts, so I’m thinking it may actually get to the cat 1 bracket. Maybe I don’t have to race masters after all haha.

Have had this cough on and off for months now. It seems sinus/congestion related. I don’t have any real COVID symptoms, just this sort of annoying cough - it annoys my wife more than me - and taking cough syrup for a couple of days seems to knock it out for a few weeks.

Anyway, I skipped my Friday and Saturday workouts as a result.

I’m sure the weather change is a factor in this too. We went from 80s/90s to 60s overnight. Had to dig out pants to wear again.

Most days I don't even bother anymore.

With pants?

3x10' today. Wish it was a 1x30', taking a break then mentally regrouping for another one is the hard part.

6 hours 50 minutes. 121 miles including 3x20 km TTTs and 264 TSS. And watched the TdF every night.

1x29 + 1x12. Basically just pedaled what felt correct up some climbs in a not all-out fashion. Data gels with the 3x20's I did on Monday and what GoldenCheetah pegs my threshy at as well. Good data, gains keep coming.

Thing I'm trying to figure out is my legs *always* die before my lungs do. It seems like if I can figure that part of the equation out I'll find some relatively easy watts. Maybe as simple as adding in another easy day between harder workouts. Or it could be because my last structured vo2 workout was in March. But threshy is so much more fun...

Let me know if you figure it out, I have the same problem. Even doing 5x5s has my legs are dying well before I feel like my lungs are at their max. Had trouble even getting within 5 beats of my MHR last set of intervals. Tried low cadence, high cadence, same thing.

What's your ftp and what are the wattages you are doing your FTP intervals at? What sort of intervals are your legs giving out on?

I would wager my FTP is between 355 and 360 but I really haven't tested this year. GoldenCheetah says 360, but when I do ftp by feel I tend to settle in around 357-358. Earlier this week my 3x20 were just below 360, yesterday my by feel 1x29 was 352 with a higher NP due to rolling uphill, tight turns, and such, but I could have done more.

I wouldn't say my legs give out per se, it's just obvious that they fatigue more quickly than my lungs do. For example, 3x20 day didn't really feel like much aerobically but my legs were not so happy by the last interval. So I am trying to figure out how to get legs and lungs to fatigue at roughly the same rate, but maybe that's not really possible.

In my experience I need to be really fresh for the limiter to be my aerobic system. If I have any sort of (even mild) fatigue, pain in my legs is the limiter.

Even during 20' intervals some portion of your power is going to be produced anaerobically. Maybe only a 5%, but that 5% is most likely what is causing your legs to "fail". Improving vo2 and efficiency is going to allow more of that power to be produced purely aerobically, increase the time to failure and increase your 20-60' power. Improving lactate clearance will allow you to use more of the anaerobic glycolytic system, while being able to keep blood lactate levels lower. Some of the 'efficiency' can be gained with low cadence / high muscle tension work, so you need less muscle fibers recruited to generate the same power. You might also do some 5-10' intervals as well to work on lactate clearance and possibly bump up vo2. Doing long endurance rides will also help improve stroke volume, not just at the beginning of a ride, but allow you to keep the higher stroke volume during longer rides. Lots of people don't understand that the reason the pros have the same FTP at the beginning of the race as at the end of the race is because of that. Lot of text book stuff, this isn't anything I came up with on my own. Hopefully it helps.

That's a lot of power too man, I'm jealous lol.

Question.........is it also kind of normal that the less trained an individual is, the more the VO2 contribution to that aerobic power will be? Kind of like how someone like me is closer to 92% for hour vs 20min power compared to a pro who might be more like 95% ?

Either way.....over 500 TSS last week. Legit. Before last week I had failed to play nanny with TP to correct the rTSS to HRTSS. I feel the rTSS might reflect how you feel when tossing runs into bike stuff, but as for actual "fitness" I think the HRTSS works better for me. I thought about going for 30min easy at lunch today.......legs said nah. Taco lunch day.

Also, I learned this weekend that teams are not needed to win UCI world tour stage races and having some baby fat is okay. I want to be on Tadej Pogačar’s diet - I think.:D

Well, the thing is this is across the power curve, I used FTP as the example because I'm doing a lot of FTP lately. With tempo it obviously takes longer but still happens, vo2 is the same deal - always legs before lungs.

It is interesting you talk about low cadence work, a rower I know just recommended the same thing. I guess in rowing the aerobically-skewed will do some Rocky 4 **** like drag a can on a string behind the boat to develop power per stroke.

RE: watts, there's always a bigger fish...

Try a flying (no standing start) pursuit style efforts on the road with high cadence 110 -120 rpm or 2-3’ @ 140%. That should jack up your breathing. Legs may still crap out but your lungs will burn...more. I may cough for an hour or more after a pursuit race.

Have you ever done a 3 minute critical power test?

Yep, a bunch of 3-4min max efforts in the books. I mean I can taste blood after doing that sort of thing, but it's never my lungs that make me slow down, it's my legs.

Sounds like you need to channel Jens Voigt and just tell your legs to shut up lol.

Back in the day we'd use 36 hole big gauge spoke box rims with heavy tires for training. I have no idea if it made things faster on race day, but I guess we broke less carbon in training. Welp, I guess there wasn't really carbon then.