caloso

First group ride in a long time last night. Small group, probably due to the hellacious wind, but that made it a great workout: 20min best power for 2019. Still have no snap, but I'm pleased that the diesel is still there. Swung back into town, picked up my backpack and was able to meet my son and ride home with him from soccer practice.

aaronmcd

Wtf.
Know how I said my leg muscles always get tired first? Well today I went to the gym and felt a bit sluggish, got home, as I got ready to ride I was breathing really hard. Then I went to do 4x8 with 2' RBI. The first effort was ok, the next 2 were down around threshold with hard breathing and I just couldn't do the last one. My legs were fine. I was literally gasping for air. Weird. This never happens.

furiousferret

Supposed to be an intervals day but after the first set it just wasn't going to happen; too tired. I managed some Sweet Spot work and did some descending. I hit a corner and since I'm a sissy descender slowed down but just then a car decided to turn and hit the apex, we both hit the brakes and stopped about 5 feet in front from each other.

I still haven't hit my bucket ride yet in training or racing, but my numbers have been solid regardless.

Heathpack 

furiousferret

Nice pics @Heathpack

revchuck 

I need to stop doing drive-bys and post more often again.

I didn't make it to 1000 TSS that week. The goal was 890; I cut back Sunday's ride by an hour and ended up at 907. Still a pretty big week.

This week was "Whose legs are these?" week. I hit the highest watts for this year from 1-90 minutes and last week hit the highest for three hours. And I ain't done yet. Tuesday was a huge surprise - it was supposed to be 3x20' sweet spot. I decided to try them using last year's FTP instead of the current one, which is 19 watts lower. The first one was no problem. I felt good enough at the end of the second one that I skipped the RBI and did a 40' interval with the last 20' almost at last year's FTP. I spoke with my coach the next day and she allowed that maybe we should bump up my ranges a bit. The following day was a long, windy ride that ended up being 4:21 in the new zone 3 range. Of course, the next day was a recovery run and my legs felt like corroded lead pipes. Today was my first group ride in a while and it went well too. Tomorrow I hit the hills for ~3500 ft of climbing.

I've got one more week of build and then it's taper time for the Tour of Georgia Gran Fondo on the 28th.

caloso

revchuck 

Windy ride today. I park at a rec center that's on a reservoir and there were whitecaps on the water and the deciduous trees were showing the underside of their leaves. I'm guessing it was blowing at ~25 mph. Luckily, I was either sheltered from the wind by trees or had a tailwind for much of the ride.

Those great legs I had this week? They disappeared overnight. I was able to do the workout to standard, it just felt harder than I thought it would. I had about five miles where I turned into an unimpeded headwind and had to drop into the small ring on an almost-flat road. I guess the week's riding just caught up to me today. CTL 98, ATL 135.

Recovery run tomorrow, rest day Tuesday, 2x30' SST Wednesday.

TheKillerPenguin

Raced on Saturday, decent speed work and awful fun though the field was too deep and the wind wasn't substantial enough to allow anything to roll, so it wound up as a bunch sprint. Such is life.

Yesterday I did 4.25hrs with 4x15ish around 95% of mFTP, 1x/hr with z2 between. Legs were a little tired from the day before and I kinda came apart during the last interval, I was 3.5% down as compared to the others which was annoying, but I was also 2900kj deep and out of water when I started it so all things considered it's not so bad I guess.

Getting in a bit of tapering this week to freshen up and finish off getting sugar back into my legs. Stomach bugs linger in weird ways, I've felt like 95% of normal since it went away last Sunday, just kinda flat.

revchuck 

Stupid legs. Did a three-mile run for recovery this morning. Instead of feeling like doo-doo like my last run, they felt great and I wanted to keep going. My legs are as dumb as a box o' rocks.

Hermes

I got a cough/cold two weeks ago that turned into a mostly cough and tight chest. I did some sub threshold work that was on my plan. Coughed my head off or 10 days and the cough seems better to gone this AM.

I attended the Fiesta Island TT, that I planned to race, but instead I was a bike slave for my wife, chatted with @Heathpack and met her doxie, so cute. I coughed, timed laps and took pics as my wife won the open 40K ITT women's division and beat half of the 40K men.

Pic of wife on the course.

furiousferret

I couldn't finish my 110k weekly tempo Zwift ride due to a literal (as the english would say) pain in the ass. My Pirformis was acting up and with out 40 minutes to go I just couldn't pedal anymore.

I was able to release it and believe I know what the cause is; arching my back too much (i.e. Donald Duck position). Confident it can be fixed. I've recently changed my position to a more aggressive hip angle and have been fiddling with minor changes. Now I've learned my back has to be flat or slightly convex. Concave (inward arch) just presents a ton of issues. With the newer position I feel stronger. Not the best evidence but on my TV Calorie Burner Recovery Rides I average about 90 watts in the old position; this is over a few thousand miles. In the new postion I do about 105 with the same RPE. It feels stronger in the top end as well so I'm definitely going to try to make it work.

@revchuck that's quite a bit of volume.

@Hermes glad your better and grats on the Mrs win!

Ttoc6

5x8 at 105%. Felt real good til the last two and had to take a break for a couple seconds during each. Otherwise numbers felt closer to threshold than 105.

burnthesheep

I have that exact front trispoke on my TT bike. I think. Is that an HED 3c? What size tire up front she use? I'm letting the life wear out on the tub that's on it I got from the guy, but mine is 21 right now and feels a bit big. I think before I do anything in an event I care much about I'm going to toss a 19mm Conti on it. The 21 makes training on the race wheels a bit easier though.

Last night I did a reverse brick workout at the local tri group ride. Showed up early and ran a bit slower than race pace, then swapped shoes and headed out on the TT bike. I followed the A-group, but I needed a long tempo workout instead of sitting in a big fast group then pulling twice for a minute at some un-Godly speed.

Run felt pretty easy at about 8:10/mi for a couple miles. It's pretty slow going getting in/out of town with turns and stops and crap, but power and speed were looking good once out in the country-side. I let the A-group go from a stop then solo'd my workout.

For the part of the ride I cared about, the work part, it went well. I got it up to 23.5 mph for about 40 min of uninterrupted riding. Flattish, but a bit of roll to the route. I was at a tempo I could feel really comfortable getting off the bike and having to run again. Not really any burn at all in the legs.

I even felt pretty "fresh" when I got back to the car. I think that pace was pretty good for the bike leg. I think the first run was just right too. It left enough in the tank I could go all-out the 2nd run. Strategy was I hydrated well before starting the run and got my pee/poop done then hydrated the run well. I didn't drink on the ride, I don't own an aero drink. I think I may try to ghetto rig a DIY BTA setup for the race. Or hit up ebay/craigslist.

I thought about bricking the back half of the workout also, but it was getting dark and had to drive home to shut the chickens up in their coop for the night as the wife is out of town with the kids and nobody there to do that.

Hermes

@burnthesheep Yes, it is a 2008 HED 3c 19mm rim. Typically, I put a Vittoria EVO CS 20mm tire on it but in the pic she has a 21 mm. I was out of the 20mm and only had a 21 in my stock. I have used a 19 mm on that wheel. FWIW, I think rolling resistance versus aero becomes the trade off and of course handling and safety. So skinny is more aero but depending on the road surface higher Crr. And if the front tire blows, my wife has survived two front wheel tire blow outs at speed, there is not as much rubber with a 19.

I think the 21 mm is a pretty good all around tire on this wheel that offers good handling on a technical course, low rolling resistance, good aero performance and survivability if the tire fails. YMMV

Hermes

Fiesta yesterday 90 minutes of tempo broken into two segments 4 laps sweet spot and then 3 laps.

We had unstable weather yesterday with a chance of rain. So Fiesta was deserted. I got hit by a few drops of rain and the wind was typical but from the south so the back stretch was directly into the wind. Besides the workout, I passed a guy on an electric bike who was not a bad cyclist per se. Generally, I pay no attention to passing or getting passed while training but passing the electric bikes seems like such fun. The electric bikes problem is the speed governor. If the electric bike goes too fast, California will treat it as a motorcycle and require a license.

revchuck 

Rest day yesterday. Did a two-hour ride this morning with 2x30' SST. The first interval was at 92% and the second at 95%. I had a 5' RBI in there and I could've done without it. I felt pretty comfortable during both. Average HR for the first was 123 bpm with an EF of 1.89; the second was 128 bpm/1.86. My heart's too old and lazy to beat much faster these days. It was a cool day, so that kept my HR down.

Recovery run tomorrow, probably on the treadmill due to severe thunderstorms, then four hours of hill repeats on Friday. Taper starts Saturday.

burnthesheep

Funny you mention that.

Driving to the group run/ride stuff last night, I was sitting at a light and saw a DIY hack job e-bike. Mythbusters or Junkyard Wars would have been proud.

Dude had probably 30 lbs of batteries strapped between his legs to the top/down tubes. Had a Chinabay front wheel motor thing. He was clearly using it as a direct throttle electric motorcycle. Flying around on the sidewalks, using the cross walk. No helmet.

I'm all for alt transit, but c'mon, he was riding basically an electric motorcycle on the sidewalk.

aaronmcd

Sunday back workout, 4x9 at ~104ish with 2' RBI and 44' sweet spot, except with all the traffic it was more over under.

Took 2 days rest cuz we saw K.Flay Monday night in the tiny bar/venue next door.

Today hit legs in the gym (back squats, rack pulls, barbell hack squats), then went out for some hill sprints. Sprint power was a few hundred watts better than last time, but Im hitting peak power at fairly low rpm (relative to the ~110 or so I'm used to hitting peak power).

burnthesheep

Been doing a lot of volume at tempo with run/bike mixes this week. Did an 8mi run last night, then decided I wanted a beer. So I rolled over to the local critical mass brewery ride. The run made me late, so just sat and enjoyed a beer while that circus went around the block. Then sniped a slice of pizza when they got back.

So.......my yearly avg on TSS is about low 300's. Like maybe 320. My last 7 days rolling average is 570.

Oddly enough, I feel fine. I've eaten a touch more than normal, but not a super lot.

Wife and kids had taken off this week but I had planned to work to save the time for our summer time off together.

Can't decide what to do tonight. Freaking beautiful weather. I need/want more time on the TT bike even if it is a lot of Z1/Z2 riding. All my Thursday groups though are the quicker roadie rides. Maybe I'll ride the TT bike and give em a head start and just chase/follow then enjoy their company afterwards. Maybe run super slow 1 mile or 2 mile before. Maybe even Galloway run/walk it. I need the run everyday for a while, even if short and super easy.

I must be pretty well fat adapted. I was running/riding below that particular threshold past few days I guess. Never felt a lack of energy on the workouts at all.

I know I've built in some fatigue though. I did give it the gas over a couple rollers on the way home from my treat last night and never got the HR out of the 160's. Almost hitting top 10 for that segment, on the cyclocross bike. No power, just HR as the meter is on the TT bike. But, to do that it means I was freaking moving out.

Radish_legs

I've been practicing my jump and sprint. I had not hit 1300w in quite some time before I started practicing. In just over 2 weeks of practice, I've started hitting over 1300w. And in crit races, have hit over 1200w when quite tired. And yesterday in a practice solo ride did my 2nd best 1 sec power ever (1446w), and PRs in 5s (1373w) and 10s (1252w). Weird, practice actually works. Who would have thought? First time over 1400w in more than 3 years.

TheKillerPenguin

Dude that's legit sprint watts! I know like one guy that can put out more than that, and he's a track specialist.

Radish_legs

Thanks. One of my fellow cat 3s on my team has a similar power sprint profile. But he does stuff like this on the actual group rides, not when rested and practicing. It's one thing to do it when rested, another to do anything close to this in a race. But I'm working on the premise that I can get better at it. Getting over 1400w, the front wheel is actually coming off the road. I don't know how these guys that do 1700w do it. To me that's an unfathomable kind of number.

furiousferret

First commute of the year, fasted which should help with that 3 lbs I can't lose. It also means I won't get any work done today as everyone at work is going to stop in at my office, lift my bike, and ask 20 questions.

There's a lot of technique in sprinting, and it sounds like you have it all dialed in now and you can def win some upper cat races with that.

One of our locals pulls 1600 with 1000 over 30 seconds. Dude is thicc af though. He's built like Gronk.

Radish_legs

One of our best local masters sprinters--really big guy, well over 220lb I think. He hit the weights all winter, and he is sweeping all the 50+ races. He went from a nobody Cat 4 fodder fat guy 2 years ago to one of the top local guys in this short amount of time. He's such a big guy that I don't even bother looking at his numbers, they are meaningless to someone like me (non-comparable).