Phatman

Good ol' Lystra! I used to ride out there from NC State, taking E. Chatham and Green Level to get there, back when Cary was an itty bitty baby town. Nowadays I'm pretty sure you'd die riding those roads.

burnthesheep

Only early AM on weekends.

Either way, after riding it, Lystra is a bit of BS. There's plenty of hills equal, or worse, rising out of creek beds in neighborhoods "in town" where I live in Raleigh. People are always like "oh Lystra is so hard".

There's a hill about a mile from the house in town part of a greenway with a 30% grade for a very very brief part and is significantly overall more difficult than Lystra IMO. We have the "dirty dozen" in town. Not very big hills, but little ones. St Mary, Lassiter Mill, Galax, that greenway into N Hills Park, the greenway up to the bridge at the art museum.

Phatman

Yeah, I always thought it was BS too, but it does get pretty steep. I feel like hill repeats on a bicycle are silly anyways, its not like with running where you use different muscle groups climbing a hill. I live in Asheville now and there's tons of climbs, but I was better at climbing when I lived in Raleigh and did boatloads of intervals and fast group rides on flat to rolling ground.

Anyways, for the "training status" portion of this post--mine is pretty upended. I was going to try to put on a good showing for cross season this year, but my training has fallen completely off the rails the last two months with stupid daycare crud circulating. It seems like as soon as one cold works its way through our house, another one hits.

burnthesheep

45min of singletrack on the cross bike yesterday, then wheelswap and and 75min of tempo.

Man, with the smaller cross tires and the drop bars it's all you can do to mentally handle all the direction changes and challenges that a MTB just plows over not even worrying about. Especially the suspension folks.

procrit

Suspension, tires, and bikes in general are so good these days. I rode a bit of single track today, new trail with some technical climbs with big rocks and roots, and it amazes me what these bikes can ride over. I did have a decent over-the-bars crash as well, going 15 mph or so. Left pedal caught tree stump that was blending in to the trail. Luckily is was on the 10% of trail that didn't have any rocks and I walked away with just some bruises and scrapes.

TMonk

Even within MTB, there is a huge spectrum of bike capability and trail difficulties. MTB is probably the most diverse cycling discipline.

I went with a hardtail (29") when I built my new bike up last year, but wish I would have done FS. "I'm not that much of a MTBer", I thought. But, I do find myself getting a bit beat up on some real chunky stuff, and all the top XC guys are now on (short travel, steep angled) FS bikes on all but the most mundane courses. A dropper post won Olympic XC for the first time in 2020.

It's all about the right tool for the job. Personally I don't particularly enjoy being "under biked". I rode BWR full in 2019 on my TCR with 25's and thought I'd be fine since I knew the unpaved bits from MTB. Boy was I wrong - that sucked lol

procrit

Did a 200 TSS long ride today and it felt really good. One more day left to get in some training and I’m off to a five day fishing trip.

burnthesheep

Zwift workout, almost 300w for almost 30min. Under/overs kind of workout. One long 28min set. This gives me hope that with a bit more time and it being cooler than 84deg in the pain cave, I could do 300w for an hour this year.

I have dedicated some time the last few weeks to more Z2 volume and tracking the associated KJ's with that. Those weeks were the biggest KJ's weeks strung together for me in years.

I guess that works. Lol.

I need to fit in 90min today of Z2 or Z2/tempo mix. It's stormy, so likely back to zee Zwift againz.

procrit

Oof. My recovery ability sucks. The big ride made my resting HR go from 41 to 50 lol. I guess I also did two hours of yard work in the sun, tried a new brewery, plus went out the family and didn’t get to bed until late. Maybe I just overdid it?

TMonk

sounds like all of those things would contribute to higher resting HR. I wouldn't worry about too much. Wait a while before stringing two big days back to back, and don't be afraid to see high z1 AP. esp. if you're making a comeback.

I usually adopt this mentality for the first couple months of base, and then all the sudden my z2 basement is much higher and I'm able to motor around for consecutive hours at a respectable base.

procrit

Good advice, and I'm definitely taking it easy and just "dipping my toes" when it comes to overload at this point. Minimum effective dose and all that. I doubt I'll do any back to back 200 TSS rides before next year!

Phatman

FWIW, alcohol alone (just 1-2 drinks) will cause a jump in my resting HR the next day.

hubcyclist

coming back from the early July vacation malaise after a nice 3 week block of 12-13-14hrs respectively with a focus on threshold intervals. This past weekend I actually rode with people for the first time in ages, and it kind of reminded me for a couple of reasons why I prefer riding by myself. Saturday was actually pretty great, I set out by myself but ran into a couple of folks from my local cycling group, I was the strongest of the bunch and was happy to pull at tempo for the 3.5hrs and the guys were thrilled to get pulled along. We stopped at a popular general store and they got some stuff, I generally don't do any stopping on my rides, so that what kind of the meh part of that ride. 200tss

Yesterday I joined in another long ride, and was among the "weaker" of a small bunch of 5 (i.e. the lower side of 300w lol), the two strong guys kept hammering and riding me off their wheel even while I'm doing 260w sweet spot, with another guy gapped behind me as well. The guys were great about regrouping, but it's frustrating and demoralizing trying to latch onto wheels and seeing them ride away and made the ride way less enjoyable. It was another 200tss, but if I were solo I'd have a lot more fun. So I think I'm done with group stuff unless I'm really looking for a social ride, I like controlling my own fate lol

Phatman

For what its worth, I've only found group rides useful for the extreme ends of the intensity spectrum. They're great for long, chill Z2 rides for building base and not getting bored, and a hammer type of ride is awesome for motivating me to work harder than I would on my own in an interval set. They're just frustrating for anything else, its rare that someone is the exact same fitness.

procrit

Back from the week long fishing trip and ended up getting covid from my buddy who went with me. My HRV is down 30% and my RHR is up about 30-40%, and I'm running a low grade fever. I *really* hate this virus. On a better note, my new bike was waiting for me and I took a quick spin around the neighborhood despite feeling like garbage. Time to get some rest and hope I can ride soon...

Enthalpic

Catch any nice fish?

procrit

I did! Tons of rainbow trout and silver salmon, a few grayling, and some pink and chum salmon as well. One of the creeks we fished was loaded with spawning sockeyes and there were tons of grizzlies fishing around us that made for an exciting day. Can't wait to go back and bring my two boys.

procrit

Went to bed early and woke up to low HR and good HRV, headache and fever gone. Spun *easy* around the neighborhood for a short time, felt pretty good actually. I'll take it easy this week and see if I keep improving.

Phatman

Well add me to the Covid club. Kinda sucks since I was sick with regular colds for a lot of July and August.

The thing that surprised me is how fast Covid kicked in--I had a great interval workout Thursday, did 3x8 minute intervals up the parkway and hit power levels that were on par with my June levels. The next day, I woke up with a sore throat and by the evening, a 101.5F fever. Today is Day 5 and I'm mostly over it, a cough or two here and there and a stuffy nose, but I'm a bit paranoid that my rapid progress will stop progressing.

procrit

Just take it easy getting back into it. Go easy until power and heart rate data look normal and you are recovering well. Too many people are having weird heart issues right after Covid or the vaccine to go pushing too hard too soon.

Phatman

Yeah, going to play it safe with this one, going to leave the bike on the rack until I'm symptom free. With that said, RHR is back to normal now, low 50s instead of the 75(!) it was on Saturday and Sunday. No wonder I felt smoked.

procrit

No kidding! I'm sure you'll be back on soon.

burnthesheep

It's always cute when the local group ride gets your KOM when it was a ripping tailwind. 90% of days it's a headwind for half of it, they got a tailwind for all of it. So that sucked.

But, the ego got stroked a bit as a person flagged a segment then was ok with it after I commented on theirs that "sorry bro, that was real". They just thought it was silly fast. Yeah, it was, but I was doing like 600w also. So, that made up for losing the other one.

10 guys with a tailwind on the other one will always win, so I need to let that crap go.

procrit

Base miles today. It's cool to see both the watts and heart rate stay the same the entire ride. I give credit to my coffee shop and the sub 90 degree weather.

Hermes

We returned from Aguascalientes, Mexico last Friday where we were training and racing at the indoor velodrome for 18 days. I did about 180 miles on the indoor track of efforts and long higher speed motor paced efforts.

My wife set a new world hour record for her age group 38.732 KM beating the old record by about 500 meters. She said it was the hardest race she has ever done.

The Mexican Federation had paramedics at he event and I saw her finish and I was talking to someone in the infield. The next thing I see is she is on a paramedic cart sitting up hooked up to their electronics. It was no big deal and she was fine. I think they routinely take the cart onto the track and if someone looks exhausted, they put them on the cart. She hung out there a few minutes and then went to drug testing. She definitely left it all out on the track.

I was following a training plan while my wife finished her hour record plan and somewhat acclimated to the high altitude. The high altitude is fast but brutal on the lungs. I started feeling okay on the last day but I am sure that I needed more time to fully acclimate to the elevation. My Kestral race weather station had the calculated elevation generally at 8500 feet and the highest we saw was 9200 with an Rho of .923. Even though the actual elevation is 6200 feet it records a lot higher.

I was back at the track in Carson and wow, do I have a lot of aerobic juice. Of course, this is going to wane over time but I will enjoy it while it lasts.