60min test

Not feeling brilliant and a bit tired I started off last nights session on the trainer at an easy pace for 10min and then picked up a bit. By the 15min mark I was at threashold output and my HR was still low and not picking up very much, although it was quite cool (2 fans blowing from 2ft away) so I put this down to body temperature. After about 15min I was still feeling ok, HR low (but rising) so I thought I'd hold for an hour and see what happens. 40 min in my HR was up to 160 and then by 50min 170 (from memory, will post the chart and clarify). At the 60min mark a pickup in pace was in order, which did not last very long. 354W average on the Ergomo Pro and 357W on the iMagic (supprised the iMagic matched up so close with the Ergomo). All in all not a bad session, but not quite intended.

Nice roads and a long hill

Went out at the weekend for a couple of longer rides than normal, while I had the chance of riding on uncongested smooth tramac instead of fume filled potholes. Both days were quite nice at around 3 hours with a test on the 2nd outing to see if I could set a new 5 min power. One of my theories is that cooling is far more important to 5min+ efforts than what is generally looked at for performance improvements, hence the test. During an indoor effort I set a 5 min record of 421W at the begining of July, which had fan cooling only on the upper body. The test ride at the weekend was out in the open with approx 20C broken sky conditions and I managed 449W, which put me into the CAT1 are on the power profile. Either I managed to get better motivation riding out in the open (30%), improved by 28W in 2 weeks (10%) or had better cooling (60%). The percentages being what I think the difference came from - a combined effect.

During the home bound section of the ride on Monday I ended up on a time trial course with 2 riders ahead to chase. I managed to pass one of them and then stayed about 100m behind the other, who had better aero performance than me (on a section at 33mph he was pulling away slightly). The aero element is something else that I need to work on so that I do not have the profile of a brick.

So, all I need to do now is (appart from the impossible) to maintain my 5 min output for an hour and then I can enter the toru next year.... ha... ha...

Empty legs and no riding

Bit of a supprise in sundays session as I thought my attempt at setting a new 60sec power record went really badly when my legs fel appart about 40 seconds in. Looking at the power profile over the 60 seconds it was a start with too much output that caused my legs to empty in no time at all and I could feel them loosing power by the second. At around the 50 second mark I almost gave it up as a bad job because I did the test after an hour and a half at 270W (294W norm) that had 1 hour at 300W (315W norm). Seeing how low the power had dropped I though it was a sub 600W average and not the 640W recorded. My HR finished at 179 (10bpm lower than my max) but my legs were well and truly shot.

Since then I have not touched my road bike and only done the short run to the station, now it's Friday and my CTL is back to what it was a month ago... Oh, well.

The weather this weekend is looking good and the Tour is in town, so it's either a ride down to watch it on Saturday or take the camera on foot. The ride down seems more appealing in some way, afterall I can always sit on my bike to watch it..

Progress stalling on time

Progress so far has been a little mixed with relatively small gains on the back of a low training load. Felt quite good last night after a bit of a break and some hill work on a couple of days last week and set a new 5 min power output at 5.61W/kg (421W).

My CTL is stalling around 55 as I struggle with the time to get some decent hours in when either the weather is not too bad or it is not too late at night after work. The problem with the after work sessions is that a couple of hours on the trainer finishing at 8:30pm or 9:00pm leaves you wide awake, which is not too good for either getting some sleep or making sure you eat for a good recovery. Fortunately the High-5 recovery powder seem to work quite well with some semi-skimmed and have been thinking about using a mix on some cerials to save some time.... bannana milk on wheetabix... mmmmmm...

Well, considering the weather this weeks crit at MK seems like it will be 50/50 so I'm going to train the rest of this week and then ride in to London on Saturday to watch the Tour and then possibly ride out again on Sunday to watch the 2nd stage depart.