Mike's Bike Blog

For the past 3 weeks I've been having a heavy dose of intervals in my training. All Intervals have been at my 20 minute critical power level of 292 watts. They have ranged from 7 x 2, 9 x 3, 10 x 3, 4 x 4, 1 x 8. For the most part the intervals have gone off as planned, but on a couple occasions it has been a struggle to hit the target power.

There will be days where you feel off and have the power output of a 117 year old on a beach cruiser out for a Sunday stroll. I had a ride like this this week, I was to do 10 intervals at 292 watts for 3 minutes with 2 minutes of recovery between each one. The first one went off without a hitch, but I went out too hard and my average power was 321 watts. I did this first one up a hill (3% grade) on Old Manor Road.  The next one I struggled on a flat road but into the wind and only averaged 279 watts.  For the 3rd one I returned back to the hill and averaged 299 watts. Then again on the flat I averaged 283 watts. It kept going down hill from there with 277 watts, 271 watts, 287 watts and 285 watts. The entire ride just felt hard, even the 2 minute recovery seemed difficult just turning over the pedals. I ran out of time to complete the 10 intervals over my lunch so I completed them later that night after dinner with 2 intervals both at 304 watts. There again this ride just felt hard, it was like riding around with the brake engaged, just felt hard.

Luckily the following day was only 1 hour of recovery riding, but I skipped out and didn't get on the bike at all. Instead I spent an hour  doing pylometrics. Jack and Zeb joined me as my workout partners. We did standing box jumps, jumped hockey sticks set up on pylons, long jumps across the yard and several other moves. The kids had a good time and topped it off by running through the sprinkler.

The little time off the bike was exactly what I needed I think as yesterday's workout was 3 intervals at 302 for 3 minutes with 2 minute recoveries between. From the time I first got on the bike and headed over to Old Manor Road to do my intervals everything seemed to be clicking. On the way out I remembered I needed to reset the zero offset of the power meter. Every so often a power meter needs to be calibrated to make sure the 0 point is registering, when you are coasting with no pedal force it should read 0 watts. Anything plus or minus will throw off the values. My legs felt strong and had great snap to them. The first one up the hill on Old Manor road felt easy at 364 watts. I began to suspect that maybe something wasn't right as when I was coasting the power was registering 5 to 30 watts (when coasting power should be 0). I recalibrated.  The next interval on the flat road into the wind wasn't killing me like it did the day before. I was able to average 372 watts. The final one again on the flats but into a cross wind I averaged 388 watts. I calibrated after each interval and finally got it to read 0 watts. Since I was feeling so good on the way back into the office I threw one more interval in to make sure everything was copastetic, I averaged 357 watts on this last interval. That number was still big but it makes me question the results of the other intervals, even if they are off by 30 watts the numbers were good. I didn't really work the zone I was going after though, but at 350 watts it felt about like the effort on my 1st interval from the day before. It will be interesting to see if there is any progress next week when I retest my FTP.

Since I was questioning the numbers produced I went back to see if there was anything out of the ordinary with my other files. I didn't see anything wrong with the power data, but I did see why I was having trouble with the prior interval workout this week. Last week in Washington was a hard week, I put in a lot of climbing that week, 18,991 feet of climbing to be exact. With two days off I thought I would be caught up, but Sunday's ride on Limecreek to attack the 3 sisters depleted my energy more than I realized. By the way I bettered my time up it by a few seconds, I'm at 3 minutes 09 seconds. I also set peak power bests at 1 minute, 2 minutes and 5 minutes on that ride.

Today's intervals were 4 x 4 again at 292 watts. My legs were feeling it and I didn't have quite the power I was packing yesterday. They were quite sore. The route I selected for the intervals turned out to be problematic because of the stops. The first interval started on Sprinkle Road I turned left onto Sprinkle Cut Off and then right onto Samsung Road. The route worked, there were no stops, but a couple hard turns where I did have to ease up on the pedals though. I was off on my average power by 11 watts however and only maintained 18.1 mph. On the 2nd interval again I was off on the power and only averaged 283 watts but averaged 23.5 mph. A problem with this interval was the traffic, there was one time I had to come to a complete stop to check for traffic to make a right turn. The 3rd interval I was able to do a better job on hitting the power and averaged 299 watts and averaged 26.4 mph. The final one saw my power at the lowest at 275 watts, with an average speed of 24.6. This interval was broken up with 2 stops to negotiate turns into traffic. I had thought by going out to where I did that the roads would offer a more suitable venue for 4 minute intervals, but it didn't turn out that way.

With my legs feeling worn and not so fresh I might rethink my riding plans for this weekend. Instead of a group ride on Saturday I might go out for 2 1/2 hours solo so I can be sure to stay in my target ranges and not overdo it. This will hopefully leave me in better shape for Sunday's Le Burrito ride, I won't want to miss that one and I want to be able to get back to the burrito festivities with the main 60 mile group before the burritos are gone.