Saturday Intervals

I stuggled with a sinus infection earlier in the week and didn't do much training. I did a 2 x 20 workout on Tuesday morning about nine hours after taking a dose of Nyquil, with predictably mediocre results. The next couple of days I spun easy for a few minutes and let myself recover.

Friday morning I felt much better so I again did a 2 x 20 workout. The goal was to go a little below threshold just to get the work done. I rode at 97% of FTP, but struggled near the end.

Today I felt better and banged out a pretty nice workout, once again on the trainer. I opted for the trainer(bailing out on my buddies who are out doing 110 miles), because I wanted to start early(before sunrise) and because rain was on the way. I decided to try something new - a 20 min set of micro-intervals. First I did 20 minutes at a little under FTP. I averaged 313 watts and didn't have to kill myself to hold the pace, which was perfect. Then I set out to do 20 minutes, alternating between 30 sec at 400 watts and 30 sec at 200 watts. That would lead to 300 watts avg, but I felt really good doing these so I upped the pace a bit and averaged 313 watts with an NP of 328. Surprisingly, the micro-interval set felt easier than the well paced first 20 minutes.

After that, I had enough in the tank to cruise for 12 minutes at about 90% FTP, to rack up a few more TSS points, ending with 112 for the day in 1:25. Post workout I polished off a giant stack of pancakes, easily replacing the 1319 calories I just burned.