Training
I'm probably going to continue with the bike theme for a bit. The parts for the upgrade are slowly starting to come in -- I've received the front derailure, chain and cassette so far; everything else is in the mail. The Trek is as taken apart as I'm going to get for now (though I should overhaul the headset as well...).In any case however... this isn't about parts, this is about me.Today's routine after work: high intensity intervals.And boy did they kick my ass.The pattern was five minutes of warm-up or rest between sets at 120W, and two minutes of 330W.The first interval went fine. I was tired at the end and my legs were burning but I made it up the hill. The second one I needed to stand up a bit. The third I just barely made it to the end.The fourth one ended with me pooping out a minute in. Standing on the pedal didn't make it go anywhere.Now something you have to understand about the indoor cycle I have is you give it a target power and it'll do everything in its ability to make you generate that amount of work. If you're going fast, it'll be low resistance; if you're going slow it's high resistance. It makes sense if you think about it. For a given speed you can be in a low gear going at a high cadence or a high gear with a low cadence -- Watts, in this case, is a proxy for speed.When you slow to a stop... It can't do infinite resistance, but it may as well have in my case.View Larger MapIt felt like I was climbing up Grove Hill in Chagrin Falls.From the view up there you can't really tell how steep it is. Just go up the hill and look sideways at the roughly 15% grade. :-OI petered out on my fourth go at it with my heart rate up to 184 BPM. (!) (Before you go calling a doctor, I have a naturally high max heart rate. I've hit 194 before as well. By the conventional formula I would have been dead!)I have a long way to go until I'm truly in race form. I want to win at the next Tour de Solon dammit! :-PMy goal: be able to hold 400W for five minutes :sweat: :eek: . It'll take all year probably. But it'll put me into a solid position in a cat. 3 race... but it's not for racing... I might never race. It's for me.