Ride was fine and mostly on gritted roads. Our council publishes a map of their gritted roads and ensures there is at least one in and out of every village. Grit only works down to about -10C, thus wouldn’t work at your -35C. Where the car had crashed into the ditch there was black ice. I suspect they were just travelling too fast as this was on a straight bit, not on a bend.
I have a few gritted routes mapped out for this time of year. I do also have studded tyres for my bike for if we get prolonged cold. What I need to do is build up a second set of wheels so I can just swap them over if the roads look like there might be a lot of ice.
Neat, I used to live in Olds/Didsbury for years before I moved up here for work. Yes I plan to stay inside for almost all training until April when I be outdoors all the time. Once I move outdoors I rarely use the trainer or treadmill unless it’s smokey.
Today was my FTP test and it moved my threshold HR up quite a bit. Surprisingly though my Z2 range has expanded/changed (higher number) based on updated threshold HR, the workout prescribed HR ranges have not. So when it comes to doing workouts, the goal from a cycling standpoint should be to hit the HR range and not the power range? I think I can be at the bottom of the prescribed power range to keep HR inline, but I’ll have to wait and see this weekend.
As I hinted at in another post, I believe I had been overtraining up until this point, and my FTP decreased 21 points somewhat confirming this thought. Looking forward to slowly crawling back with better recovery management rather than trying to self coach workouts and overtraining further (seemed like I was going down some spiral).
Edit: The HR ranges have now changed on the workouts based on new threshold value.
Hey Dave! There’s no need to manage both HR and power when doing your base training. Just focus on one of them and keep it in Z2 range.
We’re all unique and experience different stressors. Try Z2 HR and gauge if you feel like you’re heading back down the overtraining road. If so, then switch to the “easier” Z2 power range for a while.
Yes, it is certainly less work to ride by HR than power. Since I feel like I overtrained on my own by power, I will focus on HR for now and see how it goes.
I like working out at 830a, too bad my schedule is not set up this way. I uploaded the HIIT workout to Zwift today and let it take care of the intervals for me. It was nice to concentrate on just spinning the pedals.
I could have worked harder during the first of 3 sets, but I wasn’t sure how I would feel at that point. Turns out, it was too easy. I added 10% to the workout bias and keep the cadence high. That felt right and I got my HR up over 170 by the end.
I slept well last night, its been quite a few nights since that happened. Will set myself up for the same tonight.
Strength Endurance today. It’s risen to a tropical 4C with drizzle and damp roads. The AI gave me 7 x 10 mins, which is the most it’s scheduled me in 18 months of use. Previous max was 6 intervals. Progressive overload in practise.
Hit a mWR of -5% and felt paced it pretty well.
Due to be 2C tomorrow and Sunday then back to sub zero on Monday.
I didn’t have the energy for a threshold ride today, so I switched it up for a recovery session. (@Prof Under the fatigue tab, a recovery ride wasn’t an option, I had to add it from my library). I felt fine, but was getting hungry by the end and I wanted to stop. Great for consistency though.
Will give the threshold ride an attempt tomorrow depending on how I feel.
OG gave me props for listening to my body; “Great job on listening to your body, Jesse! Your smart switch to a recovery session maintained consistency and respected your energy levels.”
Body felt stiff this morning, so ride wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked. There was a problem with the export function in Athletica today (Thanks for the quick fix @MarkB!), so I chose a random Zwift workout that seemed close enough.
On the docket was 4 x 6 min threshold and I found 3 x (3’Z4, 3’Z5, 3’Z3b) of at/over/unders. It was definitely more challenging that 4 x 4’ at threshold, but a good workout. I 100% felt my mWR depleting once it hit 20% (start of final interval) and then down to -6%. In the future, I will experiment with switching to Z2 for the remainder of workouts once I feel that again.
Great stuff! Just a quick note, you can also create your own custom workout on Zwift. It took me only 5 minutes today to replicate my workout manually.
I gave blood today. Monday is my recovery day. I walked to the blood donation centre which is an hour both ways, total two hours walking. Cold but sunny.
Tomorrow is normally VO2 max but I’ve moved that to Thu. For tomorrow I’ve moved a 1 hour endurance ride in. I have a relatively flat route out to a bridge and back which I will use. I’ll be keeping my mWR firmly above 30-40%… With real time Workout Reserve I can do that easily. No need to guess.
Sheet ice stopped play. I waited as long as possible but things were still frozen. Roads were dry till I saw some sheet ice. I turned round as having given blood I didn’t want to be needing blood. Total 30 mins which will do the day after a donation.
Efficiency factor was interesting, mine is usually around 1.70 but was 1.34 today. Min Workout Reserve of 60% today. My body needs the blood volume and red cells back before I do harder efforts. Recovery time.
I got more sleep last night, this past weekend was “bordel” as we say in Quebec. Several late nights in a row, and I’m the only one getting up early. Both Garmin and Athletica are warning me that my recent training load seems a bit high and I might consider adjusting things. So, today I decided on a recovery ride. It went very well and I felt good.
OG was pleased with my decision, “Great job sticking to the plan, Jesse! Your recovery session was right on target, with some impressive efficiency to boot!”
I know from past experience that I need to push the watts to get my HR up. Last week I adjusted up by 125% to reach about 350W per interval, so this week I used Zwift to edit the workout and raised the intervals to 360W. I did 3x7 last week so I figured 2x8 would be “easier”. Humbled by he first set of 8, I lowered the intensity to 350W. It was really difficult and I needed a lot of internal motivation to get through to the end. A little too difficult perhaps! Gotta think about the next workout. I’ll stick with 350W next time and see how I do.
In other news, the rear axle came unscrewed in the middle of my workout. For a moment I was worried that I had snapped the rear triangle (carbon frames on indoor trainers…). Thankfully the frame is fine. I screwed it back in and finished the session without issues. phew!
High five from OG: “The FTI at 90% shows you were very close to your threshold, which is great for VO2 max improvements. Despite the challenging nature of the workout, your RPE at 9 indicates you were near your limit. Remember, the mWR of 7% demonstrates you were working at the edge of your historical bests, which is a testament to your grit and capacity for hard work. Keep up the strong effort!”
this class, say it out loud in the voice of David Goggins !!
Remember, the mWR of 7% demonstrates you were working at the edge of your historical bests, which is a testament to your grit and capacity for hard work. Keep up the strong effort!”
and I was stressing about running in -2 
