The End of the World workout - Local Hero

Well, after hundreds of years of countdown I was getting ready for the Mayan prophecies to come true and for the World to end today. I thought that, if I was going to die, I may as well choose a hard workout to die to. Sufferfest's Local Hero seemed to fit the bill so I fired up the laptop, The Best of Thin Lizzie and set to work, expecting the World to end sometime during the 80 minute session. It didn't, so I had to complete the whole painful session.

During the second interval (around 25 minutes) I started to feel weak and I was starting to make excuses to give up, but I knuckled down knowing that this would be the last workout for 5 days so I really had to make it count. I didn't want to eat lots of mince pies over Christmas knowing I'd let myself down on a key workout. I did back off completely on the recovery intervals though to make sure I had enough in my legs for the work intervals and I really struggled to achieve the hardest part of the last 4 intervals; legs burning, sweat dripping, head drooping etc.

Back in the saddle

After a frustrating 5 days off I was back in the saddle and on the turbo again this afternoon. I've been working away from home and remembered to take everything I needed to for some hard turbo sessions except my shoes. Last night I had 8 pints at the office Christmas party so I wasn't expecting to achieve much today and I was right.

I'm working on a work-out video that takes real race data from a race I have completed and trying to replicate the effort while watching the video. Here's a still from the video showing a figure relating to the required power output/intensity level:

For me, level 7 equates to 270W and each interval lasts 30 seconds, ranging from 3 (150W) to 10 (360W) according to what happened in the real race. I've used intensity rather than a specified power output so that other riders can use it, even those without a power meter. Below is the plot from today's session showing the short warm-up and then the intervals starting. The dark section is where I was unable to complete the intervals and had to back off and recover (I'm blaming the hangover) before I did some more and then the quits kicked in and I stopped (again, the hangover).

I need to do a bit of tweeking to the video to make it work well and I'm planning to upload it to YouTube once complete in case anybody else wants to use it.

Back on the turbo again tomorrow for a decent session and then a 20 minute power test next week. I'm glad I didn't do a test today, I had considered it on my way home but I now know I would have been very very ill had I tried to go all-out for 20 minutes.

Disappointing!

After 2 days off I was looking forward to one of my home-brew turbo sessions called Shorter Harder.

Overview (based on a FTP of 306W)

Warm-up: 5 mins at 200W
8 mins at 270W
7 at 280W
6 at 290W then 3 mins rest interval (RI)
5 at 300W then 2.5 min RI
4 at 310W then 2 min RI
3 at 320W then 1.5 min RI
2 at 330W then 1 min RI
1 at 340W then cool-down

All was well until the 3 mins at 320W when I no longer wanted to continue. At the time, with sweat dripping off my nose and a lovely dinner waiting to be cooked, it seemed natural to stop there and then. However, afterwards I realised that I should have carried on no matter how uncomfortable it was; at 300-340W I wasn't going to hurt myself and I'm not going to get stronger quitting. So that's it, NO MORE QUITTING!

I last completed this session on 23 Oct to exactly the same power and felt quite good afterwards (according to the notes I took at the time) so I have no idea why tonight was so different. Here's the plot. I was going to have a pic of a pansy after my weak performance, but the plot is probably more useful. Black line = power. Red line = HR.