Hour of Power and New PB!

Thursday (2 days ago) was a rest day after 2 days of hard intervals and I planned a road ride yesterday. Unfortunately I was delayed at work and had other commitments when I got home so I had another day off and several glasses of wine and some chocolate too. Not exactly the highly disciplined training I had planned in November when this experiment started.

This afternoon I grabbed an hour to myself and headed out for another Hour of Power on the sunny roads, planning to repeat the hard session I did last week when I averaged a respectable 296W.

Today I felt great straight from the start and rather than trying to maintain 275-285W between the high power bursts, I just rode on feeling with occasional glances at my power. After 24 minutes I had averaged 317W (a new record) and then went on to set a PB right out to 60 mins. Other than a slight 'wobble' at 48 mins I just felt fine, though I was on the limit at the end and pleased to stop.

At the end I had averaged 313W compared to my last 60 min PB of 308W on 1 Jan. Then I tried to even out and control my effort, whereas today the Hour of Power workout is specifically designed to disrupt your flow and I would expect that to reduce your average power. So, I guess I must have got fitter. Last year's 60 min PB was 296W and I was absolutely shattered at the end of that, so I'm quite pleased.

 Average HR was low at 163, cadence was tightly grouped around 80rpm (yes, I do pedal slowly). 1100kCals for the hour and a relative intensity of 0.999, so hard work!

Road Session

Felt good when I got home from work and, motivated by the sunshine, I decided to head out onto the road for a mixed interval session. There's also a local Strava segment I wanted to attack.

The first interval was 2 mins at 400W which felt quite easy, then I did a 3x350W and a 30secs x 530W which felt very straightforward with a nice controlled heartrate. These were really just preparations for the Strava segment so I had a couple of minutes of easy riding before I got to the start point. Unfortunately, I chose a bad day for this segment with a slight headwind all the way along it but I thought I'd still have quite a good chance as it's a shortish segment. I was SO wrong. Although I gave it everything and averaged 415W for the 2:53 it took me to complete it at an average speed of 24 mph, I was still 21 seconds of the KOM for the segment. This is a ridiculously lousy result and one I'll have to do again. The KOM averaged 27.2mph so I 'm guessing there was something going on there.

Anyway, once I'd recovered I did another 4 of the same segment targetting 360W+ for the roughly 3 minutes it took to complete it, then did some 300W intervals on the way home including a 10 min one which drained me of my remaining energy and I was pleased to get home and warm up.

Average power for the whole ride (including 2 minutes picking a motorcyclist up after he fell off) and lots of soft pedalling between intervals was a fairly respectable 230W and I used approx 1100 kCals and covered 23.5 miles at an average speed of 19.2mph.

Shorter Harder

Friday's fun knocked me out on Saturday so I didn't fancy turboing. Sunday was 'family day' and then yesterday turned into 'get-up-far-too-early-and-spend-the-whole-day-on-the-back-foot' Monday. By the time I got home I felt the need to lie down and then I woke up an hour later so I decided to bin the planned turbo session.

So, today I had to do something so I did Shorter Harder (long version). Things started off well, I had Ministry of Sound blasting out and some video of this year's skiing holiday running on the laptop and then I got skyped. I tried to carry on the session but it just got a bit weird with me shouting at the screen and looking all red and sweaty so I decided to have an early rest. I then combined the next 2 intervals to make up for it and get back on the original timeline.

On the last interval before the mid-way break I really pushed it and went longer and harder than was required because I felt quite good, and then the first 2 intervals after the break were harder and longer again. Then I started to suffer a bit and regretted showing off but I just had to dig in and keep on going to the end, sweating in the dark. Once the last interval was over I gave myself a short recovery before going all-out for 30 seconds, averaging 493W and peaking at 660W.

Overall it was a good workout and I'm looking forward to another tomorrow and the day after to make up for my weekend of laziness. After the ride I had a very dull pasta and tuna dinner and then sorted the gears out on the turbo bike because they were getting a bit lazy and didn't always change when I wanted them to.

2 Hours of Power

I've been suffering from some early starts this week so I haven't felt like doing too much on the turbo in the evenings. I got a lucky break on Wednesday and was home early enough to set up for an Hour of Power. I last did this on 13 Feb and did a shortened 54 minute version so I needed to do full hour this time. Last time I suffered around 38 minutes and I had to back off for a while to be able to recover then complete the session. I was well motivated and keen to get the whole session done...

Unfortunately, my body decided otherwise. The good news is that I was disciplined at achieving the 275W (90% FTP) baseline and 450W bursts and that I lasted longer before I failed than the last time I attempted the Hour of Power, the bad news was that it was the start of a complete failure and I was unable/unwilling to complete the hour even though I knew I really needed to. My HR wasn't excessively high, peaking at 171bpm so I'm not exactly sure why I seemed to be suffering quite so much. Obviously there are daily variations in performance, but this seems like a fairly fundamental failure to perform rather than just a weaker performance.

Today I decided that I'd try the Hour of Power on the open road rather than suffering in the heat and boredom of my kitchen. I had quite a hard day at work yesterday, including getting a bad dose of CS gas, and several glasses of wine last night, so I thought I might be lining myself up for a big failure.

After a short warm-up (it was too cold to be riding too slowly) I got on with business. Above is the 60 minutes ignoring the warm up and cool down. The good news is that I managed to complete it. I had a bit of a brain-dump after 6 bursts and I forgot to do the 7th on time, so I threw in an extra one as soon as I realised and accepted that I'd have less time to recover before the next one. Heart rate was similar to the turbo session, peaking around 171bpm but I just felt a lot better throughout the whole session and never felt like I was going to fail. For the bursts I was standing for 20 revolutions as a practice mini-sprint and there's a lot more variability on the baseline as a result of corners, traffic, junctions etc.

The excellent news is that I was consistently above the 275W baseline and my bursts were well above the 450W targets too. As a result I managed a 60 min average power of 296W (equal to my second best ever recorded power output) and at the end I was even able to surge to 312W for the last 6 minutes, though I was pretty knackered at the end. The 60 mins of hurt had a relative intensity of 0.949.

So, overall a very good day to get me over the bad turbo session earlier in the week. It's also clear that riding this on the road MUST be easier than on the turbo, possibly as it was cooler and possibly as it was possible to to the bursts out of the saddle rather than seated on the turbo. I'm sure the wine didn't help, but maybe, just maybe, that's the answer!

Sunday Morning Road Ride

After Friday's fun on the road I made the effort to get up early and get a longer ride in today. The sun was up by 8am, shining brightly trough the morning mist, and after a bowl of cornflakes and a cup of tea I was ready to go, immediately hit by a cold blast of air as I opened the front door. When I set of it was a chilly zero degrees (C) and I was dressed for something a bit warmer than that, but I really couldn't be bothered to go back inside and change.

For the first hour I set a brisk tempo pace (90% FTP around 275W), just enough to feel like it's on the border between comfortable and uncomfortable with an average HR of 159 to match.

The ride was a nice mix of rolling terrain and steep hills and a couple of times I embarrassed myself by having to change down to the smaller chainring (34T!!). I wasn't trying to smash the climbs so I changed gear accordingly, but on a hard day I would have been able to all of the climbs in the big ring (50T) except Dalby Bank, which is a b'stard.

After the first hour the temperature had increased and I dropped down into the beautiful village of Hovingham and then home via Brandsby and Crayke on more terrible Yorkshire roads. It really is a matter of time before somebody dies as a result of hitting one of the many massive potholes.

I was lucky to not fall off on ice on Dalby Bank which just seemed to appear once I started climbing. After 15m I was just wheel spinning so I had to walk 50m or so to clear the slippery bit and try not to get hit by a wheelspinning car slithering its way up the 1-in-12 climb.

By the end I was pleased to finish the ride and get into a hot shower and have a hot coffee.

The rest f the week looks like turbo sessions, but as I'm starting work early and not getting home until 6pm I don't know how much enthusiasm I'll have.

Totals for the day:
Distance - 45 miles
Ave power - 245W (incl the first hour at 275)
Ave speed - 18.3 (including some ice walking)
Calories - 2160

Road Session

After a day off from training I was really pleased to drive home in glorious sunshine because it meant that I could finally get out onto the road again. The North Yorkshire roads are made of cheese and are dangerously maintained by a bunch of incompetent idiots with little funding, so it was nice that they were dry enough to ride on without sinking up to the hubs in all the puddles.

After a gentle warm up I tried to regain a local Strava segment which some local scrote had stolen off me a couple of months ago, and I'm pleased to report that I managed to win it back with a time of 2 mins 30 and an average power of 395W. This is quite a low power for such a short interval but I struggled to get the power down for some reason. The road is obviously different to my turbo which seems to give a constant resistance rather than the variable resistance of real-world riding.

Then I did a couple of 340W intervals (6 mins then 4 mins with a short rest between) starting each with a big dose of power and then settling down to achieve the average, and I was really feeling it towards the end of both of them but it was lovely to be outside and getting the benefit of the cooling air to control my heat build up. It's easy to get used to having sweat running into your eyes and down your face if you do a lot of indoor work so it was a pleasure to finish the ride dry and warm rather than soaking wet and boiling hot.

After another short rest I settled in for a 40 minute interval at 275W (90% FTP, sweetspot) over a gently rolling triangular route. I think I've lost quite a bit of efficiency as a result of doing a winter of static turbo sessions so I made a point of sticking in a single gear and giving my legs a good work out and making them work hard by varying cadence rather than sticking to my favoured 86rpm. There are quite a few power peaks and troughs associated with corners and the slight hills and I also noticed that I put out the best power on the long into-wind leg because I felt that I had more to work against.

I think that's only my 4th or 5th road ride since I started this blog. Now that the nights are getting lighter I'm going to make more effort to get out on the road more to complement my kitchen turbo torture sessions.

Hour of Power - nearly

Today I did a shortened version of the infamous 'Hour of Power' devised by Bill Black. It's based around 60 minutes at a solid 90% FTP (for me 275W) with 15 sec bursts to 150% FTP (450W) every 2 mins and 45 secs. In the hour you should complete 20 bursts and 20 tempo intervals between.

There are lots of variations of the ratio of power but I looked at 90/150 and thought it would be achievable although I only planned to do 54 minutes as part of a 60 min workout. I'm going to add another 3 mins until I get to the full 60 plus warm-up and cool-down.

It started off well enough until I got to the 12th burst (the big red A) when I suddenly felt pretty crappy and was happy to back off and recover for 45 seconds or so. This also ties in with my highest HR and not being able to achieve the 450W burst. Luckily my HR strap was working today so it's easy to see that my HR was nowhere near it's 175 LTHR and only up to a measly 167-170 for the 6 mins leading up to the A. I know from experience that I usually suffer if I stay in this HR zone for too long so I'm not surprised that I hated it today, though I'm always cautious to not look at HR during the workout because I don't want it to make me think about stopping when I get up to these levels.

After the A I seemed to settle down a bit and just had a bit of weakness immediately after the bursts and then I did the last burst as an all-out 30 secs at 400W. And then I was done and beaten by Bill.

Next time I won't do anything different except stick to the 275W intervals and add another interval to take it up to 19 bursts. The time after that will be 20 intervals.

Overall stats for the 54 minutes:

Work done - 945 kJ
Average power - 290W
Average HR 160
Relative Intensity .93