Snow time

We spent the day at Alta...they got 18" of snow in the last 24 hours so it was incredible.  My little 5 year old was ripping down black diamond slopes in powder...today was her 7th day on skis.  She rocks.   Julie and I would take turns skiing with her while the other was out hunting for untracked shots.  It was a great day...

VO2

Tonight I got a mulletectomy then went out with Der Knut to do a workout. I decided to ramp up the time for the VO2 intervals. I started with 2 at 4:00, then 2 at 4:30 then one at 5:00. I kept the wattage averages around 311w or so (about 113%). After this was done I did a solid 30' of tempo riding to get some more TSS for the day. We headed back in by lights.

Spin

Went out for a real recovery ride with le nutty. 1:12 and a whoppin 35TSS. I don't know whose legs these belong to...

My pre-vaca plan is to do a 2 hour SST session tomorrow which should be doable then get at least one "hard" workout in before friday...2 would be nicer but I'm a realist.

Bike Practice

I got in a much longer ride today than I had planned (or was capable of doing alone) thanks to Maria and Austin...they just kept going and going. I felt good in a completely fatigued sort of way.

For the first hour my legs felt like overstuffed lead sausages...but they came around, sort of. Mostly we just cruised & I did one hard effort down chain gang rd and that helped open the legs up a bit. At the end I was very glad to see the house.

<--charts are current as of today

275 TSS

Today I felt like I got some of my mojo back...maybe I was gettin a bit overreached with my training or something but today I had great legs. A very nice 70° day.

We decided to start out with the group ride and some people got a little bent out of shape because we were riding hard and not waiting at every intersection. Sorry, we weren't trying to be dicks. Group dynamics: gotta love it.

Coming up Old Leesburg there's a long climb and we usually go hard here. Ladd and I ended up on the front and I put it at 333w (my VO2 range is 297-338w) and kept it there for the 5' climb. I could hear LL breathing hard so I knew it was a good tempo (his 5' ave was 415!). Once we got to the turn off there were 6 of us left: LL, Me, Lang, Jay, Clemson Nick and Casey.

WTF? What was this 20 y.o. girl riding a piece of crap Trek 1000 still doing with us? And us means: a Cat1, a Cat2 and three Cat3's. We turned onto Chain gang and I said "lets go hard" so we drilled it at race pace all the way to eastover. Short 400+w pulls and cruising at 30mph. We were motoring and Casey just sat there and never got dropped (I think she did beat LL in the sprint...). Amazing. Sign her up.


At the Gmart we all split up. LL/Jay went home, Lang and I headed out to the cricket store then back to the fort. He had to go save some lives so I did another loop. I'm really amazed at how good I felt today after such a crappy week.

1x90' at blah

This has been a rough week...it's been hard to get out and git er done. The legs have felt bad and I just am having a tough time getting em to go. So I'm just trying to get through it...tonight I decided to just do a SST workout: a loop in the fort, about 90' at 230w or so.

Once I got home I felt like I could do a bit more so I hopped on the velodyne for 30' and just cruised at tempo. It'll get better...

1x40'

Jules and E are heading to SLC tomorrow so I've been spending a lot of time doing dad stuff the last couple of days. I managed a quick spin on monday then today when they were at ballet class I squeezed in a very efficient workout.

It was raining off and on so I warmed up riding over to the crit course for 15' then did 1x40 (@ 275w) doing the last 10' on the way home. Cool down for 5' then I was home. 1 hour of ride time...81TSS...nice.

Ok...it's Feb. 12th, tonight I was riding in the rain, at night, in just shorts and a jersey and I was warm. Tomorrow I'm gonna see what the weather does...I may do another VO2 workout or just ride for 3 hours, or both. We'll see how I feel.

howling

On friday I tweaked my ankle doing doughnuts on my scooter at work...tried to ride friday and was only able to go an hour...it hurt. Saturday was a no-go...I could barely walk. Today it felt pretty good so I decided to make up for lost time.

We ended up doing 4:15 in 15mph winds with gusts to 30. It was pretty epic heading out to gaston but once we turned with the wind we were cruising at 33mph. Brian and I did an extra loop in the fort to rack up the TSS.

I usually take mondays off but I think I'll be down for a bit of threshold work tomorrow and try to put in a 3 day block of hard training.

pretty cool...

6x4' @ 113%

Yesterday turned into another rest day. We had torrental rain so I had lots of kiddo time. It's all good...I felt great today.

Today I started the VO2 workouts we all love so much. I was going to do 5 intervals but was feeling so good I did a 6th. I shot for around 310w which is about 113% of my FTP. It was a good place to start. They were hard but nothing like the usual 6x5' (at 115%) ones I do. I finished the day with 20' of hard tempo averaging about 236w.

2:10 and 141TSS...a pretty solid day.

Easy 2hrs

After feeling like total crap yesterday I was a new person today...amazing what a day of rest can do. The legs felt OK today, not great but it wasn't that hard to keep the intensity at ~200w for 2 hours. Basically just cruising along...

Tomorrow's supposed to rain and I really don't want to do those VO2 intervals on the velodyne but I will if I have to.

Oh yeah...it was 80° today.

Rest day

I'm chillin' today. No bikie.

On Wednesday I'm starting VO2 workouts. I've been debating about how to begin. Right now I'm leaning towards 5x4' (4' rest) at 112% (308w) to keep it "easy" and manageable for the first go around. Some sick part of me is looking forward to these...

My scooter's humming along now after replacing the carb. This Saturday may be the first motorpacing session...stay tuned.

Fried

A group of 8 of us did 3 hours today...I was pretty thrashed from yesterday so I hid in the back all day. Karl basically pulled the last 45min alone, thank god. Go Karl!

With temps that hit 70° and no wind it was a pretty stellar day.

<--charts are current. I had a big week: 13 hrs, 7700kj, 671TSS, 250miles.

2500kj

Went out with Ladd, Jay & Tri-Jeff (aka the metronome) and did 80 miles this morning. The roads up past Blythwood and south of Lake Wateree are awesome...very good riding.

It wan't crazy hard but we did keep it very steady with long threshold+ pulls...our ave speed was 21.5 for the day. That kindof wears you down after a while.

Ladd was up over 3100kj--Go eat a cookie...you've earned it. And of course Jeff went running for 30min after the ride...My post ride goal is to eat a lot then walk to the couch without falling down, then not to move for a while.

update: Ladd's numbers from today are pretty amazing!

Loopage

Ez loop in the fort...90min. It's amazing how much easier this ride feels with a CTL of 58 compared to 25.

Big ride tomorrow...