2016/17 NOS Week 5 Bike Thread - Fighting with a gorilla
Welcome to the "I can't believe it's already week 5" bike thread. It's great to hear of everyone's challenges, progress and questions. This weeks workouts will again be the basically the same format, but the Z4 intervals get a little longer and the quantity of 30/30s goes up.
Rule #10 of the Velominati Rules of Cycling states: It never gets easier, you just go faster. As this famous quote by Greg LeMan tells us, training, climbing, and racing is hard. It stays hard. To put it another way, per Greg Henderson: “Training is like fighting with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you’re tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired.”
I noticed in the coaches notes for Tuesday, there is a comment on bike position. You may recall, there was a lot of discussion in the forum in week 4. position on the bike -- choose the position (or select the bike) that reduces the mental cost of doing the work. If that's road bike in the hoods vs tri bike in the aerobars, that's fine. Just build the fitness with the lowest mental cost venue available, then we'll transfer that to a tri-specific riding position later when you shift to your A-race training plan.
Comments
10/31/16, FTP: 208, W/kg: 2.83
11/29/16, FTP: 218, W/kg: 3.00
45' ride
1x14'@ 1.07
1x5'@ 1.07
Definitely a hard one this morning.
@Ashton, nice FTP bump after only 4 weeks!
@Ellen, Great job! I also stare at Trainer Road and my Garmin 520
Wow, that hurt! 16' is a lot longer than 12'. I had to turn off Netflix and listen to my music to stay focus on maintaining watts. 2X16' were at 1.01 and 1.03.
@Leslie, I'm with ya on that darn Gorilla. Love the analogy though. Great FTP bump @Ashton!! Excellent work all.
My 2 x 14' started off great. Hit great numbers for first interval, 1.03.. then, my 3 young boys (3, 4, 6) woke up and came downstairs about 30 mins sooner than I expected. That blew up the middle of second interval, but recovered some to hit 0.98. Tried to keep them from killing each other while pushing through the z3 work, but having them around my spinning rear wheel was unnerving. Oh well, got the work done. Delayed brick run, for obvious reasons. lol
@Mike - jealous about your Central Park run tomorrow. Sounds much better than what I got going on.
@Derrek, @Ed - thanks for the kudos. Trying to catch up to you guys. Ed, that's the worst when they get fixated on the spinning rear - I go into panic mode, shouting to the wife for backup. The dog, on the other hand, only needed to catch a couple whacks to head from the pedals and she won't go near me now!
Workout completed on Tribike/Trainer/TR. I love Trainer Road ...
I watch/listen something on my iPhone on the trainer to cut the boredom. From now on need to set DND. I can ignore the emails/texts, but the calls seem to break my concentration.
Anybody have any good podcast recomendations. Watching movies is getting harder now that I need to focus on the power number so much.
@Mike - I've only done a few spin classes, but I left each one totally crushed, so a good substitute. I saw your run in Central park on Strava this morning. That is where I love to run when I get to New York.I did the 2 X 16' yesterday. I am certain that I would not have been able to hold these if it what not for the fact that I did not want to report back to you all that the gorilla won. I was able to hold both right at 100% and then the 8' ABP at 84%. My heart was racing for sure! I am looking forward to a nice run tonight!
I'm not an official NOS member but have been doing the training since week 1. I haven't planned my 2017 season yet but figured I would get ahead of the curve by participating. This is also my reason for not posting until today.
I'm trying really hard to get my FTP up this year (this is my 3rd OutSeason) and am pushing each ride a little harder than prescribed. It could be a recipe for disaster or possibly a huge ROI? Time will tell. Anyway, yesterday's ride was tough....2 x 14' seemed like a big jump and I completed it at 102% FTP but added 2 minutes of additional rest between intervals.
Did anyone else think the rest interval seemed a little short this early on?
As to rest between intervals, wanting more rest is a sure sign that the work is too hard for your current fitness, and is an early warning sign you are slowly creeping up to the overtraining abyss. If you fall into that, you won't get the improvements out of the OS you are seeking. Be humble, patient, disciplined, and consistent. (The right amount of) work works.
For the rest intervals, I've been unplugging the Computrainer from erg mode and soft pedaling. I do this to 1) wipe sweat off my arms and hands, 2) blow my noes since I can't launch snot rockets in the basement, 3) get my HR down as low as possible before the next interval starts. I usually plug back in after 90 seconds. That 2 minutes goes by pretty quick!
It's very motivating seeing everyone getting in their workouts. Great job.
@Al, thanks for the reminder about over-cooking the workouts. I tend to push above each zone target, but need to keep that within reason.
Despite mainly following the intermediate plan, I did the advanced 30/30s in Trainer Road on Thursday, as well as last Thursday. I feel like I can do a bunch of 30/30s without fatiguing all that quickly. 14 of them definitely is a bunch of work though. Both sets were similar power numbers, and strived to hit upper end Z5 each time. Definitely need to let the legs chill on Friday.