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JOS 2020 Bike Thread Week 11 - The New Normal
Thanks @Bill Eckert for starting last week's thread. A bit a sleep at the switch after a fun weekend BC skiing in VT. This was't a good week for the world, never mind my issues of getting WKOs done. I'm not going to beat the Covid 19 wagon to death.
Let's all focus! the more time we spend in our pain caves, or running/ biking alone outside, the more we are practicing social distancing.. let's pump each other up and get those new FTP numbers out there for the last third of the OS!
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My April ski trip to Utah was cancelled (got a complete refund - Yeah!), no travel for work, kids are home from college and high school and I'm working from home in the basement for the foreseeable future. I'm looking at this as a great opportunity to do some quality WKO's. I now have more control over my schedule and can spend some quality time in the pain cave.
I'm just not sure about what happens when it's time to start swimming. I know it's coming in a few weeks and I'm curious what others are planning to do.
So I did the Tuesday workout yesterday. I saw where @Jeff Phillips commented on Strava that he was not looking forward to it. I see he got it done.
I must say that as I was looking at the workout I was thinking that it was going to be tough and it was. It was nice to see a bump in the FTP last week. But now having to use that new number and looking at the workouts had me a little worried. I decided to stay on the low end of the prescribed range and adjust as needed. I was actually able to hold that and bumped it up a little using the bias during the intervals. It was not as bad as I thought it would be but still not easy. Interesting thing is I average watts was 242 and 239 for the two 20' intervals. Average watts for the FTP test in week 4 was 249. Amazing what consistent work will do.
Been in a slump since last week. If you ask me I have a mild case of something, my doc says runway allergies. I've been having a cough since Mid Feb in Utah, so it's likely not COVID19.
gotta get back to my daily routine, but did do the 2x20s. I felt from the outset that I wasn't on my game, so I dialed the effort down 10% and did the intervals as ramp ups.. solid efforts, that were better than blowing off the workout..
Way to get the work done @scott dinhofer
As I wrote on GroupMe, Tuesday's 2x20 min made today's 5x8 min seem tame. However, they were anything but. Got all five intervals done at FTP. The hardest part for me is keeping cadence up in ERG mode -- when I get tired, my cadence drops, and it becomes a grind. I was able to keep cadence in the high 80s, which for me is low as I like to be 95-100 RPM normally.
My HR climbed nicely through the workout. Interval 1, had max HR of 139; #2, max HR of 143; #3, max HR of 146; #4, max HR of 147; #5, max HR of 150.
I haven't looked at week 12 workouts yet, because I simply don't want to know...
Getting it done @Jeff Phillips !
I struggled today. Got through 4 of the intervals. Started the last one and just had to let it go. Pushed my run for today to tomorrow and going to see how tomorrow goes. Not feeling sick or anything like that. Just a little tired. It is definitely spring time here in Georgia. Getting the yellow pollen from the pine trees settling on everything.
Well done all. Both workouts were very hard for me, but I made it through 2x20 and 5x9 without stopping. My garmin is recommending recovering for the next 67 hours so apparently it agrees they (probably along with yesterday's run) were difficult.
I peaked ahead and next Tuesday's bike actually looks slightly easier than this week's to me. No such luck with the Thursday wko, however.
Hard morning for me. Even after a good nights sleep, I climbed off the bike after the two sweet spot intervals, 80 min in. I just couldn't spin my normal cadence today, I felt like I was grinding. I took my bike off ERG mode to see if I could spin faster in resistance mode, but that didn't help. HR was in-line, but RPE was really high, so I threw in the towel. Quick 1-mile brick off the bike and then a big breakfast.
Apologies for my weakness, it won't happen again! 😀
@Jeff Phillips Looks like we get another shot at the exact same workout next week. This three week block is just brutal on the bike!
I struggled with this one. Made it through 2x20 sweet spot, but had to scale it back to 90% 50 minutes into the Z3 work. I don't think I could have finished it at 100%; even finishing in Z2 was very difficult at that point. I'm still pretty tired a couple of hours later.
Shooting for the 7 run weekly target, I had run a couple of miles earlier in the day. Not sure if it would have helped much, but I think I'll flip the order and try this one on fresher legs next week.
@scott dinhofer : Hang in there... the structure of the OS is one thing that is not a new normal for Team EN. There will be great WKOs and not so great WKOs. Since consistency is the most important factor, modifying WKOs seems like smart training. Work ALWAYS Works.
@Jeff Phillips and @Mark McCombe 2x20’ @ Sweet Spot is one of my go-to WKOs when I am not feeling it. Solid work with less recovery cost. @Jeff Phillips has been doing some epic work recently.
@Mark McCombe : I find that once run frequency gets above 5/week with long run of 90’... my legs lose some snap overall, and I have more “down” WKOs on the bike. Hitting the WKO target is not as important as doing the Work.
I’ve had a couple of real breakthrough rides over the past 10 days. Tour of Watopia Short Group Rides are a good way for me to ease into a 45’ effort, form a good working group at my level, and finish with a sprint. Very cool to have your jersey flip to ENX at the line... especially when you get there first :-)
I built a 4-8x(15’@Sweet Spot/5’ Recovery) workout for my long rides on Sat and Sun. (That Freakin’ Tron Bike requires dedication) Really trying to stay healthy and nail the Run Durability. Going to step-up to CnC and add some long steady outdoor rides on nice weather days. I’m with @Ralph Moore in March OS now. Short Course races in May, June, or July. Boulder 70.3 in early August? I’ll stick with you guys, since we are JOS, and my current FTP represents OUR work together.
good advice @John Culberson
i am reloading starting today. time to get serious, all trips that were breaking my consistent inconsistency are now gone, I am distracted by us moving houses and rushing to get contractors done...
I was off grid, quite literally at times, for most of last week. Susan and I ordered a Happier Camper in September of 2018, We were supposed to leave last Friday to drive down to LA (a little over 1,000 miles away) and pick it up today. Then we were going to go to Joshua Tree National Park and camp for a couple of nights and do some gravel riding. Well, last Monday Happier Camper called us and said the camper was going to be done early and we could pick it up on Friday instead of Monday, did we want to do that? Oh, and they had been talking to the Mayor's office and he might be issuing a stay at home order any time now. They could maybe ship it, but it would be at least two weeks out and they didn't know how long any non-essential shipping would be happening. So perhaps it's best if you come down and pick it up. Our jobs have some flexibility and I had already scheduled to be off on Friday so we said sure we'll come down and pick it up on Friday. We figured we'd be spending most of the time in the car and it wouldn't be much different from being isolated at home. Besides, the WA state Dept of Health said that camping was social distancing.
We left early Wednesday morning and drove to Redding CA and spent the night there. Traffic on I-5 was not as light as I thought it would be, in fact, it was pretty normal with lots of semi's and cars. We got an early start on Thursday morning. We were going to spend the night in Bakersville and drive into LA on Friday morning. Since we got such an early start we knew we could be in LA in the afternoon so I sent HC an email asking if we could pick it up then. I got a reply back that no, they couldn't accomodate that and they'd see us in the morning.
We stopped for lunch about 3.5 hours out of LA and the phone rang. It was HC and they could have the camper ready that afternoon and it would be best if we could get there to pick it up then. We agreed and hit the road. Luckily the traffic was not bad heading into LA. In fact, I have never seen the freeways around LA so free flowing. I was driving 70-80 MPH at 4 PM and it wasn't bumper to bumper. It was pretty crazy.
We picked up the camper and headed to Ventura to camp for the night around 5:00. There was still very little traffic on the freeway and side streets. Having everyone working from home was very timely for us. Later that evening the Governor issued a stay at home order for the state. We're pretty sure the folks at HC knew it was coming and did what it took to get the camper ready for us.
On Friday we drove up to Pinnacles National Park where we had reservations for two nights. Once we got there we didn't have any cell service and no wifi so we truly were off the grid. It was great hanging out in our new camper and doing some hikes. It was easy to stay away from others and keep exposure to a minimum.
Pinnacles is about 850 miles from home so Sunday morning we left really early and headed north. The freeway between San Jose and Sacramento were practically deserted. It was very weird and surreal. It took us almost 17 hours to get home because we had a couple of longer breaks to walk the dog and eat. The camper is tucked safely under the carport and today our governor issued a minimum 2 week stay home order so we won't be taking it out soon. But we're already telling it about the places we're going to stay in it while exploring the US.
Back to training this week, Stay safe everyone. As Red Green used to say, "I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together."