Week 20 NOS Bike Rides
Started the week off in the pool with ~1800 meters of mostly drills. Then took advantage of the great weather and took the bike outside. 1:21, 25 miles, @ 0.87IF. No set intervals, just focused on keeping at 85%+ on the flats and up hills. All in all, pretty happy.
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Swim at lunch. 2200 yards with main set of 6 x 150 (first 100 at race pace, then 50 easy)
Bike on trainer at night. 60 mins with main set of 4 x 8 mins Z3. TSS = 59. I love race week training!
20' WU
2 x 15' (2') @ 102%/100%
1 x 8' @ 100%
Good luck everyone!
Mini tri this morning before I catch a plane.
Swim - 1700 yards including 6 x 150 (100 @ race pace, 50 easy) and 4 x 50 sprint
Bike - 45 mins on the trainer including 3 x 8 mins @ Z3
Run - 3.63 miles including 3 x 3 mins @ Z2
I am about to kick off Paul's "I am freaking old now so I'm going to race my ass off tour!" Race report to come early next week. Good luck on your testing and thanks for all the great NOS mojo.
ok here is my WK20,
My Plan for this week is
a.) get rested from my HM race from last Sunday (no run till this sunday)
b.) get back into swimming (Tue/Wed/Fri/Sun)
c.) prepare for my finial Bike Test (Wed/Thu/Sat target for 275-290W FTP on saturday)
d.) start working on my nutrition - want to loose 2-3 kg next 4-8 weeks (i managed to get 1-2 kg off in Feb, mainly due to the long runs)
Yesterday: Swam
)
500m WU / Skill progression
10x100m Fast/Smooth/Controlled
100m CD (had to leave the lane as the school kid came in
Wed: Lunchtime, same protocol as Tuesday, with 200m CD
Tonight and tomorrow I will bike again (2..3x15' FTP/Z3) to get on shape for a saturday bike test (most likely i will do the 5/10/20 test)
On the swim i am very suprised how well things going, taking the fact that i have not done any real swimming since September (with the exception of one Hotel Pool attempt in Jan
). I hit 8 of 10 100mintervals at T+2..3 sec yesterday, today i was swimming the first 5 100m intervals at T-5..8 sec and the remainder on T+2..3 sec. Now I feel like a real triathlete again 
Paul... hope you taper well into your race and good luck .. looking forward to your report
The rest i wish best preparing for the finial OS results.
Tuesday was a busy day for me. Swam in the morning. good solid workout. Nothing spectacular, but solid.
The weather was great and I knew it would be, so I broke out the TT bike to go for my first outdoor ride on it - and in fact my first ride on it at all in months. As everyone knows, I have moved around my test weeks, so I've done my last indoor OS test already. I was going for a std 1-hr FTP ride, but my legs were just too trashed after I got going and just turned it into an ABP ride. The good news (as I posted up on the front page) was that the result was fantastic. 1.5 minute PR on my "1 hour" route from my house to a particular intersection. I'll take that any day. :-)
@Paul- Good luck. We'll all be waiting for the report!
Outside again today. Starting to come to grips with how to get effective intervals with up and down terrain. Pretty much got the spaces in this route figured out as best as I can, on to the next one:
1:22, 25.xx miles, 0.88 IF overall.
1x 8 @ 1.03
1x 10 @ 1.0
1x 7 @ 1.0
Probably a tad below desired spot because I'm using the indoor FTP outdoor, but I'm not testing again til I get up on the tri bike.... Which segues perfectly into the plan for tomorrow/rest of the week.
T'row: AM swim (getting the Swimsense unit wet for the first time!)
Lunch time Retul fit with the tri-bike that's never been ridden and has been staring at me for the past four months in the basement
Fri: AM Swim
Sat: Rock n Roll Half Mary (very low expectations as I'm still coming back after getting snipped four weeks ago)
Sun: 1 on 1 swim session with local coach (complete w/video)
Fun times all, finish out the NOS strong!
All in all, a success. I'm looking forward to taking these improvements into the IM plan for CDA and then finishing the season with Savageman, a grueling HIM.
Best of luck to those of you testing later.
I decided (slightly against the coaches rec) to test outside yesterday. It was 80F here in Chicago and outside was calling. My FTP was 246 W, 2 W less than my max....but.....I had to contend with a bit of traffic and had to turn around several times which killed my watts. (4 complete U turns per 20 min interval). My HR was only 152 where other tests have had me at 160 bpm. Thus--if I were able to really push it through and push my body to an avg HR of 160 I think my real FTP would be higher. I am satisfied. I think I will bump up my FTP to 250 for my final number since safety trumped a real hard push.
I need to really find a better place to do my tests in the future.
Took the thread title as reason to do my very last OS bike outside (firsttime outside this year)
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Wow i was doing my regular 35km loop which took me last year normally 1:20 and had two sensations
first riding against wind (26km/h) is something to get used to again
second my loop is now only 1:10 and i was only ABP (hr z3).
Did no formal FTP testing (will do one in the getfast TP) but based on last indoor trainer session my ftp is about 280W and my Pmax for5' at 345w.
So my bike OS brought my from 251w/82kg/3.0 W/kg to 280w/79kg/3.5kg that is 11% in Watts and 16% W/kg.
Thanks for pushing thru the NOS, looking forward to next years OS.
Nice job by all who got to week 20. It looks like some very good gains were made. I'm hammering through another 3 weeks.
Gordon
Just got done with my final bike test. Brutal, as always! Faded a bit about 13 minutes into the second 20' interval, but hung on and pushed hard at the end. Started OS at 250, and ended at 277 for a 27 watt bump. Very happy with that. Last year when I moved outside my ftp went up 20 watts, and I'm hoping for that again this year. Would like to get the outside ftp up to 300 in time for Rev3 Quassy in early June. The gory details are here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/159190305
The power tap cadence got very variable for some reason on the second interval - not sure why that happened, but my real cadence was not bouncing around that much.
It's been a great outseason - good luck with the rest of your seasons everyone! I will be back next November for more work!