Athlete Blogs
March 1st, 2009Day 3
Today was my third hard day in a row of workouts exceeding 100 points - friday was around 100, yesterday 140, today another tough workout. One of my guys asked the other day if a "100 point" workout was "good or bad" - my response was that it depends. Points can come in many flavors - I prefer the kind that come from blood curdling intervals. You can easily rack up 100 points in a hard interval session in 75 minutes - or you can do an easy 2 or 3 hr ride and get more points. So in my mind a point is not a point, it depends on how ya get them. This means that the CTL for someone who focuses more on intensity than trying to get 15 or 20 hrs/week in is going to be lower - not to worry though, it will show in FTP. SO every now and then I have to reassure guys that even though their CTL may be lower than a friends, their hard work certainly will pay off and for many of them it already has with great 2009 results.Anyway - I woke up this morning, tired and a little grumpy. I'd rather be racing but the weather is bad today - ice, snow, 40mph winds, just nasty. So I got on the bike around 5:15 with a bad attitude, already making up my mind that I was too tired to work hard, etc. Whenever I have those thoughts, I remember that I force myself, no matter what, to get at least 5:00 into my first interval before deciding to pack it in. I have saved countless workouts doing this - it really works. So I felt crappy in my 20:00 warmup, the 2 1:00 efforts at 100% felt like death but I didn't care. Hit my first 20:00 interval and thought I was going to die at 2:00 into it - but 5:00 was my goal. Funny thing, by the time I got to 5:00 I felt better, the pain was at the appropriate level - so that was that, workout on. Did 2x20 at 339, 346w, nice power, happy with that. I had a little more gas in the tank so I did a 20:00 piece at 85% to finish off the workout at 90 minutes, 110 points, done. Three hard days in the bag - time for at least one rest day, possibly two.
I can't wait to try another all out 20:00 effort, I can tell I've gained a lot of fitness lately and am getting ever so close to my near term goal of seeing 400w for 20:00. Might happen this week, might take a month but that's the goal. I figure that after a solid 3 week block of VO2 work building up to a peak for nationals I may have an additional 20w of FTP left to gain - so the season long goal would be an MP20 of 420w. If I can do that it will be my best season ever, at least in terms of power output. Race results depend on a lot of things - but you gotta have the engine tuned and ready to go.
I noted something funny this morning - by the time I finish up a long indoor workout and eat - I usually have downed 2000 calories, usually before 8AM. That's easily more than my wife eats all day - some days a LOT more than she eats. Funny. I think cytomax might make up 20% of my dietary intake, I hope I'm not approaching the LD50 of cytomax.
What else....went live with version 2 of my website yesterday, my webmaster is the best and a pretty strong masters rider too - yet another CCT client who will be a threat at nationals. If I'm not careful I may risk my stars and stripes this year! Note how I said "my" jersey. Just like in the movie "friday" - "my bike now punk". My jersey now punk.
Though I don't have any new tires yet, I'm beginning the meticulous process of gluing new race wheels - 808 front/1080 rear - I think the only person who might do a better or same job gluing tires is goldman. I have ridden his wheels without concern but I rarely trust anyone with gluing. As he wrote the other day, 3 super thin coats with at least 24hrs drying time, 2 thin coats on base tape - focusing on the edges, then one thin mounting coat. Stretch tire for days/weeks of course. I've done this enough times to have 100% confidence in the gluing job, which you must have if you are going to rip through crit corners at 30mph.
Cheers!
-Coach Pete
