Yesterday I did a short, easy ride with a couple test pushes at threshold; both only two minutes each. During the ride, my legs felt better than they had in a long time! I knew the weather was supposed to better today, that’s part of the reason I kept it easy—I wanted to save it for today’s ride! The forecast was correct and today it was in the 40’s with no rain, so I was finally able to ride outside. Besides my St. George ride on Christmas Day, I hadn’t ridden outside in three weeks! My resting HR was also really low this morning, usually an indicator that I’m well-rested. Over the past month, while I’ve been in my riding “funk”, it’s been 2-3 beats higher than normal, even after “rest” days. So today’s number was another good sign.
I started my ride with the intention of doing a sprint workout, followed by some tempo. Just gotta do those sprints when I have the chance to ride outside! My max powers on the first few sprints weren’t that great, but it’s been a while since I’ve done a true sprint workout, so it was understandable. As I was heading west on Beacon Light towards Can Ada Rd. I thought maybe I should do a couple hard anaerobic efforts. So I turned north on Can Ada and did an interval on that steep section of road. I cranked it all the way up and kept looking at the clock to make sure it was a 1-minute effort. If I’m going to do a short effort like that, might as well make it a duration I can compare to past scores!
After the interval, I checked the average power, and it was 588 watts! One measly watt less than my all-time best of 589!? But that doesn’t account for the time period between the end of the effort and reaching over to stop the interval timer. So I was hoping that once I download the ride, I would find that I surpassed my all-time best.
At this point, I was stoked! So after 10 minutes of rest, I did another test on the Hillsdale part of Can Ada Rd. This one didn’t seem as good power-wise, especially since there were a couple cars that startled me at the end of my effort. At that point, I was “all over my machine” (as Phil Ligget would say) as well as all over the road! In my confusion, I forgot to stop that interval, so I had no idea what my power was. After that, I did a couple more sprints on Purple Sage, but they were weak. By that point, my legs didn’t have much left to give, at least at the top-end. So I switched to tempo for the next half hour.
On my way back on State St, I decided I might as well try a 5-minute effort. It’s a flat road with no intersections, and today I had a slight headwind. That interval didn’t go as well; it wasn’t anywhere near my all-time, or even this year’s, best. Oh well, maybe I’ll have to test that some other time when I’m fresh. So I went back to doing tempo, then spun easy up Eagle Rd as my cool-down.
When I finally downloaded my ride, I was pleasantly surprised at what I found: That first 1-minute test was 598 watts! Woo, hoo!!! And the second test wasn’t as bad as I thought: 593 watts…still over my all-time best! Considering I haven’t done any focused Level 6 work yet, I was astounded at both scores! Hopefully, this bodes well for my anaerobic work capacity once I actually do some focused training in that area.
Another thing also made me happy: While my sprints weren’t that great when looking at max and 5-second power, my 12-second power was only 1 watt off of my all-time best, achieved back in November. So my sprints weren’t as bad as I thought?! I just had no way of knowing by looking at the Max wattage on the PowerTap.
So I’m very happy with today’s performance. Considering where I am compared to my all-time bests, I’m actually doing quite well, at least on the shorter durations. In the near future, I’d like to do a 5-minute and 60-minute test; I really think I can do better than my last ones. Total ride time was 2:12 with 169 TSS and 214/268 ave/norm power.