It finally felt like spring today with the temperature reaching 60° F! In addition, I was able to get in a tough workout so it was a great day all around. Ted and I headed out on our TT bikes to do a medium-length ride with a set of 2×20’s somewhere along the way. We headed out at a brisk pace and did our first interval up Hwy 16. There was a bit of traffic that time of day, so it was a bit disconcerting to have cars constantly passing you at 65 MPH when you’re on your aerobars, but most of the road has an OK shoulder. The first interval went OK, but my legs could still feel the effects the 4×15’s I did on Sunday. Today I was shooting for 100% of my FTP, the same as Sunday. A quick look at my average power before I stopped the interval and I was right on!
We dropped down through Emmett and did the second interval, westbound on Hwy 52. There was a tail/cross-wind and it was really blowing. We were able to cruise at 28 MPH! Then as cars would go by, there was enough draft that my speed would increase for 10-20 seconds after. It felt good to be able to go time-trial speed, even though I had normal spoked wheels. My legs were really hurting on this one, similar to my last rep on Sunday. Since the road was flat I did a better job at pacing this one. I went sub-threshold for the first 5 minutes, threshold the next ten, then kicked it up for the last five. Without peeking at my average power during the interval, I was still able to hit my target spot at 305 watts.
We turned around and had to fight the wind on the way back. By this point my legs were tired and even doing Tempo was getting hard. We headed up Little Freezeout and then took Purple Sage to Hillsdale. We saw another rider up the road and noticed he looked particularly “orange”. So we pushed it to catch him and it was our teammate Ben! So the three of us rode back together. Ted was lagging for a while and finally, he stopped to check his bike. His new TT bike has horizontal dropouts and at some point his wheel became skewed. His wheel was rubbing so hard that it was difficult to turn the wheel by hand! He wasn’t sure how long it was like that but he must have had to put out 100 more watts to overcome it!
Ben would pull through strong and I just tried to keep it tempo the rest of the way. Ted was mainly recovering from the added “interval” he did plus a lack of food. Once we got back to Eagle we went to Subway. It was a good ride and I’m feeling more and more comfortable on the TT bike. I’m going to stay on it for the rest of the week until the Jason Broome TT on Sunday. It’s the first year the George’s Spring Series has a time trial so it will be interesting to see where everyone’s form is right now.