Since Sunday’s race, I’ve been playing it conservatively as far as my training goes. I wasn’t feeling great the couple days after the race and my sore throat didn’t get much better until Wednesday. I did manage to squeeze in a sprint workout on Tuesday, but my power wasn’t that great. So today, I finally felt good enough to hit it hard again. I went out to do 6×5-minute VO2max intervals as VO2 is currently what I’m focusing on.
Today was another beautiful spring day with blue skies and temps in the 60’s. I headed out on Beacon at a tempo pace. At first my legs didn’t feel that good and I was worried about how my intervals would go. I did my first VO2 on Beacon, and the first couple minutes felt fine, but the last three hurt…and this was the first interval! When I did my 5×5’s last week, it didn’t feel that hard until the fifth interval! But I’ve been using a power meter long enough that I know you can’t always go by feel, so I kept plugging along. I continued to do 5-minute VO2 intervals up Hwy 16
Then I went down Old Freezeout so I could do the last two intervals, uphill. My thought was: since I was starting to fade, doing them uphill would help. Ha! That didn’t work?! The last two were the worst! Of course, I can’t blame it on the hill, with no “real” workouts since Sunday, I figured my legs would give out earlier than usual. But my interval wattage was still 114-115% of threshold, so still in VO2 range.
The last one I did an “extra” minute since I started a bit lower on the hill and wanted to finish at the top. It also gave me my highest max HR of the day (185). I always kick it up at the end of the last interval, knowing I won’t blow the rest of the workout! So after doing six VO2’s I rode easy for a few minutes then picked it up to a tempo pace for the rest of the ride, with the last ten minutes reaching into LT/Level 4 territory. It actually felt good there, as that’s my personal “sweet spot”. A few minutes of cool-down and I was home. I was glad I didn’t abort the intervals after the first one, as today ended up being a great workout!