That ride on Saturday really kicked my butt, so Sunday was a recovery day and yesterday I just went out long enough to get 5 sprints in then came home. Today I wanted to do a real workout, but I still wasn’t feeling that great before getting on the bike so I decided to hit the rollers. What’s great about riding indoors is if you have an awful ride, you can stop at any time and you’re home!

So I warmed up for a measly 10 minutes then launched into my first VO2max interval. It hurt and I noticed my HR wasn’t responding too well. My average wattage was also fairly low, but I had to remind myself that I don’t usually hit the same wattage when I’m indoors. I thought about quitting, but I decided to try another one to see—maybe the first one helped “blow out the pipes”, so to speak. Well the second one hurt just as much, but my wattage was better. So then my goal was to do four. Mentally it was tough, especially indoors, but I had my tunes cranked to keep me going. During the fourth one, I thought “This is it, I’m done!” But after a few minutes of easy spinning, I figured, what’s one more!? It’s amazing how quickly you forget the pain of a few moments ago, once your HR has come down to a reasonable level!

So for the fifth VO2 interval, I started at a high-cadence, even for me (112 RPM for the first 2.5 minutes). That didn’t seem to work very well as my average wattage was really low the first half and I had to make up for it during the second half. I shifted down and started pushing harder. But even with 30 seconds to go, the average wattage was still too low so I had to shift down a couple more clicks and hammer the last bit. With such a negative split, I maxed out my HR at 186 and managed to achieve a respectable 352 watts! Yet another VO2 workout where I’m glad I stuck it out and was able to complete them. It seems that the theme lately has been to just take them one at a time, then surprise myself with how many I end up doing!?