Cycling Workouts: Discussion/Encouragement/Sharing/Banter

[HLaB]

First workout in a while after taking a break over Christmas. Nothing major to start me back, the scheduled Endurance ride in my plan, Bald -2. I had time last night to do the then scheduled Anaerobic workout, as I was still off work, but after a break and a 6h drive, I thought that might have been a step too far.

Tonight (Bald -2) I tried to keep a higher cadence for a change which might be why hr averaged nearly 70% on a recovery ride. Or it could be I’m unfit. The trainer/ERG seemed to drop the resistance on the 2nd long interval, so I started playing with my cadence more.

 

[HLaB]

Generated a bit of heat on tonight's VO2max workout (Morena). Although Garmin think it had more of an anaerobic workout. Maybe it was because some of the longer intervals were more threshold on average, with dips into VO2max 🤔

Interestingly (well to me anyway), it consistently appears I'm ever so slightly left sided. I thought I'd be ever so slightly right sided and it was just a sore right ankle but that settled down over Christmas.

 

[HLaB]

A bit icy here first thing so the group ride was called off. I might've been ok to cycle outside late afternoon but there was still ice when I went out for a walk at noon and I didn't fancy riding alone in those conditions, so I fired up TrainerRoad's workout suggestor, TrainNow. TN's AI suggested the Sweet Spot workout Kwaay. I started with ERG but it was having too much below target so I switched to Resistance mode for most of the work out. You can see my cadence drop a fair bit when I switched it off, and rise a few times when I toggled it on briefly.

Stood up a little more than I would have wanted to though.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Some 30 / 30 intervals outside this morning on a hill 5 mins away. It was 0C but hill is dry and gritted. Planned to do it later but when it rains it’ll hit frozen surfaces and that will be lethal.

I was reading an opinion on the difference between endurance and stamina. Endurance is the ability to sustain long low intensity efforts. Stamina to repeatedly do high intensity efforts. I quite like that, as the former you want for a long ride, the latter you want when there’s lot of hills. If you can both in same ride, you’re in a good place.

 

[HLaB]

No chance of outdoors here today, an icy start, then rain falling on top of it. I've been caught out in those conditions before as they never grit things.
So I thought I'd get an Endurance ride in on MyWhoosh to vary the scenery a bit. Lol, but what I didn't recognise until the 60mins long interval, MyWhoosh was only reading one power pedal, and it was more like a Tempo ride 😂 Apparently I have to go into the Favero app then find and enable some unification setting. That might though lose pedalling dynamics which I quite like.

 

[HLaB]

San Miguel for me tonight, unfortunately not 🍺 but an Anaerobic workout. To celebrate getting another year older a few weeks back I lowered my max HR by 1bpm again (1bpm per year from what I was regularly maxing out at when racing TTs)

I was expecting TrainerRoad to fail me because of the weird things going on with ERG. I made the mistake of jumping of the trainer in a recovery to tighten a skewer. When I jumped back on it ramped it up to a massive resistance. I expected it to fall as I got back to 40% FTP target but it never, it just kept on rising. So I switched to Resistance mode for a few seconds thinking that might reset it. So I switched back to Resistance mode for the last 4 or 5 minutes of the recovery. I switched ERG back on 5 seconds before the next anaerobic interval and the resistance automatically shot up again. Not a problem I thought as its supposed to be high but halfway through the interval the resistance dropped to zero. ERG seemed better after that but some of the intervals the resistance seemed to bottom out just below the target when I could have pushed a higher gear. After all that TR passed it.

I have an Edurance ride scheduled for tomorrow and I might put my power pedals on the commuter and do it out doors at lunchtime, it supposed to be fresh but dry and above freezing, and I could do with fresh air in the daylight. Edit scrub swapping the pedals, the commuter pedals are seized solid. The first time I've ever had pedals I couldn't get off. I'll do the work out on RPE and look at dripping some oil into the threads to perhaps loosen them for another time.

 

[HLaB]

I had thought I’d stick my power pedals on the winter bike and do my endurance workout but its pedals were seized solid, so I done it on RPE/HR, I wanted fresh air. Also to make it easy I just did one flat intensity period, rather than the marginally varied intensity session that TrainerRoad had planned for me. Nothing spectacular just a loop round Conington Airfield.

The skies cleared last night so it had plummeted from. +11deg C yesterday to -1deg C first thing. I was going out at lunchtime so that didn’t worry me; it was fresh though in a stiff wind. Its funny how a 7-8mph wind down in here is really noticeable and stiff but the same wind speed at my parent’s place up north is barely noticeable. Going south I was 14-16mph mainly to stay in Zone, but going north I was at 20mph for slightly less and a more stable HR.

 

[HLaB]

I enjoyed that workout tonight. TrainerRoad says it was VO2max, Garmin says it was Anaerobic.

I generated a little bit of heat in the pain hall.

 

[HLaB]

On Saturday I had my usual group ride but the first half (35miles) was pretty relaxed so the ride took 30mins longer than normal which put me into the red according to TrainerRoad. Then Sunday only the slowest rider in the group said he was turning up and it was raining first thing so I thought I’d better go and keep him company. Which meant the Sunday Ride was an hour longer than normal too. Even with Monday being a rest day that triggered my anaerobic Tuesday workout to be downgraded to an Endurance workout by TrainerRoad. I thought it was being over cautious and I decided to skip the adaption and stay with the Anaerobic workout (Norraard). After having done it I’m quite glad I skipped the adaptation.

I generated quite a bit of heat in there again 😆

 

[Norry1]

I had a VO2 Max 7.0 today "Blue Top". Done on the Turbo. It was pretty tough but I managed to complete it.

View: https://youtu.be/P4g-yYnfWmw

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Got about another 3 weeks of base and then I’ll be getting on with build. Garmin’s VO2 max estimator been moving in right direction. Summer peak it estimated 55.

 

[HLaB]

In my plan tonight was Gora an Endurance workout.

It was a bit hot in the pain hall tonight butI had the fans on low/sleep mode so I could listen to the Tour Down Under.

 

[HLaB]

A VO2max workout (Julius Caesar +2) in my calendar tonight whilst watching the Glasgow Celtic game. Lol, you can tell when the pre game talked and the game kicked off and my cadence dropped. I probably should have switched off ERG at that point as the Suito doesn’t seem to up the resistance enough when my cadence is lower.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Just an hour of endurance today. A short VO2 tomorrow.

 

[Norry1]

Gonna do a Zwift Race today.

@HLaB how are you finding the new TR AI?