What's your prediction for the fight, Clubber?.... PAIN!!

First interval day today.

Ohh that hurt.

Friday's a crazy morning. Wife has to work early, I gotta get the older one on the bus and the younger one to preschool. Had to, just had to get my interval workout done this morning. After work is almost always a bust. Too tired from the day, and need to hang out with the kids, and have dinner, etc.

So I was able, with my wife's prodding, get out of bed at 6 and get down into the basement. Put some coffee on, and got the trainer set up, then went and slammed half a cup, then got on for a warmup

10 min warmup, followed by the following session

3 sets of
5 x 1 min on at 320Watts, 1 min off
3min rest between sets

Last year I had done some 1 min intervals at 300w, and had tried a few last week. They felt pretty doable. I decided to try 320W to see if I could do the entire workout at that setting.

First one.


It felt so easy, just cruising along. I had a pretty high cadence 120 or so, too high I think. I was toying with the idea of upping the wattage to 330 or 340, but decided to see if I could do the entire session at this wattage. If so then next time I'd up it.

Man, am I glad I didn't do that

I would set the Tacx ergo to 320 and do the interval, but you can't go to 320 immediatly, you have to go to it 20-30w at a time, otherwise my cadence would bog and it was all over.

To recovery, I'd go to the slope function set on -4 and just soft pedal. I used my timex iron man set on countdown timer for 1 min. I need to bring a clicker or something as it is really easy to forget what interval you are on. Was that 3 or 4? Uh I think it i was 5, time to rest!!

First set went pretty well. It hurt no doubt, second set got much harder, and third set, I barely made it through it. Actually I didn't really finish the last one, but I'll call it mission accomplished anyway.

I definitely work better at higher cadences like 100+. When I dropped below 85 or so, I knew I'd bog and the legs would just shut down.

During the intervals, I discovered the secret to controlling time.
I still need to work on the details, but during the intervals I was able to make time slow to a crawl. I'd be hammering and tried not to look at the countdown timer, but then just had to, and there would be like 25 seconds left, when I thought I'd be done.

And then during the rest periods, a 1 min block would go by like a flash, and the 3 min block just disappeared w/o me noticing. I'm on to something here. I know it. Gonna make me rich.

After the last one I felt like this:


Felt like hurling, just like after those sprint intervals.

Went upstairs and had some soy milk. No way could I have breakfast. Everyone else was still asleep.

Wife overslept, so I helped get the kids ready. I'm sitting at the table still in my cycling clothes, listen to the play by play of what I need to do.

Bus stop at 7:55am, don't forget snack cooler, backpack, jacket, hat, gloves, lunch drink....

Lukie's clothes are on the dresser, if he wants to wear his plane outfit let him, money is here for charity doantion at his preschool class....

Oh, and read this flyer to Ansel to see if we want to go to this tonight..

and on and on.

And I'm sitting there just saying like a mantra over and over in my head, bus at 7:55, bus at 7:55 don't miss it, preschool by 9..etc.etc.etc.

I was dazed. Good thing I've honed the "yes I am listening" skill to a craft.

Plus my son will NEVER forget how we missed the bus more than a month ago. So if I did it again, I might have to move out.

Tomorrow is another on day, then one off. Looks like next week I get into the 3 day on blocks.

This is what it is all about, baby. Riding outside the comfort zone. It's just like a kick in the pants. and almost fun in that sick way that cyclists thrive on.

I was curious about my power profile, and went to the Power profile spreadsheet that is at:

Power Profiling

and calculated 270Watts / my weight in kg, and found that I was right in the middle of the Very good section for the threshold reading. I'm happy with that.

Cya.