getting there

For at least 3 reps on today's intervals I felt back into the groove. Today was 2 sets of 6reps of 2 on 2 off. The first 3 went well. Well meaning that my face was contorted and I was motivated and just barely able to finish them.

However after those first three it went a little downhill and I was unable to really finish the next reps completely and then decided to bag the second set. What that tells me is that I obviously chose too high a power setting to start with. The key for the Morris style intervals is to select an intensity that you can maintain for the entire workout. When I go too far over the limit I am shot for the remainder. I've often just scaled down the power for the remaining intervals in order to finish the workout. Other times, like today I'll just stop.

From one perspective it can seem like a slightly wasted workout. Where I was supposed to do 2x6x2=24 total minutes of work I only did 6x2=12 minutes work of which the during the last 2 reps the last 20 seconds was below desired power. However for at least some of it I was over my limit. Which is to thing to highlight.

There was an article many years ago in Bicycling Mag by Dean Golich who was Dave Morris's partner at the time. He made the statement, "if you never go 30, you'll never go 30" The 30 is reference to 30mph for a time trialist. His point was that if your goal is to average 30mph for a time trial you are never going to do that if you can't get yourself to go 30 in training. Their training methods center on this ability to work yourself at higher than sustainable levels in order to bump up your overlall sustainable power.

So I burned too many matches early on. After that it's tough. This is the main issue I've had with racing the past years: going too hard too early. Hence my racinng philosophy was to control my efforts and finish strong. However this year I'm going to take that paradigm and flip it upside down completely. Damn results, go for the gold at the start and survive to the finish. This will be difficult to mentally accept but I think I need to do this in order to improve. Just keep the search parties in reserve cause surviving something like Dragon's Back or Douthat is a lot different than a lap race.