Turbo Week 8

Wednesday
Missed Tuesdays workout as I needed to take my daughter to the dentist for treatment so completed Tuesdays workout a day late.
Today's workout consisted of fast pedalling which I thought would be a piece of cake, after all the instructions are to select an easy gear and just concentrate on a smooth circular motion with a cadence of 108 – 120 rpm and only 1 set of 4 x 3 minute intervals with 3 minutes rest between intervals. Were they easy? Yes and no(ish) yes to getting into the range and no for keeping it there…

The hardest part of this workout was keeping it in the range as the intervals progressed so even though this doesn’t sound much of a workout it was still quite hard at times, for how hard this workout was I would give it a 6.5 out of 10… Not much to be said about them really, I think Carmichael has thrown them in for this week as a way of getting a mild workout, giving the ‘athlete’ a bit of a rest…

Thursday
Today's workout promises to be to last big workout before the Cheshire cat, I'm at week 8 in the Chris Carmichael Time Crunched Training Plan, 8 weeks that started off at a nice steady canter and ends in a full blown sprint so to speak. Today's workout is a mix of power intervals and over/unders. Power intervals first that saw me averaging around 245 Watts for the duration of the short intervals. Over/Unders next with a more modest 177 - 206w.

So what can I say now I'm coming towards the end of my first training block under 'the plan'?

1. My power has increased, gone from barely scratching 206 watts in the first weeks to 245 watts, an increase of 19% in just 8 weeks. Great stuff...

2. My heart rate has gone down. For any given power output say for example in the first week I was putting out 150 watts my heart rate was around 150 bpm, now for the same power output my HR is down to 135. Great stuff again...

3. I can train more by training intelligently and efficiently. Previous to 'the plan', any more than 2 turbo/road training sessions and a week-end ride would have me on the edge of illness and that's purely because I didn't know how to train, I would just go hard at it every time. Now I have been educated to 'train right' by Mr 'train right', I can train 3 times a week along with a big week-end ride without anything nasty happening with my health...

4. As a result of all this time in the saddle my posterior can handle nearly any saddle going...

5. Thank goodness it's all coming to an end, I have run out of 'Turbo saddle' motif pictures that start these turbo blog posts...

It's not quite the end just the end of the power intervals. Saturday I will be out but taking it a little easier and Sunday there's the club ride. Next week in the run up to the Cheshire Cat I will mostly be taking it easy. On Tuesday I will have a hour or two ride probably incorporating some over/unders, Thursday maybe an hour easy ride/turbo and then it's rest until Sunday.

My Stats
Wednesday 14.8 miles, 1 hr, Av Speed - guess...
Thursday 14.72 miles, 1 hr, Av speed - work it out...