Training - Week 4

All turbo stuff this week what with the snow and if not snow, ice making any riding on the road a big no-no so all my workouts this week have had me confined to the garage and it was so cold even in my garage that I had to wear overshoes and thin gloves to stop my extremity's from turning to blocks of ice - still wore bib-shorts and short sleeved jersey so not a complete wuss.

No need to go into a lot of detail regarding the workouts other that besides steady L2 base miles and speed drills there has been the introduction of 'muscular endurance' working within my tempo zone (L3) now that I'm into my first week of base 2 training.

I enjoyed the slightly harder challenge of the tempo workout and I like the fact that apparently they give you 'the best bang for your bucks' in that it coincides with the 'sweet spot' training that is in fashion these days. Here is a chart showing how the 'sweet spot' zone relates to normal zones (power). Based on HR, your SST zone is between 89-100% of your LTHR which using the Friel method of determining HR zones is zones 3 (tempo) and 4 (sub-threshold).

My workouts this last week have been on the usual Tues, Wed, Thu, Sat and Sunday. Tuesday was the tempo workout, Wednesday was another L2 but unusually it took me 15 minutes to get into the right heart rate zone and this day I saw some improvements in that I needed to pedal faster/harder by a good 1.5 mph to get my heart into the zone and stay there, I feel that on Wednesday I had definitely seen good improvements in my aerobic capacity which is one of the reasons behind level 2 workouts.

I'm wondering if this is the way the body works and adapts; Tuesday was my tempo workout and everything went as expected but Wednesday as I've already mentioned I had to work harder to get into the right zone; my legs worked harder and I was breathing somewhat harder but my heart was working less harder than the usual. Thursday it was a similar story but my lungs were a lot better and on Sat/Sun my heart, legs and lungs all levelled off in effort but I was riding faster than I had been previously, so what I'm asking is is it normal for the body and its aerobic systems to play catchup with each other? IE as in my case the heart adapts to the workouts first followed by the lungs and legs? it seems so...

Sat was another L2 but Sunday had me in the garage yet again as all road rides were off due to the ice so although I was due a 3 hour ride, 2 hours on the turbo was the most I could manage, 2 x 1 hour level 2 workouts.

My stats for the week
94 miles and 7 hours - ALL on my turbo...