More L6 suffering

Well the last week or so has gone along pretty well as planned, but the only time I managed to get on the track, last Monday, wasn't a particularly fulfilling session.

On the day prior, I had spent some time on a favourite loop of mine sprinting the short (10sec to 20sec) little hills as a "Points Race" type of workout and it left my legs a little heavy.

The track workout was planned to be a series of flying kilometers, but 500m into the first, my legs were saying enough is enough.....yelling pretty loudly actually. OK, these are supposed to feel hard, but when it was obvious I wasn't going to be able to sustain anything like race speed, I thought it better to pull back in distance so I could at least hold some semblance of quality.

So it was 4 x FL500m with ~ 8min recovery, all in the mid to high 36sec range, followed by 1 x FL 1km. This last rep, ridden as a paced effort instead of all out was a 1min 17sec. Not target race pace exactly, but it's rare for me to go fast in training .......probably 'cos of tired legs most of the time..........maybe I should be spending more recovery time so I CAN ride the speed I need to?

In the past, I can't recall ever going faster than 1.15 for a FL 1km in training, and really struggling to do that! But it all seems to come together on race day with fresh legs. Gotta trust that the same will happen in October :-)

I suppose when you consider that these times are ridden when tired, in the morning with temperature inside the velodrome of about 12 degrees, and on crummy training wheels and tires, then there's scope for improvement.

All the Pursuit specific work I've been doing on the road and trainer with my Power Tap equipped bikes have been within my target range of power, so I've just got to trust the process.

On Wednesday morning, I rode 3 x Standing Start 1km reps on the road (in the rain) with 10min recoveries. Not a particularly high start power, around 895watts, but averages for each rep was 400w, 396w and 389w. That's in target range but there was a drop in power towards the end of each. But again, that's what is to be expected the way I'm riding them, i.e. all out from the gun.

I'm riding most of my L6 reps in this fashion to REALLY create a high lactate environment. There seems to be reasonable evidence, and I've had good advice, that this method has shown in the past to provide a strong stimulus for adaptation. We're gonna find out soon aren't we.

Even though I've been running on tired legs most of the time, with a touch of freshness, in the last two weeks I hit an all time peak power PB of....and don't snicker, 1031watts, and twice have PB'd my 5sec Power with 934watts and 935watts. So I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the last week when I'm well tapered.

Tonight I'm heading straight from day shift with the Fire Dept. for the last of the Friday night RAW (Race All Winter) track series, then from night shift on Sunday morning directly to join the regular Sunday morning group back on the velodrome.

Put my entry in today for World Masters in the Pursuit, Scratch race and Points race. Stay tuned to see how things go in these last couple of weeks.

Mike