Two by Two Means Sore Legs

Well, today was a little strange on the bike. My training schedule called for two different specific workouts. The first was 4 or 5 three minute intervals at my CP6 power level, which is about 344W, while climbing a 4-6% grade hill with three minutes rest between intervals. After these were completed my schedule called for 20 minutes at CP60, which for me is 245W.

Since my non-biking schedule was even stranger than my workout schedule, I had to get up at the, for me, virtually unheard of hour of 6am. I got up and had a Powerbar Harvest for a quick breakfast and started getting ready for my ride. Unfortunately the forecast was calling for something like an 80% chance of showers and the road was wet, even though it wasn't actually raining at the time. So onto the trainer went the bike. I did my warm-up and then raised the front wheel of the bike to simulate the climbing position and started on my intervals. They hurt. They hurt so much that by 2:30 of the third interval I couldn't do any more. So after a bit of a cool down I lowered the front wheel and moved on to the 20 minute at CP60. This was painful too, but not as much as the CP6 intervals.

By the time I finished the 20 minutes I noticed the road didn't look wet any more so I decided I was going to get the last 30 minutes of my ride outdoors, so I grabbed my vest and helmet and off I went. Since I was out on the road now, I decided I would try and get my final two CP6 intervals in on the hill I had planned on using if the weather had co-operated in the first place. I did two solid intervals and discovered that this hill, Dole Hill, is exactly the right size for me to do this workout on currently. It took me exactly 3 minutes to do this climb at the prescribed power level.

After finishing the two intervals I took it easy going home. On one flat section I worked on riding no handed. I almost always do this at one particular place on the ride home when I'm coming from the west. Today I was able to actually put 200W of power into my pedaling while going around a nice gentle bend in the road.

Drank 2 bottles of sports drink during the workout.

Average power for the CP6 intervals - 341W (Target range: 327 - 361)
Average power for the CP60 interval - 248W (Target range: 234 - 257)

So right on target I think.