Today's workout was the length of two '24' episodes - a couple minutes shy of 90 minutes. The goal was basically to do a steady state session with the HR getting into the 130's. After Sunday's spin where the HR stayed in the 120's, I wanted to bump up resistance a notch - but I wanted to have it be a shorter session just in case it got a bit too arduous at the end. If all went well, then perhaps the LSD sessions on the weekends could be brought up to the same intensity.
I started out with a warmup of about 15 minutes or so in an easy gear (about 15.5 mph), and then increased resistance to one higher than Sunday, resulting in a speed of about 16.5 mph. After a little while, I decided to try playing around with mechanics a bit - trying to not make such an up and down motion that uses primarily the quads for power, and instead make it more circular, which may pull other muscles into the power generation. I noticed that when I did that, the cadence dropped a bit - from the mid-90's to somewhere between 88-92. So as a result, the speed dropped a tad as well, closer to about 16 mph. However, I may end up being ok with that - the cadence is still in the optimal range, and if I can get my legs used to that sort of motion, it may pay efficiency dividends later on in the future. For now, though - I found that when I paid attention to it, I could maintain it, but time moved slowly. When I allowed myself to get distracted by watching TV, time moved more quickly but I tended to fall out of that new mechanic. So I'm hoping that over time, it'll start getting more into muscle memory and I won't have to think about it.
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