Trainerroad Tunnabora workout - 2/21/2012

Even though the past couple weeks has been somewhat of a taper going into this past Sunday's half - and I was intending to start up again full steam ahead into base building, after the race on Sunday I decided I needed to hold back a bit some more.  Partially as a result from tight muscles from the legs workout, and partially due to the intensity of the race itself, I have been having a couple moments where I feel like I am pushing the limits of the IT band, and that I should get that straightened out before it potentially develops into something worse.  So the plan for this week is to go to Yoga at least twice (already did once yesterday - and as suspected, some poses were hampered a bit due to lingering soreness) as well as a deep tissue massage.  I'm waiting until the vast majority of soreness dissipates before the massage, though.  I was originally thinking today might be a good day, but my calfs were still a bit too sore to handle that.  So I might look at tomorrow or Thursday.

Anyway, I also debated whether to do a cycling workout.  I ended up reasoning that the cycling workouts aren't very intense at the moment, and cycling tends to be easier on an IT band than running, so I should be ok. The next workout due up was called Tunnabora (no idea where they get these names), which was basically five intervals of 7 minutes each at varying intensities between about 87% and 92% FTP.

In previous workouts, I had been starting to consider that perhaps I need to up what trainerroad thinks my FTP is - currently it thinks it is 220W, but these workouts might be a tad on the light side.  Todays workout only peaked at a HR of 138, for example.  But then I remember that this is a base building phase, and the concentration isn't necessarily on making each workout gruelling.  Maybe this week, while I'm still in kind of a lower intensity phase, I'll keep it as is - and then next week raise the FTP by like 5W and see what happens.

The only other thing of note is that the lower power portions of the intervals on this workout were done at a lower than typical cadence - in the 80-85 range.  Certainly not a mashing gears cadence - but a little practice at a lower cadence can be useful.  It may be helpful to be comfortable at high cadences, but supposedly it can be helpful to be comfortable at very low cadences as well.