Trainerroad - Tioga - 3/1/12

Holy crap - the next bike workout was the weekend-intended 90 minute one already.  I debated whether to do it tonight or not, especially considering I'm figuring on another mid-day run tomorrow - but I figured I'd be better off getting this workout out of the way as opposed to doing it on Saturday or Sunday, in such close proximity to the 30k on Sunday.

This workout was called Tioga, and was the first workout that got to FTP intensity.  It was an interesting workout - the description and goals were listed as follows:

Description
- 5x9min intervals spent slightly above or slightly below FTP (2 minute unders, 1 minute overs); 6 minutes rest between intervals

Goals
-Develop the ability to handle changes in pace during hard, sustained
-Improve lactate shuttling/buffering capabilities during high effort

What made it interesting was the variation of intensity during the intervals - the 2 minute 'unders' were still more intense than any intervals thus far, and the 1 minute 'overs' were just slightly more intense (about 5%) - but when it came time to go back to the 'unders' they felt very similar to recovery.  Also, the variation really made me forget that each interval was 9 minutes in total - it broke it up into a handful of 1 and 2 minute segments.

For the rest intervals, I maintained a bit higher power than was called for - unless I'm doing ILT's, power of 88W is barely sustainable as there is hardly any resistance, so it's easy to over-spin.  So I ended up just settling into a comfortable cadence at an easy pace that still offered some resistance to keep from spinning out due to rotational momentum.

As far as the IT band goes, it felt pretty good.  Sometimes it can be hard to know whether I feel something like very slight tightness, or whether it is just my mind playing tricks on me because I'm so tuned in and paying attention - but so long as I don't feel anything definitive, I try not to worry about it.