Sunday 5/13:
Today I did the TrainerRoad McAdie workout - second time around for this workout. It's an over/under workout, where the intervals are right near FTP - spend two minutes just under FTP, followed by 1 minute just over FTP, rinse and repeat 4x per interval, with a few minutes rest between intervals. This is supposed to help simulate varying grade terrain on climbing hills, or any situation where you are riding along and need a brief spurt of extra power.
I'm starting to think whether I should increase my FTP again. The workouts are tough, but I'm also tending to float well above the target number to make sure that I minimize chance of dipping below. So as a result, I tend to ride 5-10W higher than the target in most situations. So I may bump up the FTP from 231 to 236 and see how that goes, or I might actually do the 20 minute power test. I've avoided the power tests because I believe you want to be fairly well rested for them - so with that in mind, Tuesday might be a good day to do that, as it'll be the day after Yoga (Monday).
Monday 5/14:
Yoga. Standard stuff.
Tuesday 5/15:
Decided to go with the power test on this day. After doing yoga the previous day, and knowing I'd probably not hit the bike much over the subsequent couple days as I prepared for a relay I'm participating in over the weekend, I decided to go with the full-on 20 minute power test.
Earlier in the day, I started mentally thinking and predicting what my end result would be. I knew that the 20 minute test is based on going as fast as you can for 20 minutes, and the normalized power over that 20 minutes is something like 95% of your FTP. So with my FTP currently at 231, I'd need to do somewhere around 242-245 just to maintain the FTP at 231. I felt like that was possible. It may not be fun, but it should be possible.
But then, as I do with all my workouts, I ended up bumping up above that number, because I don't want to see my power go below target (even though if its low by a few W, it shouldn't really matter). So with the mental minimum target of 245, I ended up saying 'eh, going to 260 is only a few more RPM's, lets see how that goes'. And.. it went. There were times when it'd slow to less than 255, but for the most part it stayed between 255 and 265. Meanwhile, the HR slowly crept up from 160, through 165 and ending up closer to 170. During the last minute, I gave it everything I had left (in measured fashion to make sure I wouldn't collapse before the end), pushing the power over 300.
In the end, the new FTP value was recorded at 244 - a full 13W more than my previous FTP setting. That means that since January when I started on the trainer, my FTP has jumped from 220 to 244, just over 10%. Then again, spending almost 3 days worth of time should produce some nice results :)
Wednesday 5/16 and Thursday 5/17:
These days were off days in prep for the Reach the Beach Relay (summary in another blog post). Or, not prep so much as a chance to be a tad lazy and rest up a bit, taking advantage of the disrupted schedule I'd have over the next few days.
Sunday 5/20:
Still a bit sore from the relay, I decided to do more of a recovery spin on the trainer as opposed to a new interval or threshold workout based on my new FTP number. If the new FTP were only a few W higher, than maybe I'd have done something other than a recovery workout - but the jump in power is significant enough that I'd like to be reasonably prepared for the first one so I can establish a nice baseline for fatigue and recovery.
So today's workout was just a 60 minute free. The first 10 minutes were a warm-up and ramp-up to about 90% FTP, where I stayed for 10 minutes. Then a drop down to 70% FTP for 10 minutes, followed by a few segments of 90% FTP for 5 minutes with 70% FTP recovery. This ended up splitting the workout about 50/50 between the active recovery and sweet spot power zones.
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