Week of 5/6 through 5/12 - cycling hills and intervals

Sunday:
On Sunday, my fears regarding my foot were realized.  Immediately upon putting weight onto it in the morning, I felt pain.  I was really hoping that a nights sleep would take the edge off, but not so much.  So I popped 4 more advil.

Fortunately, though, doing bike work has never seemed to bother this injury, so I headed up to Wachusett Mountain to get some hill work in with a friend.  The concept was simple - ride up and down hills for a while, both for the physical benefits as well as some mental preparation for the hills at Lake Placid.  During investigations, it appears that the bike course @ IMLP is often in the 4.5-5 % grade range - which isn't necessarily huge, but the placement of them makes them deceiving and difficult.  Mt Wachusett is in the same range - the only thing missing is the 10-20 miles of climbing.
At first, we ascended from the parking lot (located about half way up) to the summit - a distance of about 2.5 miles.  After that, we decided to descend all the way to the bottom, which would add another mile of climbing distance.  In the end we discovered that the bottom half was more of a steady climb and felt easier, while the top was more rolling, with some sections of steeper grade.  Liking the combination, we repeated the climb from the bottom to top again before calling it a day.

One of the questions I've had for a while is whether my power output is high enough to allow me to spin at a nice cadence of 90 while staying well in an aerobic heart rate zone.  Doing these hills gave me the answer - nope!  However, I did discover on the last ascent that if I lowered my cadence to around 50, I could do so, albeit slowly, at a manageable heart rate.  That is an encouraging bit of information, because from everything I gather, if you cook your legs too early during an Ironman, you really pay for it on the run.  Yeah, going 4-5 mph on the bike may be slow - but if it keeps you from walking at 18 min/miles during long stretches of the run - that time gets made up.

Back to the foot - on Sunday night I continued with the alternating of the cold/heat immersion.  I even grabbed an old crutch to hobble around on so that I could completely minimize the amount of weight that foot had to bear.

Monday:
The foot felt slightly better on Monday morning - I think I still took 2 advil though, and was walking slow to keep from hurting it more.  Fortunately for the whole morning, I was able to stay seated.  At lunch I popped a couple more advil - and by the time I got home, I realized it was feeling much better.  Yeah, I had taken advil - but not only had the amount decreased, but the overall pain did as well.  I still had to be careful, but I was really surprised at how much improvement had been made.
I had considered going to yoga, since Monday if my normal yoga night, but decided not to - if things were healing nicely, I didn't want to take the chance that the balance poses @ yoga would set things back.  While it's possible it could have helped, it was progressing nicely on it's own, so I didn't want to mess with it.

Monday evening I did the Ansel Adams trainerroad workout - a return to interval based training.  This one was a new challenge, as the intervals were 50s long @ just over 130% FTP, with 50s rest in between.  It was only an hour long workout, though, vs the hour and a half I had been doing.  However, the intensity factor was 0.99, whereas most of my workouts have been in the 0.85-0.93 range - so this was definitely a bit more intense.

Continued with cold/hot immersion for the foot - three times.  One session in the morning before work, one upon returning home, and one before bed.

Tuesday:
Once again, the foot continued to feel better on Tuesday morning.  Certainly nowhere near 100%, and still having to walk a tad slower or with slightly altered gait to keep from irritating it - but found myself going through short stints of walking like a normal person (wow, is that nice!).  Dropped down to 1 advil in the morning and 1 at lunch.  In fact, there were periods after returning home where it felt completely normal, and I forgot I actually had a bum foot.  So thats good news.

On Tuesday evening I did the TrainerRoad Bago workout.  Holy crap - I was not ready for that one!  I picked it because I wanted something interval based that was intense - and this had an intensity factor of 0.94.  However, just the intensity factor alone doesn't tell the story - this workout was more difficult than the Ansel Adams the day before, even though that one had a higher intensity factor.  The reason this was more difficult was that each interval at 120% FTP was for 3 full minutes.  The other thing is that I purposely put the bike into a high gear, so that I could practice some lower cadence gear mashing, since it became apparent to me that I'd not be able to sustain a cadence of 90 rpm anyway at IMLP.  So that may or may not have made it more difficult.  Either way, I got through the first 6 intervals and came exceptionally close to calling it a day - the legs just didn't have enough left for another 6 at that intensity.  However, I made myself a deal - I'd allow slacking on the target power (down into the 260's) if I finished the whole thing - because finishing even without hitting the target is better than not finishing.  It was still tough, but much more doable.

Wednesday:
Went to yoga on Wednesday night.  The foot has been improving steadily day by day, and by Wednesday I was feeling comfortable enough that the balance poses and time in the heat would not adversely affect things.

Thursday:
On Thursday I did the TrainerRoad Thor workout again.  I had done this one in the pat, but only for an hour and ten minutes due to a tightened workout window.  In looking at my writeup from last time, it was a taxing workout, and I felt like I could finish the entire 90 minute workout - so today I wanted to see how it compared to last time.  This workout has multiple sets of 12s sprints @ ~188% FTP, followed by 4 minutes  at slightly above FTP.  As usual, I had a bit of a hard time nailing the target power on the 12s portions due to them being so short, but all in all, it was a solid performance.

Friday:
I took the day off from work on Friday for various reasons, but one benefit was that I was able to get the Rockhouse workout in again.  This is the 3 hr race simulation workout, and it.. works you.  It was definitely easier the second time around - the first time the seat was uncomfortable virtually the entire 3rd hour, whereas this time it was more bearable.  That goes a long way towards the workout being easier from a mental standpoint.  However, just like the last time - I was pretty tired right away, and the legs were definitely feeling it for a couple hours afterwards.  But it was the best opportunity for a long training session for the weekend.

Saturday:
Saturday was largely a rest day, but I ended up going to the pool for a swim workout - the first since about March.
Total Distance: 2650 yds (53 laps - I actually did 54, but the last one didn't get counted because I screwed up trying to stop the counter)
Total Time: 46:54

I lost about a minute or so since the last swim - still in the 31 minute/mile range, which I'm ok with.  I'm not too concerned, though, because I'm sure that time will be recovered once I start putting the final touches on the swim portion over the last 6-8 weeks before Lake Placid, and get a lot more swim time in.