The Last Week Of The Month
Sorry I didn’t get an update for two weeks ago up but the Thanksgiving holiday got in the way a bit. I’ll summarize that week plus this most recent week all in one exciting post!:
Week ended November 22nd
- Time Spent Training- 5:28 (bike only)
- Time In Sweet Spot- 117 minutes
- Miles Ridden- 102
- Miles Walked-6 (not included in other stats)
- TSS (training stress score)- 402
- Weight- 163
- TSS YTD- 19031
- Total Miles YTD- 4816
- Total Hours YTD- 276
This was a pretty good week. I got in 3 days of walking to work as well as 3 good, fairly intense workouts. I did a “fartlek” type trainer workout on Wednesday that simulated a bunch of accelerations. On Tuesday and Thursday I did some moderate intervals on the trainer in the sweet spot. On Saturday I did one of my regular routes but instead of just going out and hammering, I broke the ride up into 3 sections where I rode close to my FTP for 20 minutes. between those sections I rode easy for about 5 minutes. I also rode relatively easy the first 20 minutes to get a good warmup in. The end result was this:
If you look at the marked up screenshot from the Powertap software you will see that I had 3 great 20 minute intervals in the ride (click the image to enlarge it). I also stuck in a hard 5 minute effort right after the 1st 20 minute interval. This was one of the better rides I’ve done all year. It was fun (in a twisted way) and I’ll probably do rides like this once or twice a month if I can.
Week ended November 29, 2009
- Time Spent Training- 4:57 (bike only)
- Time In Sweet Spot- 49 minutes
- Miles Ridden- 83
- Miles Walked-0 (not included in other stats)
- TSS (training stress score)- 346
- Weight- 166
- TSS YTD- 19376
- Total Miles YTD- 4898
- Total Hours YTD- 281
This past week was a little less than I would have liked but I expected it because of the holiday. I did all of my riding outside on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. All the rides were group rides with a lot of variability in them but not a lot of consistent efforts. The exception was the last 10 miles or so on Sunday when a few of us pushed the pace a bit. It was a good finish to a great ride in great weather.
The Week Ahead
I’m hoping to get back on track this week (starting on Tuesday) and ride 3 days inside and hopefully 2 days outside. I want to focus on moderate hard intervals as much as possible. I will also be starting my “core strength” program which I’m hoping will help me become more flexible and powerful on the bike. I’ve got 31 days left in the year and I want to make the most of it and try to get to my goal of 300 hours of training. I think I can do it, especially if we have decent weather on the weekends.
