Friday Training

Hi

VeloTron

Standard L3 turbo session with a sting in the tail. Had decided to start getting at least the feel for my L5 training so did 1x4 @ 370W after the L3 work, and my did it sting!

In some ways a very interesting session. The first point is that I managed it but 370W is well towards the upper part of my L5 zone (332-378W) and I think jumping instantaneously from 175W to 370W at the start of the L5 effort was an overly harsh step and the load really took some holding.

I was surprised that my HR peaked at 171BPM and I think this was almost certainly due to the fatigue from the previous L3 work during the session. Back in August 2008 doing some L5 work @ just below 340W my HR was hitting exactly this level! Interestingly this also felt far harder than the 5 minute section of my recent RAMP test where I averaged 369W and I'm sure this was because that was part of an incremental test so I didn't have the awful anaerobic first 2 minutes as my heart and respiration rates rose to the challenge of the load.

On balance I've decided to drop the load for my proper L5 work from 370W to initially 360W (355W would be the mid point of the zone) and do some more of these introductory efforts at the end of my L3 work. I think these will start the process of adaptation nicely prior to the proper L5 sessions. I'm hoping that when doing the L5 work from fresh I should be Ok at 360W which would be good because that's 20W higher than I left off last year and I should make some gains from there, time will tell.

So, on balance very informative and worthwhile. I managed the 370W effort I'd planned but I believe that for the purposes of raising my VO2 max 360W will be more than adequate and 350W would be fine and may at times be the right level to work at, I think that would feel just fine!

Onwards we go :-)


[Uploaded 13/03/2009 21:34:50]