Two Wheel Blogs

And to think I almost up and skipped working out today. I really did. Between my trainer ride on Friday and my strength session yesterday - actually it was more the sore muscles from the strength session than anything else - I almost bagged it.

I'm glad I didn't because working my leg muscles helped to flush out some of the pain and soreness. It's still with me, but my legs are better off for it. So is my attitude. It always is after a ride, and I know you know exactly what I'm talking about there.

With all the stiffness and soreness going on I knew I didn't want one of those "climb every hill in the county" rides. We had a decently windy afternoon going on here, so I set out looking for a stretch of road where I could ride into the wind. What I had in mind was a whole bunch of intervals at a slightly easier wattage level than I would normally do for the time it would take me to do them. Hey, I already had a painful pair of legs under me. Did I really need to shred them too?

I got lucky. I found a stretch of road aligned almost directly with the wind. It wasn't flat, but that actually improved matters. The climbing direction was with the wind; and the return, the descent, was into the wind. A little grinder in both directions. Perfect. I'd accelerate into each interval, grind it out in my upper end of my threshold zone, let off, ride it out, brake, turn around and accelerate into the next one.

After about 45 minutes of this I had my attitude adjusted just about perfectly. Time to throttle it back and go make some dinner.

Checking on the power output file I see I got just about exactly the results I was looking for. NP for the entire ride is right in the sweet spot, and the TSS is right where I want it to be - high enough to keep the stress on but low enough to allow a reasonable recovery time.

And finally, at long last it looks like we might be getting back to our regularly scheduled Summer weather. We're all pretty sick and tired of the rain and wind. Hopefully the trails will start drying out now that the sun is making a comeback. I think it's been a solid week since I've been on my Karate Monkey. That can't be good.