Saturday, March 26, 2016

In Brief, Saturday Ride

This will be quick b/c I still have to go play Easter Bunny. Decent ride this morning with a few friends/training partners. 58 miles in just under 3 hours. Pretty easy first hour, then we did a few strong intervals like 6-7min long. Coming home it was moderate for a bit but sitting on and drafting really reduced the effort required. Eventually I went to the front and put out a 20min effort of my own- Mike knew what I was doing so he gave me some space and stayed behind me (but wasn't drafting). I avg 209w for that 20min piece which is right about current FTP (given last week was basically an FTP test). People tend to do 20min "FTP tests" but I'm not convinced 20min gives a true picture of FTP. It gives an estimate, yes, but what you can hold for 20min is not necessarily a concrete indicator of what you can hold for 60min, as evidenced by how rarely athletes actually go out and ride as hard as they can for 60min(!). It's hard(!). Anyway. Last 30min coming home was punchy and I think at times Mike was attempting to spit me off his wheel but it never happened.

I felt like I could have run off the bike but I want to run tomorrow and since I ran Thurs/Fri I didn't want to push it running 4 days in a row. Call it patience maybe?

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