As I’ve said for the last few weeks, I think a lot of my problems are mental over physical at the moment. Thinking today would be an indoor session, I resolved to do one of those FTP Builder rides, an hour at 150w or whatever.
However, finishing “on time” (not quite, I’m still owed 30 minutes and forgot to have a longer lunch), I got out by 16:10 as the weather was much nicer than I expected. It was 11c, sunny and hot, but very windy.
Even so, I decided to do a 20km loop I know well, then carry on if I felt like it. Heading out I aimed to do about 2.5w/kg average. That failed. Instead I found myself going at a decent pace, more like 3.3w/kg at a high cadence, aiming for a nice 30 minute workout. Knowing the route would take me out and back, I was fine with working hard up front in the knowledge I’d ease off for the latter half of the ride.
And that’s pretty much how it played out. I’d done 25km in 55 minutes over fairly stop and start terrain. Better than usual. The unexpected outdoor session was a turn up for the books. I’d expected to be indoors all week and I think that, combined with the fresh legs from a ‘woe is me’ day yesterday really helped me work harder than I have been doing as of late.
The other thing I’ve been thinking is that without the structure of the indoor stuff, I’ve really been over exerting over too many outdoor rides, and that might have had a short term detrimental effect on me. It’s really hard to tell, as I have no scientific data to back anything up.
Anyway, let’s see what tomorrow holds. It’s so hard to pass up on outdoor rides when the sun is shining.
