As far as bad ideas go, this was definitely one of them.
With the new job I’ve been on conference calls / training sessions the past day and a half. I deliberately skipped yesterday’s ride as I figured I wouldn’t have time to fit one in, along with starting a new job.
However, I can’t keep skipping rides, so the options were either ride at lunch time, or ride after work. I guess I could have done before work, but I’m trying to get my sleep back to normal and even heading to bed very early last night (22:30 as opposed to the usual 00:30), I still feel tired. Another few earlier nights required.
The thing is, I have a bad cold at the moment. It’s given me a sore throat and a bad cough. Probably all things tied together really. But that also likely should have meant I opted for an easier ride today.
Normally I would have gone for an hours Zone 2 on a Wednesday. But being time crunched I decided I could handle a Jon’s Short Mix.
Whoops.
I really struggled with this session today.
There’s the easy warm up that lulls you into a very false sense of security. A steady ramp from 30 to 70% of FTP over 5 minutes. Ahh, this is the life.
And then: bam!
Right into 2x 1 minute at 150% FTP / 375w (for me), which is around 5.8w/kg.
Hold that for a minute and then get a ridiculously short 30 second ‘breather’ before it’s right back into it.
If memory serves I was out of the saddle for a chunk of that second block, simply because I was struggling so badly.
Things did not improve on the sprints.
On the first two I went with ERG mode, the first one failing hard as I didn’t have the cadence built up to see me through to the end without the resistance practically seizing up.
And the second time through I got the cadence high but couldn’t keep it there, hitting the exact same outcome.
On the third attempt I went with ERG mode: off, and that time I could only manage ~475w.
Fail, fail, and a fail.
Even with the four minutes of recovery before the tempo block, I didn’t feel anything close to fresh. 10 minutes at 89% FTP / 223w (3.4w/kg) should be fairly straightforward. But it dragged so bad. It was my breathing today, I couldn’t seem to get that sorted and that led to feeling depleted.
Ahh well, I tried.
I kind of wish I hadn’t done something that intensive though. I’m still feeling it in my chest now. Nothing major, just irritated my cough and I certainly don’t feel like it was an overly beneficial session.
But never mind, because there’s a full afternoon of work ahead!
Far out! 0:30 bed times! No wonder my ride to work times make you cringe. 20:30 as I type this and I’m struggling to stay awake!
Jon’s Mix reminds me of my ride home from work actually, but with less warm up and dodging commuter riders and zombie walkers.
Crikey Moses, I cant even get my kids to bed before 20:30! Fair play. Usually I need to have them in bed, then me take a bath for ~30 minutes just to chill out, watch a bit of TV and then I feel like I’ve unwound sufficiently to sleep.
It’s ages since I’ve done Jon’s Short Mix or Emily’s Short Mix. Both of them are brutal. Emily’s a real killer – that final 9 minute block, that’s just awful. It says during Jon’s Short Mix how the devs used it to test the platform. I guess they figured if people would keep coming back after being brutalised like that, they were on to a winner. It’s the ERG mode thing that kills me – when the resistance ramps up so high that I can no longer spin the pedals. Talk about demoralising.