After an up and down week it was definitely nice to get a slightly extended period of time back on the bike.
For this one I opted for Norseman Workout #5: Imingfjell, an hour and fifteen minutes of 28 increasing intervals, albeit with a nice amount of recovery between each set.
Looking at the work, I wasn’t overly concerned about any of this going in to the ride. I felt fresh and with the sensible recovery slots between, I was hoping to get a good workout without slaughtering myself.
A decent 8 minute warm up meant I was prepared and ready by the time the first set hit. I’d taken the precaution of using the final 1 min dip after the warm up to get off the bike and open the window. It’s cold out, but I figured I might welcome the chill as things heated up later in the session.
As the workout prompts say, the first four efforts really felt like an extension of the warm up. Nothing difficult there. I wasn’t really focused at this point, and was simply aiming for a consistent 95rpm cadence.
Pretty much all of the first half of this workout went off without issue.
The recovery blocks felt fine. The work was all stuff I’d usually consistently do more of. One minute at 225w with 1 minute at 120w after? Not quite the usual SST affair.
However, after the half way point I expected things to get harder.
The first block above FTP was where things started to get interesting.
I’d been taking the 1 minute breathers as a chance to do my Duolingo exercises. But once I was working that much harder, I needed the minutes to properly recover.
Each time I was aiming to get my heart rate back in to the 140s. That applied throughout, and I was happy with how I did on this front. Controlled breathing and generally improved fitness actually meant I never missed this mark… until the very end, but more on that below.
For the fifth and sixth blocks I was still feeling decent.
Heck, during the fifth block I found myself thinking how much I was enjoying the workout.
That feeling subsided a bit by the end of the sixth set 🙂
Though it was in the final 20 second block that I really pushed myself.
On the first effort I did what I was told. 305w for 20 seconds.
But it didn’t feel like enough.
I wanted more.
So I took ERG off for the subsequent three intervals. Hence, no photos. I was full gas.
Seated. But full gas.
The thing that I want to change though is my cleats. They have waaay too much float on them. I don’t know what my old ones were. They had a small degree of float, but not much. These current ones have way too much leeway, and I feel like I’m slipping all over. I really don’t like it.
So, yet more expense ahead. And annoyingly it might even mean I have yet more messing around with cleat positions in my short term future. Arghh.
Anyway, aside from the 10 minute cool down, this ride seemed to pass by fairly quickly. I got through a Weezer album I’d never listened too before, and still had 45 minutes left to enjoy at techno mix. Can’t be bad.
Over 700 calories burned as well. That goes some small way to burning off this Christmas stocking that seems to be growing around my belly.
