Last week I felt like my rehab rides had reached a natural conclusion, with plenty of base mile rides, an SST session complete, and a climb. After the fact, the one thing I realised I was lacking was a ride or two focused on sprints.
Now, I’ve never been much good at sprinting. It’s not only the weakest aspect of my riding, it’s also the style I least enjoy. I wonder if the two are coincidental?
Anyway, I didn’t go out thinking I would be doing sprints. My actual target was to stick around 3.2w/kg if at all possible. This route today is 50/50, in so much as the first 50% of the ride is uphill, then around the 14-15km mark (of ~30) it turns towards downhill. The plan then was simply to keep a steady pace on the up stuff.
However, when I got close to the 14km mark, the final part of the gradual climb in sight, I decided to put in a sprint. Not for any other real reason than on that particular road, I always seem to want to sprint. Strange. Anyway, I was out of the saddle and punishing myself for ~10 seconds (give or take, I was counting in my head… funny how the seconds speed up as the pain increases), and when I was done I decided that hey, maybe I could throw in a few more. You know, satisfy the Garmin?
So that’s pretty much what I did. I threw in a few more efforts, none of which were anything to write home about. But I tried. And at the end of the ride the Garmin was sufficiently satisfied with my meagre results as to exclaim that the primary benefit of today’s ride was sprinting. Amazing.
The weather’s not quite what it was at the weekend now. We’ve had a big thunderstorm and I was half expecting today to be a wash out. If that happens any day this week it will be a turbo session, almost certainly SST. Something to look forward to about the same as sprinting…
