Rainy Day

Rain today. All day. Not that we didn't need it here in Madison.

This meant no chance to get out on the sweet Madone 5.2 that I'm borrowing from the LBS. Well, I was originally figuring on a tempo ride today, maybe 1.5-2 hrs, but instead I hit the weight room and played around with a new (to me) form of intervals on the trusty 'ole indoor trainer.

I took a soaking walk over to the UW Natatorium today between classes, and was relieved to put on some dry clothes - albeit smelly, workout clothes. Anyway, I proceeded to do an upper body workout with free weights and some simple compound body weight exercises. What???? Upper body for a cyclist? Yeah, I know - it doesn't make sense at first. I'm a firm believer that developing total body strength is a key to being athletic in any endeavor. So, in my eyes, this had it's place. Now, it doesn't mean I'm bodybuilding. In fact, I hope to add as little mass as possible, but retrain some forgotten muscle groups for additional on-bike strength and injury prevention.

So, thoroughly worked out - I went back downtown and handed in an assignment, and finished the rest of my school "work day" by completing some chemistry work and readings for various classes. I came home, and watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory (awesome) while stuffing in a little food (toast with honey, and some of TJ's omega mixed nuts), and getting dressed for my indoor workout.

Over the past season I'd heard a lot from a friend and teammate of mine about SST, or Sweet Spot Training. The idea being that you can build an aerobic base without aiming your intervals directly at high percentages of your FTP/FP or MHR for 10-20 minutes at a time - Instead, the SST approach involves prolonged efforts in L3/L4 zones, closer to 85-90% FP. I read that a good starting point was to incorporate 2-3 15 minute SST intervals with 5-10 minutes of recovery between efforts. In what I've read, this is too short to elicit a major response, but serves as a way of introducing the workout style and familiarizing yourself with the level of effort. So I did 3 15min efforts at ~100rpm, in my 52x21 and 52x19 on my Kinetic trainer. According to the trainer's power curve, this put my wattage near 245-250 for the intervals (about 85-90% of my last tested FTP) . I'm sure this isn't perfectly accurate, but it felt like a good workout - here's how it broke down (time in hours:min):

0-15: Warm up with 20sec spin ups to 165rpm and ILS
15-30: SST at 52x21
30-40: Rest, spin at 39x23
40-55: SST at 52x21
55-1:05: Rest, spin at 39x23
1:05:-1:20: SST (2 min 52x23, 2 min 52x21, 1 min 52x19) X3
1:20-1:30: Cool down, spin

Ok. So, the first interval wasn't all that hard. It wasn't "easy," but felt like a less-stressful LT.
The second one was harder because I got bored.

Seriously, if this SST stuff were to go on for 1 hour straight, I'd fall asleep at a 170 HR. BORING.

The third interval I split into three 5min over-unders, with the progression shown above. I called this SST, because I was at or below SST pace for 2 min, at SST pace for 2 min, and then well above it for 1 minute. It felt more like a tough LT interval. I liked this better than the first two though. To be honest, I think I was closer to LT pace based on my HR, which averaged 165 during the SST intervals.

I have a meeting to get to now, and lots of homework to work on for this week!

Regards, thanks for reading.