Wednesday, July 13, 2011

What was That?

I was stricken with something over the weekend. Not sure what? I slept almost 12 hours overnight Friday. And although I did some riding on Sunday, I was remarkable weak. No kick whatsoever. And struggling with hills that should cause no bother. I have no idea what that was all about. By Tuesday... I was OK, but still a bit off. Today's ride felt normal

This is the second week of the new cycle. Up on the power. Down on the duration. It's a bigger step than usual. More aggressive this time. I want to push the upper bound of my fitness this cycle. I've ratched up the training power targets almost 20% this cycle. Two weeks in... and I'm tolerating it well. Just hungry all the time. A battle in itself, as I'm trying to lose a few pounds for fall.

In two weeks I may have a different opinion on how well I'm tolerating things as the long-term fatigue accumulates. Stay tuned.

At the same time... I'm monitoring my chronic training load (CTL) very closely. Think of CTL as a 42-day long non-linear average of the total power produced during all of your workouts. Here's more info for the inner geek HERE> , but luckily my training log automatically calculates all this. Working toward a personal best (highest) during this cycle. I've used this model quite successfully this year in predicting my fitness. It's also been great for helping decipher if I'm fatigued, or just being lazy. Watching it also helped show me just how much of my training has been 'junk miles'.

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