Best ever Trainer Session?

One of Tony's great sessions that I have never been able to nail is the old 10 x 3minute session. In the past I have either started to fast and blown or not gone hard enough and finished well but under done.

I decided to give it ago yesterday for a few reasons. First the weather was horrible and incredibly windy so I was not going outside. Also I needed a session that would burn quite a few calories to wear off the nice Thai meal I had the night before, and finally and maybe the main reason I just found out that next weekend is the Waikato Bay of Plenty Time Trail champs and I wanted to see where I was at. At 25Km for the distance I figured this would be a good session to test me on.

Heart Rate and Cadence

Power is the only thing worth looking at here

I started reasonably conservatively at about 300W ave for the first 3 then increased to about 310 for the next 3. The 7th 320, 8th 310W, 9th 340W and the 10th 350W.

I was varying the cadence going one gear harder each interval in sets of 3 going back to the first gear after the third interval of the set. The last one (10th) I just went one more gear harder.

The lower power averages do match up with the easiest gear (e.g. 1st, 4th) except the 7th which I cooked myself on a bit as you can see from the next interval power went down.

The heart rate graph definitely has signs of cardiac drift as the HR slowly increases from one set to the next...

The last two intervals I really tried to wind it up a bit and I do not think I could have done another interval at similar power.

All in all a very good set for me!

My First CTS Field test

Just got the new book by Chris Carmichael. The Time-Crunched Cyclist...

No rocket science in involved just plain hard work!

Anyway before you start the program he recommends doing a field test. This invloves 2 8m efforts 10m apart. He has a lot of detail on how to do this. I tried to follow it as close as possible. I chose using the trainer as there is not really any good location close by to do it on the road...

The Results:


Heart rate and Cadence


Power

Unfortunately my test did not match any of the examples CC provided! It was a good test and has highlighted that I was not sure of what I could handle for 2x8m and so I must have started to easily. In the notes Chris does say to really open it up in the last minute and that is what I did but guessing from the examples he would have expected that to hold the current power rather than increasing it as much as I did... The rest of each set was pretty steady though. At the end of the second 8m I again was able to increase the power instead of slightly dropping it which would have indicated fatigue... so as I say I must have gone to easy to start with...

Average power was 325 and 323W, heart rate 146 and 149.