After a good 4 week block of training, I figured now would be a good week to do some testing and recharge the battery. For me, testing inside on the rollers generally takes some serious motivation and a whole lot of mental tenacity. It just freaking hurts, and when you know that going in, it can almost feel dreadful. As added motivation, I wrote a sign up and placed it on my TV which read, “Winners Block The PAIN! Winners Don’t QUIT! SUCK IT UP!” I also had the pre-requisite IPOD shuffle on full blast along with the 2003 Tour of Flanders DVD on the tube.
I just rode easy Monday & Tuesday for about an hour to get in some recovery. Wednesday was going to be D-Day. TSB would be rising to right about “0” by then. I got home Wednesday evening and prepared for the pain. I did something a little different. I raised my fan on a chair so it was about 3 ft in front of me, hitting me squarely in the face. I opened the sliding glass door to get some cool air in. Headband on, sweat towels laid out, DZNUTS chamois cream applied…I’m ready to rock.
Went through my usual warm-up (real ez for the first few minutes and then start ramping up by 10-20 watts every minute for a total of 10 minutes. Then went into 3x1:30 at 100% w/30 second recovery followed by 3x30 seconds at 430+ to really get the blood flowing. Soft pedaled for a few minutes and began the self motivating talk. “You can do this! Legs are good! You need to validate training progress! This is where the rubber meets the road!”
After a few minutes of this, I fired up the nerves to launch an all out 5 minute effort. It took a few seconds more of anxiety and curse words before I finally punched the interval start button. GO TIME!
My best cp5 avg power (388w) was back at the beginning of January going up Naked Mountain. Before the test, I thought a goal of 400w+ would be a good target. I told myself to not look at the power reading until about 30 seconds in and start based on feel. After 30 seconds I was sitting on 425w average. Cool. Naturally, it felt hard but not too hard that I would blow up after 3 or 4 minutes. After about 3 minutes, my avg had dropped to about 419w. The grim reaper was approaching, so I told myself to NOT let it drop lower than that and give it all for the last 30-45 seconds. I was able to get avg power back up a bit to 422 by the end of the interval. It f-ing hurt but I was really happy with the number! Wow, a 34 watt (~8.5%) improvement in 2 months and I haven’t really even been doing that much V02 work. My goal at the beginning the year was to get a cp5 of 425w. I guess I’ll be updating that goal now.
And then something unexplainable happened. As I was doing my 10 minute recovery, I started to cough. Not the good kind of cough. More of a cough like I had just seared my lungs. I was having trouble breathing. What the heck? I originally chalked it up to the hard effort, but in hindsight I think a couple of things didn’t help. I had moved the fan so it was blowing directly into my face on high about 3 feet away. It was a little colder outside than I thought and I may have opened the door more than necessary. I’ve had slight problems in the past with asthma, but it didn’t occur to me at the time that this may be the culprit. Overheated body and cold air blowing directly in my face may not have been the best idea.
Regardless, I was still going to attempt a hard 20 minute effort to approximate FTP. My goal was to be 350w+. This was going hurt. After some more self motivating talk, I hit the go button and I was off. I was holding a steady 351-352w for the first 9 minutes. Legs felt pretty good, but my breathing was all screwed up. I was coughing about every 15 seconds. WTH?! It’s at this point where I lost total motivation. I just couldn’t do it any longer. Yep, I stopped. Shame on me, but something was going on with my cough. I rode for about another 20 minutes and then just bagged it. I continued coughing off and on for the rest of the evening. I finally remembered that I had inhaler in my bag before bed. I took a couple of pulls before going to sleep.
Flash forward to the Thursday morning. I woke up a little pissed off at having stopped the 20 min effort. I wanted redemption. My cough was gone. I was feeling pretty good. I was planning on riding anyway, so I told myself to get back in the saddle and prove yourself today. I didn’t want to go all day kicking myself about last night’s test. So, I hopped on the rollers and started my typical warm-up. I added a 5min chunk at 100% and some hard 30’s. Legs were good enough to give it a go. I told myself I wouldn’t quit no matter what!
My plan was to hold 345w avg for the first 10 minutes and start building power to the end. After 5 minutes, I felt good and steady, really focused on breathing and smooth pedaling. At the 10 minute mark I was still in good shape. Time to start ramping it up. At the 15 minute mark I had slowly increased my avg to 348, I could smell the finish. It’s all heart now. With two minutes to go, I started to really pick it up. I wanted the last minute to be close to max. Bam, the finish line. 352 avg. Very nice. I’d pretty much emptied the tank…I think. My last 20 minute test (338w) was up Mt Weather back in January as well. So, I was happy with the 352 today (14 watt improvement, ~4%). Puts my FTP at ~334.
Now that the misery is over, it’s time to increase training loads. There’s no hiding. Things are on track. It’s time to put the hard work in and get back to training.
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