1x30 min...this is going to be easy!

Last night the insomnia I often suffer from hit me. I was wide awake from 2am and have now been up 18 hours. I'm sure that's no biggie when you're 18, but for me......

Anyway, needless to say, I was a bit tired this evening. However, the turbo was beckoning me. Yes, I could have put it off till tomorrow, but my sense of masochism prevailed and after cycling home in sub zero temperatures, I was already committed.

Tonight I thought I'd try a 1x30 min session.....just out of curiosity ,you understand ,and also with the bonus, in the back of my mind, that the whole ordeal would be over that much quicker than if I went for the vanilla 2x20. To be honest, it felt mildly like a bit of a cop-out. However, at the end of it I was under no impression that I'd copped out of anything.

Since I was feeling tired and also due to the fact that I was going to go for 30 minutes instead of 20, I started off a lot slower than normal. The first 5 minutes I was never above 270watts, which I felt at the time was a bit worrying. However, i picked up the pace a bit but I was still riding a click down on my 20 pace. I felt pretty comfortable and felt I could maintain this pace for a long time. My pulse was pretty low and I felt in control. However as the session wore on, it became more of a struggle . My legs began to hurt quite a bit. I was holding a consistent pace, but I could feel the lactic acid accumulating. Breathing was fine and pulse was mid 160's. The last 5 minutes , my legs were really complaining from the consistent 30 minute pace they'd had to endure.

Anyway, I finished with an average wattage of 287watts and an average pulse of 165bpm.

I felt this 30 minute format was far better at replicating Functional Threshold Power than the 20 minute efforts. I think the 20 minute efforts can contain quite a bit of anaerobic input which skews the readings, whereas 30 minutes doesn't so that. I felt that 287watts is a pretty good indicator of my FT at the moment, despite the fact that I'm sure I could do 315watts for 20 minutes leading one to assume that my FT was 300watts.

Anyway, the bottom line is I reckon that the 1x30 is giving me a better workout for where I am in my training, despite 2x20 gives me more time in 'the zone'.