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'.

only time for 20 minutes (not that I'm complaining!)

Only time for a 1x20 this morning. Working late tonight and too many things to do.
Felt rather unwell yesterday and haven't been on my bike since Friday's session.
Felt a bit better this morning so thought I'd try and fit in a 1x20.
My idea was that since I've had some kind of virus and also that I seem to fade on the 2nd 20, I'd try and tone down the 1st 20. Keep it at say 285 watts. Not go mental.
Anyway, jumped on the damn torture machine and warmed up for 5 mins. Then off I went. Started of in the low 270w but I felt stronger than I thought I would, so I pushed on. Nearly all the time I was well over 300w and my pulse was low 170's, although my breathing felt hard, for some reason.
Thankfully my computer behaved ok this time and I came in the a 301w average and a 168bpm pulse average. Not too bad really, but once again ,my planned session of keeping it easy failed to materialise. One day I'll learn some discipline with this cycling lark.

I think one of the things I'm learning is that I feel stronger the more time I give myself to recover. I've had 3 days off the bike and I felt noticeably stronger today. I think we've all read on various Internet forums and coaches web sites that recovery is the key to improvement. I've heard that most amateurs do too much and never reach their potential since they are hammering it all the time. This is ever more true for guys like me who are....ahhhemm....more mature. We need even more time to recover. I think I'll try and stick to a maximum of two 2x20's a week . There we go...that concept of discipline again!