Dashing Through the Snow...

Welcome to March! We all woke up to a nice March blizzard this morning.. Lots of moaning and groaning following the few really warm days last week that got people excited about Spring and Summer.. I have to admit, I was a little psyched myself last week since I really want to start getting some miles in on the roads.. But you can't change the weather and it doesn't do any good to complain about it. Like all things in life, it doesn't do any good to get upset about things you can't control. So as I walked around my empty gym this morning, assuming that the people who normally come to my morning classes decided to stay home and do the shoveling burpee workout I posted on my other blog, I wondered what kind of punishment I could put myself through. 

Seeing how I need to get some miles in on Mondays I decided a bike workout was in order, and it needed to be intense.. So I did something I've never done before, an interval session on the rollers. This is difficult because to get to a high power output on the rollers you have to pedal really fast in a big gear since the rollers don't provide as much resistance as a trainer does. I train with a power meter which allows me to know exactly how much power I'm putting out. This is a great method of training for cyclists since it's fairly easy to calculate the amount of power you need to put out to achieve certain milestones. For example, for me to hit 1:10 on Mt Washington at 145 lbs (I plan to lose about 5 lbs by race time) I need to average 275 Watts which is about 4.2W/kg.. That's a really high power threshold and will be very difficult to achieve. If none of these numbers make sense to you think about the last time you went out for a ride with your kids or even on your own and you were riding over gently rolling terrain at a conversational pace. You were probably averaging somewhere between 75 and 90 Watts. It's also important to realize that the more power you're putting out, the harder it is to go higher. For example, it's much easier to double your speed on a bicycle from 5MPH to 10MPH than it is to go from 20MPH to 22MPH which is only a 10% increase... OK enough numbers,  my interval workout went like this:

10 minute warmup followed by 10 rounds of 60 seconds of work followed by 60 seconds of active recovery (spinning at an easy recovery pace). The 60 second work periods were at increasing power levels and went like this:

200W, 220W, 240W, 260W, 280W, 300W, 320W, 340W, 360W, 380W. 

Then I spun for 2:00 at an easy recovery pace and then did 5 more 60:60 intervals at:

250W, 280W, 310W, 340W, 400W

The intervals above 320W were in the biggest gear on the bike spinning at a cadence of between 100 and 130 RPM.. The wheel speed at 400W was 40 MPH. To hold this for 1 minute was very difficult, especially for this early in the biking season. The scariest part of it was that I was essentially in a sprint on the rollers with the wheels turning at 40MPH, a bunch of kettlebells to my left and a window that opens to a 50 ft drop in front of me. The rollers were making noise like they were about to blow apart so it was a little scary. This was a great interval workout and by doing it on the rollers it added a level of engagement that you just can't get on the trainer since you have to stay 100% focused on your technique while going as hard as possible. Very difficult and very intense!

I finished my workout with 100 consecutive 16# sledgehammer hits on the tire, switching sides every 25 hits. It took 3:50.. That was a lot harder than I thought it would be!

Enjoy the rest of the blizzard...

kevin