Not so much to report this time, since last week I was struggling with the tooth problem and the general malaise that accompanied it!
However, Friday was the last day of the antibiotics and I was hopeful that I would be well enough to do a planned 86 mile ride with friends around the New Forest on Saturday. In spite of appalling weather, we did make it round in 4:45, for an average speed of 18 mph. Not much usable heart rate (HR) data though after my clothing became completely soaked, but I would estimate half the time in Zone 1 and half in Zone 2, no more than a few minutes high intensity in Zone 3.
My legs were pretty sore on Sunday, so I took that day and Monday off. Tuesday my heart rate variability (HRV) was far enough above baseline to commit to an interval session. I combined this with my usual 2 hour morning ride with friends, so the first 45 minutes was a fast paced warm up.
I decided to do 6 x 2 minutes with 2 minutes recovery in between. The HR trace of this part is below.
Although at first sight the efforts look fairly consistent, feedback from my friend who was riding with me told me that my efforts started off quite a bit harder than they finished. I was probably also over enthusiastic on the first one, because it got harder and harder to maintain the effort. This kind of session is new to me, so I hope I will be able to judge the effort levels better in future. Ideally, I think a power meter is what is needed, but funds don’t allow at the moment, so I will have to find other ways for now!
Wednesday was a planned 1 hour loop to test aerobic fitness – riding as near as possible to my aerobic threshold of 145 bpm without going over, and using the TRIMP from Precision Pulse app to record the internal training load. As my aerobic fitness gets better, this should decrease. Thursday was intended to be the next interval session, but my lacklustre HRV score was backed up by a high perception of effort right from the start. The plan was revised, and I just completed the 1:30 loop at moderate pace. Plan for today (Fri) is a short swim as I can feel quite a bit of muscular fatigue lingering from Saturday and Tuesday.
With any luck the effects of the bad tooth and antibiotic will clear up this week and training will be back on track…I look forward to updating you all soon!
