It was 3.6 F this morning at the site of my favorite outdoor loop in Hampshire, Il. Been that way for a while. Supposed to be that way for several more weeks.
Came home Thursday around midnight and got on the C'trainer with the plan of doing 7 hours (doing what I can as early on in the season to become familiar with pushing into the sleep deficit area).
As I posted earlier I've reduced the stages of RAW to C'trainer courses. The DeLorme software calculates the total feet of climbing/descending between two points. I then used another formula to calculate the average percentage grade incline for each RAW Stage.
That is, for example, Stage 1 would be 2.12% grade up for 54.6 miles, Stage 2 would be .68% incline up for 88.6 miles, etc.... Of course, this `smooths' out the peaks and valley gradients. That is, NO RESTING and NO FLAT SECTIONS and NO DOWNHILL SECTIONS. Just a constant, steady climb up for however many miles of each stage.
On Wednesday and Thursday mornings I completed 42 miles of Stage 1 (at a 2.12% constant incline). Took it nice and easy bc I had to go to work afterwords.
Plan was to finish up Stage 1 and start and complete Stage 2 during the wee hours of Friday morning.
Conclusion: It is harder to ride a constant upgrade than it is to ride the actual rolling or spikey real course. Which, I am concluding, makes this an even more valuable training activity.
Unfortunately, yesterday (Friday) morning I felt very good starting out the 7 hour training session. I wound up rachetting up my pace (watts and heart rate), moving quickly into the deep anaerobic zone. After 45 minutes of this I realized it might be wise to back off a bit. Unfortunately, that was too late.
I was totally fried by the end of the second hour of training, despite the fact that I finished TS#1 in 1:12:00. TS#2 has an avg gradient of .68% for 88.6 miles. It took me 2 hours and 48 minutes to cover 38 miles, for a total of only 4 hours indoor work.
Disappointing in that I didn't complete the 7 hours of planned training, hoping, as well, for a hundred miles of indoor work. But, another lesson that I've been taught dozens of times before but never quite learned: pacing.
I was exhausted after 4 hours. Spent. Wasted. Pissed off and down on myself (again).
But I'd rather learn these lessons beforehand than during RAW.
Down now, again, on the C'trainer for 3 or 4 hours. Nice and sedate, this time.
- Dan
