t-max interval report

I did my first interval workout today following the t-max plan. As expected, it was pretty hard. So here is what I took from it.

As I went into my first to sets I realized pretty quickly that fighting a gusty 30mph head/cross wind was not going to make this workout any easier. It was a challenge in itself to keep the wattage at 310.

I also noted on my first set that sometimes the county doesn't strategically place stop signs and round-a-bouts at 2 minute intervals. What were they thinking when the put in this intersection!?

Later this week I'm going to try the interval workout on a more controlled platform. The dreaded wind trainer.

After recovering for about 3 minutes I felt pretty good and ready to go into the next set. But with my t-max, I get a 4 minute recovery period. So I waited that extra minute following the plan.

I managed to squeak out 5 sets of the intervals. At that point I had a little bit of vomit in my mouth and shut it down to cruise easy back to the car. Soon my legs will look just like Jan 's (above).

Kirk out. (and off to bed!)

T-Max Time (re-test)

Well, today I re-tested my T-Max time. This time I only used my PowerTap and the trainer.

The result? Much harder than last week.

After a 20 minute warm up I rode 3:16:57 at 310 watts. Here is some data from WKO+.

Duration: 3:17
Work: 61 kJ
TSS: 8.4 (intensity factor 1.242)
Distance: 1.332 mi

Min Max Avg
Power: 227 428 311 watts
Heart rate: 138 184 173 bpm
Cadence: 77 109 99 rpm
Speed: 20.1 26.6 24.3 mph

So, now I have my PPO and Tmax time. My intervals look like this:

Interval = .6 x Tmax or in my case .6 x 3:17 which is 1:58 (almost 2 minutes) at 310 watts
Recovery = 2 x Interval Time or about 4 minutes

The goal would be to do 5 - 6 intervals. We'll see how many I can crank out early next week. Tomorrow I teach Spinning and Saturday and Sunday are long endurance rides.

T-Max Time

So I'm a little slow to post this, but I tried out my T-max test on Thursday while home at lunch.
I was talking to Kevin about the T-max intervals and he suggested trying them out on the CompuTrainer so that I could lock in the wattage at 310 and focus on just pedaling my legs off. Hrrrm... sounded like a good idea!

I hooked everything up and started to warm up. After 10 minutes or so I calibrated the CT and started adding some wattage on. Strangely, the CompuTrainer and my PowerTap didn't match up wattage. The PowerTap showed me about 30 watts lower than the CompuTrainer. Strange I thought. So I tightened up the resistance unit and re-calibrated. It was still off.

Well, I thought I'd go ahead and run the test anyway. So I cranked it up to 310 watts and waited for the pain to set in. I purposely didn't watch the timer when I started for fear of saying "5 minutes is pretty good and this is hard, so I'll shut it down".

After a few minutes I thought "this is actually pretty easy". I checked my PowerTap. 280 watts. Well, I know I can push this for quite some time. I've been doing it on the Nebo Ridge Trainer every Tuesday for an hour at a time. I attempted to wind it up a little to get the PowerTap in sync with the CompuTrainer. Ok, that was harder!

After what seemed like forever I was pretty spent and gave it up. Upon review of my data I spent over 7 minutes on the test. Well, that just can't be right.

Either I should be able to push more wattage in my PPO or I wasn't pushing out 310 watts for my timed test. I feel that the latter is the case.

My plan now is to retake the Tmax time test on my trainer just as I set it up when I did the PPO test. I hope to find some time tomorrow to do that test. We will see.

Until then... pedal on and be safe!

Peak Power Output Test

This morning I got up early and threw on the bike shorts and headed to the garage for my Peak Power Output test.

I warmed up for about 8 minutes and threw in a little climb to push my HR up and get my legs used to the stress. I hit about 400 watts. I continued to spin easy for two more minutes then did another climb. This time I pushed it a little harder around 450 watts.

At 17 minutes in I cranked up the iPod and White Zombie told me to GO! Well... go at 100 watts for a minute. And then add 30 watts every minute there after.

Let me tell you. This test doesn't really take long. I sat there at 100 watts going... this is silly. Why not just start at 200? Well, at 220, 250, and 280 I realized this was getting pretty hard. I hit 310 and kept it there about 40 seconds and I was done! WHAT? I thought I'd hit 400 or something.

I decided to spin easy for 10 minutes and try again.

This time I did worse. I could barely get it to 300 and sure wasn't going to set it there for a minute or go up to 340. I thought to myself... "OK, this is my PPO!"

I hope to get my T-Max time figured out tomorrow or Friday. I teach Spinning on Friday morning, so that is a bit of a challenge.

Try T-Max Intervals

I've been pretty busy recently with my home life and my training has taken a turn for the worse. Finding any kind of consistency has really been a challenge. Then yesterday on an easy recovery ride I was involved in a crash with a teenager goofing off. (perhaps that story will appear on another post in the future) Needless to say, I've continued to see my CTL drop on the Performance Management Chart.

So... all that said, tomorrow morning I'm going to fire up the Cycleops trainer and see where my Peak Power Output (PPO) sits. This is found by riding at 100 watts and increasing power by 30 watts every minute until you can't take it up any more for a full minute. My guess is that I'll end up somewhere around 500-600 watts based on a fairly recent Time Trial on the CompuTrainer.

I hope to get a day or two of rest, then fire up the trainer again to find my T-Max. The duration at which I can hold my PPO.

From there it's pretty simple math. Do intervals of .6 of your T-Max time at PPO. Double your work phase to find your recovery time.

So let's plot this out. If I push 500 watts tomorrow for my PPO and I hold my PPO for 6 minutes on Friday; then my "Ultimate Interval" will be 3.6 minutes at 500 watts followed by 7.2 minutes recovery. Then repeat as many times as I can! They say most people vomit and die after 5 or 6.

We'll see what happens!