I have always said that I appreciate more the path than the destination. Races give me a goal but I enjoy the process to get fit for the races. I enjoy training.
Today, I had a great training moment. The kind of key workouts that gives confidence, joy and fun. I had the idea to test my 1 min all out power to feed my power-duration curve, then do the classic 4×8 min. Hard program.
A few years ago, I choose to work part time to give me relief from some pressure I put on myself at work (and fight the craziness of the system pushing toward more cases with no increase in manpower) and to give me room for nice days of training. In the past, I used these days to fit in swims and another workout, sometimes 3 workouts. I find out it’s a little bit too much. And programming today workout, I was well aware that it’s gonna be a high demand workout in terms of work and recovery !
Hard training sessions are HRD…….High Recovery Demand. Surprising how easy it is to forget or suppress this reality when making training plans that are "overly optimistic"
— Stephen Seiler (@StephenSeiler) December 31, 2020
So this morning I had the opportunity to forget to put an alarm clock, wake up when I felt it, have a good breakfast. I also sipped a shot of nitrates. Did some computer maintenance (while avoiding socials as a dry january practice) and hopped on the bike in the end of the morning when I am used to knock good workouts with cheesy motivational videos.
I had a short warm up, 3x30s with a strong power to wake me up, déblocage as we say in french, then I choose my motivational electro music to hammer a min all-out. At the start I felt surprising strong, I was surprised by the numbers, but gosh after 30s the legs were wooden sticks !! I clenched my jaws to finish this long minute with a significant decay of power. Then I took a good 10 minutes of coasting but I could still feel my trachea sore, burning after the so hard breathing. But then it was time to do the core work : the 4 x8 minutes. Prior to the workout I decided to go easier than last time because I was a zombie after last week 4×8 min. The first interval is usually hard but this time it was even worse, I could feel that my legs have not recover from the 1 min all out. During some minutes the idea to give in popped up. It’s pretty rare that I experience this. This gives you an idea of the violence of the 1 min before. But I found some grit and stayed on the path to VO2max improvement. It was pretty hard. On the third and fourth intervals I felt better. The exercise was still heavy since I got a 7.9 mmol/L of lactate at the end of the third interval and 8.7 and the end of the fourth and last interval. After that, I took 1 min of coasting and I decide to burn all this lactate with a steady high zone 2 ride. In the first minutes it was all bliss. Even with a high HR, cruising in the upper of my zone 2 felt easy. I had good feelings submerged by endorphins and bursts of emotions caught me. It was like ending a race with the sense of satisfaction and having giving it all. The Garmin algorithm was not very gentle with a 3.9 training effect and quite drunk when I pressed « save » and gave me a new (way too high) VO2max.
After that I was in known world of strange time dilatation and contraction where I am « high » for a few minutes and then get bitten by cytokines, feeling cold and shivering. I took 10g of ketone ester (I still got a few drops of it bought when it was hype) with the crazy idea of stimulating a little bit the mTor pathway with a large whey-blueberry shake which will be way more effective in stimulating muscle growth and repair ;+) I really like the way I feel, like wrapped in cotton, with the feeling of deep satisfaction.