In November I had some performance tests done and (no big surprise) my endurance zone is basically all that I have. I don't have much 'room' (in terms of watts or HR) above it before my legs scream for mercy and I have to stop. What this means is that I am a wimp :) No seriously, it means that I need to re-train my body to clear lactic acid, and that ultmately, I need to either be doing super high intensity, short intervals ... or I need to be taking it easy (bottom of endurance zone).
Although I say it wasn't surprising, I had been doing most of my rides at the top of my endurance zone, hopeing to grow it. As my focus is on the longer races, I want to go as fast as possible for as long as possible - so this seemed to make sense. Well, it did - up to a point. I grew my endurance zone to the max possible!!!
So now I am going slower, to get faster! My intervals are super short - max length is 1 min - and they are are really high watts. Watts i haven't seen .... ever ... even when I was doing the OCup races. I've been doing this for a month now and I have to say that it's pretty fun. I love seeing the super high numbers and pushing my legs that hard. I do workouts both on the trainer (in the AMs) and on my roadbike (I have a powertap and lots of steep hills in the neighbourhood) and am making progress.
The hardest part? going slower. I have a hard time riding at lower watts/HR than I know I can for my 'endurance' rides. I feel like I want to GO and it's a mental challenge to take it easy. I have some follow up testing in January so I have another month to see the impact of this training .... it'll be very interesting to see how this shifts things around!
