Conscious of the fact that I had not done much on the bike over the last few weeks, I got a session in this evening on the Rollers while staring at the garage door. Mind you a 60 minute workout including 3 x 10 minute intervals at the top end of my Threshold Range kept me focused. Wow, how that final Interval hurts, especially the last 5 minutes or so. But in my mind I’m telling myself that it’s this last few minutes that is really making the difference, if I was to wimp out, the first two intervals would have been wasted. Rule number 5 applies!
Looking at the Intervals in WKO+ shows the following statistics for the Interval portion of the workout; (click the picture to see it full size)
Comparison of the Threshold Intervals
My objective was to hit 321 Watts which is right at the top end of my Threshold Power range with an average cadence per Interval of 85 rpm, a typical average for me on most of my rides. As I’ve mentioned previously, doing a workout on the rollers feels like a high quality session compared to riding on the road sometimes when you are trying to hit an objective like I had today. As long as I could keep going, its possible to hit the target with clinical precision. So if you look at all three Intervals, I hit 321 watts each time as an average, Rest Intervals were 5 minutes between each Threshold Interval. My Cadence was 85 rpm, exactly as targeted. And if you look at my Heart Rate, you can see that it increased each Interval as the work load on my Cardio system was stressed at each Interval. So for the same Power and Cadence, my Heart Rate increased by a significant amount over the session, Cardiac Drift in action I guess.
I think I’m going to spend my Indoor sessions focusing on Sweet Spot and Threshold Workouts in an effort to improve my FTP and my endurance at that level of effort. I find it very difficult to hit these numbers on the road, whether its simply because of the variable nature of riding on the road, wind, traffic, corners, downhills or whatever. But on the Rollers, its easy to hit the numbers, although that doesn’t mean its an easy session. I think the quality of the 60 minutes is better, perhaps, than some of my road riding. Anyone care to comment?
Overall statistics tonight for my Roller session, Average Power 240 watts, NP 274, Average HR 152 bpm, TSS 80 and IF .90 The real achievement is in the chart above for my Intervals, but you read that for yourself. Suffice to say, the third Interval was torture, it was all I could do to hang on to the number and hit my 10 minutes to achieve my objective. Feels good now though 
