20 Minutes of pain

Well, I did it. OUCH!

I started off with a good 18 minute warm-up, and then let my HR drop for a couple of minutes. Then it was time. After 5 minutes I was really wondering if I could hold this pace for another 15! As it turns out - I couldn't. I dropped off a fair bit over the next 5 minutes.

I ended up averaging 231 watts for the 20 minutes. At 86kg, that gives me a watts /kg of 2.67. That puts me as a middle of the pack cat 5 racer. Not what I'll need to be able to win. Interestingly - by hitting my weight goal, without increasing my wattage output, I can boost that to 3.07 - middle of the pack cat 4. That should be enough to win some races and get boosted up to cat 4. Hopefully I'll be able to increase my wattage output, as well.

Average HR for the test was 174, and I maxed out at 186. I never felt like I was "sprinting" - so I could've probably pushed my max HR another few points higher, but I don't think I'd have been able to hold it long enough to have any impact on my average wattage. (Max wattage for the test was 471). Average Cadence was 92. Over-all, a good work-out.

So, the baseline has been laid down. I think I'll try and test myself once/month to see what kind of progress I'm making. Tomorrow will be a recovery ride for one hour - Friday will be a hard interval session - I'm thinking of trying the intervals that John and I built last year. That'll hurt, but I should see rapid growth doing those a couple of times / week. Saturday will be a long recovery ride.

The real challenge is going to continue to be the food intake. My weight has gotta fall.