Stick to the plan?

Today was supposed to be a recovery ride. So, to keep my competitive juices from pushing me harder than I'm supposed to, I set the little computer guy to 150 watts. I figured that'd keep my HR nice and low. And it worked - for awhile.

Okay, I'll admit it. I got bored. I was spinning along nicely at 130-150 watts and listening to last night's American Idol. (my way of not really wasting time watching it - I'm working out!) Maybe it was the American Idol. I don't know, but I was feeling a little bored so I decided to do a little sprint. Nothing really tough, just see how quickly I could open a gap on my 150 watt pace friend.

I didn't pound it hard - in fact I only put out about 325 watts for that 10 or 15 seconds (I was watching my HR a little, you know.) But suddenly there was this gap of 30 lengths. And my legs still weren't really warmed up, so I didn't want to push it hard, but it was so boring just spinning! So I kicked the pace up a little.

When I'm time trialing I tend to do some "mental math" games in my head - if I can hold this speed for 10 more minutes, how much will that shave off my over-all time? Stuff like that. I started doing that. Before I knew it I was holding 300 watts for 2 or 3 minutes intervals, and then only letting it drop to 225 or so for recovery. The gap started to widen on my 150watt man.

Then I said to myself, "self, what's the biggest gap you've ever had on watt-man?" Realizing that number was only about 1km - mostly 'cause I don't usually give myself such an easy target of 150 watts, but that didn't matter this morning. I decided to CRUSH 150watt man!

I laid it down. 30 minutes into the ride I realized that my legs really were a little tired from yesterday's effort, and I really could have used a recovery ride today - but it was too late. I was gonna crush 150watt-man.

2km, 3km, 2.88 (Even 150 watts is fast when going down 5.6% grades while I'm climbing 3.6% grades!), 3km, 4km, 5km... yup. 5km is what I beat him by! I ended up averaging 209 watts. No, not a monstrous number - but I also kept my Aver HR under 158 - though at the end I did hit 178 while generating 429 watts in my sprint for the line. (Hey, who knows, maybe somebody picks him up and gives him a ride to the line sprint?! Always go hard for line sprints!!)

On a completely unrelated note - I've begun to put together a list of people in the area who would be interested in riding so that we can get some group rides together. Should be a fun year on the bike!

On a sadder note - no weight loss today. I'm thinking I must be eating stuff that I'm not calculating, so I've gone back to a notebook and will record everything I eat - and when. This weight MUST leave this year!