Feels good to past a test

Phew, what a relief! I was nervous before my final test, real nervous. I don’t get that nervous, not really my style. On the road I test myself a few times a week, almost every ride. Each workout I go to do I have a goal, hold a certain power for a certain amount of time. It is almost always on a route I know and I can measure against what I have been doing as of late, so I am constantly keeping myself in check, this seems to work with me. For the hour though, I have not really done a timed test in 7 weeks, just been doing some real good training, but no “hard numbers” to compare against. I did have a feeling that I had made some good improvements, sort or reading over power/speed rations for my workouts as of late and it seemed encouraging.

Long story even longer:

Lame warm-up, damn I need to get that worked out. Got a okay warm-up with my regular group, then headed up to put on my race/aero stuff, change kit, bathroom (twice!) etc. Took almost an hour! So, instead of a 10m tempo at race speed I cut it short, did a 5m effort. But, I could tell in the first minute that I was good. Funny, but I can tell almost right away if I can hold pace comfortably or not. I was so confident that I did 5m, came in for a sip of water and was ready to do it.

I got a few meters up on the pace right away and held it, for 40 minutes. At 40 minutes my HR was still low, about 5-7 beats below my threshold HR, I could hardly believe it to tell the truth, the legs were fine and I felt almost as if I was holding back. So at 40m I started to roll it out, figured I would take the HR up to 178-179 and see how it went, just wanted to keep it below 180 as I knew that would be safe, I am confident I can roll at that HR for a LONG time. 12 minutes later I was at 179 bpm and had a lap on the beep, picked up 1/4 k. I pulled it back a tick and let my slowly increasing HR settle in at 180, kept adding a meter or two per lap still. Body was starting to hurt though, ass/arms/back etc., as would be expected, though not even 25% as much as the first hour test. Then at 2m to go I let it rip and took it up to about 50-52 kph, added another 100 meters in the final 2 minutes. So the test went well, as a matter a face better than I could have hopped for. Ended up covering 46.125 (estimated), about 500 meters past the current record, can’t ask for much more than that. Though, I did start from a flying start, not a standing, I figure that is about 75 meters. Also I had a few people on the track and part of the ride some riders were on my wheel, that helped. At the same time I loose a bit with other riders on the track as I have to keep my head up much more, not wanting to crash.

I took the speed out of this chart as my Garmin speed sensor works so poor it is just distracting, I have two that I have been trying to use, both work like crap. I sort of rode within myself, allowing for a big push at the end. Was not expecting this type of ride on the day, geez, hope I can repeat it when it counts!

The big thing I noticed was that I was more comfortable, my body had made some real adaptions to the posture on the bike increasing my comfort and efficiency. This full hour was much easier than my last hour, it was even easier than any of my 20 or 30 minute tests. hell, it was easier than most of the workouts I have been doing. Am I dreaming, am I going to wake up? I do love it when a plan starts to come together..

Now, just got to sharpen up, stay healthy and injury free and I think I am good. Fitness does not appear or disappear overnight, feeling about as confident as one can feel before going for an hour record.