Journey to Kona Day 115: Bike Preparation

Yesterday was a key day in my bike preparation for IM Boulder.  After my 4600 yard swim, I went home and got on my bike for a one hour workout with the intent of stimulating my neuromuscular system to be ready for race day.  I’ve done the endurance training, and now it’s just a matter of staying fresh (with the exception of a somewhat longer ride this weekend).  My coach had given me the outline of a workout that looked like this:  four six minute efforts of modulating intensity from zone 3 to zone 4 and back to zone 3.  Those are hard efforts, although not maximum efforts.  Ideally, the fourth interval should be consistent with the first three if I do this properly.  This gets my energy systems stimulated.  It also is an interesting test of where I’m at right now from both a fitness and power perspective.  Since my race day bike is  in Colorado, I rode my old tri-bike, which has a power meter on it.  The end of this workout has me doing four one minute efforts of “muscle endurance,” climbing up the hill to my house in a high gear at low cadence, and finishing with a short maximum effort.  I haven’t been training with power as of late so it was an interesting opportunity to see where I’m at.  

The loop I used for this workout started pretty quickly with a long climb, so I just assumed that I was warmed up by my swim and pretty quickly got into my first interval.  It turns out that the hilly bike loop that I’ve developed in my neighborhood has four climbs of about six minute duration each!  Perfect.

I really didn’t pay close attention to my power, just to my effort, trying to start strongly for two minutes, increasing my intensity for the next two minutes and “holding on” for the last two minutes.  It’s always an interesting mental test to see how one does on a workout like this.  Suffice it to say, I passed.  In fact, all four of my efforts ended up averaging about 220 watts, which is very solid for me.  On race day, I don’t plan on exerting this amount of power except for brief periods of time up the short “kickers” at the end of a few of the segments back to I-36.

The most important take home message from today’s bike workout is that I felt good at the end, and felt good throughout the rest of the day.  That’s what really matters right now, and my coach has reminded me that is the single most important factor in any of my workouts during my taper period.