Two weeks of no training, and I've now cycled for 5 straight days. The first four was just for an hour, today, I rode for 2 1/3 hours, getting in 34 miles and 2300 feet of climbing. I rode the first hour pretty comfortably, averaging pretty close to what I would consider my Ironman wattage of 150-160w. Then I allowed myself to pick up the pace a bit. I started with a comfortably hard ride around the Westlake loop, which I've done many times. Since I did this on my road bike, speed was only going to be so-so, averaging about 18 mph. I usually pick up 1-2 mph on a tri bike. Most important, however, was my wattage over this 18 minute effort. It averaged right around 180w. This is solid for me, especially after having the downtime that I'd recently had.
On the ride back home, I allowed myself to do some 1 minute hard efforts, and just did them by feel. Prior to my injury, I'd been doing some computrainer workouts of 1 minute at 270w, and lo and behold, my three 1 minute efforts, with just one minute of easy spinning in between, were right around 270w. I then hit the climb coming out of hidden valley, which is ~0.4 miles at 7% average grade, and managed to maintain a 250w effort for 3 1/2 minutes. On the final leg home, I have a downhill that I'm working to perfect going fast, and today I nearly averaged 30 mph on this one mile leg, averaging ~160watts on a 3-4% downhill. Let's see if I can increase my downhill wattage and increase my speed! Turning for home, I went all out on the 1 minute climb to my house, and managed to average 347 watts, as I reached the top, my legs actually felt numb. I'm not sure that I've ever experienced that feeling before. They didn't feel sore or burning, they literally felt numb. Might be a good sign!
I'm ready to start pushing the volume this coming week. I have time to ride and start running (I hope that will be ok). The following week, I'll be traveling, so that will have to be a running week. Seven weeks until Ironman Boulder. Let's see how things go.
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