Back to the Intervals

It's put in some decent training over the last two weeks. After the strength and endurance work of the last few months I'm a bit ring rusty on the focused treadmill sessions. So the Tuesday before last, I was back on it with a decent enough set of 6-minute ramped efforts.

As I said the focus has been building my strength and endurance and the Zwifting (bike) has also been in cruise mode. I feel my FTP has dropped a little so it was with some surprise that I managed a 30s PB on the virtual Cheddar Gorge climb the previous Wednesday. Not gonna lie, I went for it. Out the saddle for the majority of the first half, the steeper bit. I am definitely an out the saddle grinder sort of climber vs the in the saddle faster spinner.

Last weekend, starting Friday, I ran back to back 9k tempo's and a 6k Sunday although that was more pruning than running as I cleared away the brambles and nettles from my local loop. I followed Saturday and Sunday's run with two zone 2 30-minute bike sessions.

This Tuesday it was more reps, five 1-minute sprints followed by six 3 minutes efforts. Wednesday I tried the new Zwift FTP test, which is, in essence, just a 3.5k hill grind at an average of around 10%. My legs had a bit of fatigue from Tuesdays treadmill reps so I wasn't holding my breath... but I still manage to clock 224W which is only just shy of my 227W best FTP, and well within the bounds of experimental error as these type of FTP tests are not exactly a precise science.

Up Thursday was more treadmill intervals. Short ones this time 3 blocks of five 1-minuute 'sprints' at 16kph with 30s recovery. Yesterday was a solid 45 minute Zwift and today, a 13k zone 2/3 run as my Garmin keeps shouting at me that I don't have enough 'low aerobic' runs logged. It's hard running slow, and when it's hilly the slow is easy but the zone 2 becomes hard as I'm not dropping to a walk - zone 2 be damned.

Hopefully, it'll be 10k-ish tomorrow and then back on the reps Tuesday after feet up Monday.