If the day ever comes, I'll be ready

Another weekend, another 4-5 inches of snow. Its just gonna be a way of life here on the Front Range this year. Normally we'll get a strange run of 60 degree days and you'll see everyone hitting the trails in long sleeves and shorts, but this year the trails are getting a well deserved break.

So per the usual, I climbed on to the Roubaix thats been mounted in the trainer for the last 2 months for some indoor saddle time. Since having my week plus hiatus from the head cold, I had been worried about getting that snap in my legs back. This weekend gave me hope that a 1.5 week break won't be any problem come spring.

Saturday I did an endurance building 1:30 minute Zone 2 (60ish percent of max) ride while I watched the Pokes lay an egg on the road versus Texas A&M. Figured after the gut wrenching win over Texas a win at A&M would be tough, so I dealt with it pretty well. Ride clicked along pretty easily, with the only problem being keeping my heart rate from dropping below the lower range of my zone. Knowing what I had in store for me today, I didn't worry too much about grabbing another gear to get my HR higher in the zone.

Today I had a long ride (long for a trainer ride at least) with a couple intervals in it. Schedule for 2:10, with the intervals having 10 minutes of Zone 4 work followed by 5 minutes of recovery. I haven't done any work above Zone 3 in a long time, so I was anxious to see how all this "base" work I had done would translate to higher HR stamina. I knocked out an hour of Zone 2, then started the intervals which went by pretty quickly as I watched some NFL on the tube.

I felt pretty good during the intervals, pushing a 53/15 gear at a cadence of about 100 rpms, which translates to somewhere in the range of 28mphs. I did notice in the data evaluation that my cadence appeared to drop a bit on the second interval, but I won't worry too much about that right now.

So for the weekend I pounded out 3:35 minutes on the trainer, turning the cranks over around 20,000 times and putting in 65-70 miles (estimating based on gearing and cadence). I'd really love to get out on the trail/road, but I am coping pretty well indoors. I'm really, really glad that I had the road bike and trainer this winter otherwise I'd be 215lbs and sorely out of shape come Spring.

Here's the Polar data from Sundays ride.