I just finished Revolver and I was going to say I have no idea how I finished it, but I do know how I finished it. I can only give credit to the Mental Toughness Plan.
I am mostly following the intermediate prep plan, but deviated by not resting on Tues, with a tough workout on Wed, and a reduced effort but still tough workout yesterday with little sleep. So I went in to Revolver this morning on fatigued legs and not enough sleep. When the beginning of the warm up felt hard I knew I was in for it. The first interval was so hard that I was already considering reducing the intensity and planning my excuses.
But I told myself to just see how many intervals I could get thru. Then I told myself I just needed to get thru the extra long interval. Then I told myself I was almost halfway. At the end of almost every single interval I was on the erg mode death spiral but still pedaling. Every interval felt like the last one I was going to finish. Then I only had 5 more. Then 4 more. Then 3 more. Then I knew I was going to be able to finish them all, and I was truly amazed at myself. My last 2 intervals were the strongest and I told myself to give everything I had on the final interval and kept my cadence up above 90 for the whole interval
And now here I am honestly stunned I made it all the way thru, knowing that the only reason I did them all was because I kept telling myself to keep going and I that I couldn’t and wouldn’t quit. And so I didn’t.
That is some excellent work right there Sir @emacdoug! Sounds like you are om schedule for the tour
Made some alterations to the plan myself. Improvised Igniter and Recharger on Monday, which was a rest day. Then did Nine Hammers instead of the Frozen Road which I moved to rest day on Thursday. Yesterday I did Defender which I dialled up FTP by 2% for each interval. Which made 14 Vice Grips a bit heavy today, so dialled MAP down a few % there.
Revolver here too, it was the toughest ride. I m still compliant with the Prep Plan and after Getting Away With It on Thursday, I knew Revolver was going to be hard.
Started out on ERG but after 4 intervals my breathing was already out of control so I had to apply some more rest in-between and Level mode and just see what I could do.
Surprised myself, I just fell 6% short of the 4DP goal.
I’m taking advantage of a lull between winter storms to ride outside today and will aim to do 14 Vise Grips tomorrow instead.
Edit: great 4 hour ride which I hadn’t been able to do for a while; it’s a different kind of fatigue in the legs afterwards. About 70% of it was Z2 or lower work, with a few hard efforts on certain sections.
I think it was a good drill actually. You need to really focus on spinning the pedals, not stepping on them, else you would bounce like crazy.
Managed to get up to 180 rpm in the final build!
In the holds I found my longer effort bounce threshold (LEBT) was somewhere between 125-130 rpm. Managed 130-135 when I really focused in the final hold.
Last Saturday’s outdoor ride + 14 Vise Grips on Sunday pushed me into a pretty fatigued state, so the recovery/taper week has been very much appreciated. Since I have done well by supplementing the plan with runs and extra workouts, I decided I wanted to try projecting forward what kind of TSS-state the Tour itself will actually leave me in so I can carefully calibrate how much I do this week.
I know TSS isn’t perfect in an intervals-based world, but I’ve found it to be pretty predictive in general, and after getting re-calibrated since moving to Sufferlandria it tracks with how my body feels pretty well.
I started out with an excel sheet but decided I wanted something more visual, so I loaded the Tour events with their respective estimated loads into my intervals.icu profile as planned workouts, along with the remaining elements of the prep plan:
I’m encouraged by these results, since despite digging deep over last weekend and cracking under the vise grips, I should just barely move into fresh territory in time for the tour. It also means there’s not much room for adding additional planned efforts without pushing into the red on stage 7, unless I take advantage of the time zones to spread the tour over 8 days instead of 7.
The ToS is nine days from my perspective. Today was Recharger day ( awesome work @Coach.Suzie.S ), tomorrow is Primers and then the ToS starts on Sunday.
That s nine consecutive days of work
Legs still don’t feel great but after Recharger better than they were. See if I can prime them some more…
Thanks @ArnoKOS, glad to hear that you like Recharger and it’s done what it’s supposed to! For the most part anyway… too bad we can’t make a magic, make your legs 100% again workout!
