Hard Work Pays Off

Because I was in a "recovery" week, I had purposely set my alarm to wake me up 30 minutes later than my normal time.  I woke up this morning feeling fatigued.  I hadn't slept well for some reason and moved my rest day out to Friday instead of the normal Monday to make sure I got a rest day in before the racing the Texas Independence Relay this weekend.  I almost went back to bed, but at this point, the dogs insisted on being fed.

Today was a scheduled time trail test where one regularly rides the same course every four weeks to see how you are progressing with your training.  The course I use is called the Computrainer 10 Mile Time Trial, a 10 mile slightly hilly course.  I ride it as fast/hard as possible, letting the Computrainer collect speed, distance, and power (measured in watts). If one is improving, average watts during the ride would increase, indicating my training is cuasing improvement.  A decrease in average power from the last test would likely indicate I'm losing fitness.

So I fed the dogs and trudged over the Computrainer. Warm up the trainer and my legs for 10 minutes, calibrated the machine, reset the course, and started.  After halfway through the test, my average wattage was much higher than I expected!  I thought that I likely had pushed too hard and the payback would come during the second half by my legs giving out, bringing my average way down.  It didn't happen!  I hung onto the same average wattage for the remainder of the ride!!  This was a 4.4% improvement.  For comparison, in the previous four weeks, I only gained 1.3% in average power output.

I couldn't believe it.  Even though I was not in the "mood" to do this test, the training I'd been doing the previous four weeks (since the last test) must be working!

I proceeded to cool down for five minutes, logged my workout, updated the stats in my training plan using this new test data and am rejuvinated to continue training hard.

Train safe!