Text Motivation - The Way Forward?

After last week's hard club ride on Sunday, I took an easy day, completing an easy swim and an easy run. On Tuesday I did my strength session. This hurt as the squats are getting heavy and I introduced 5 mins of treadmill running for 5 mins building from 17kph to 18kph. That speed may not seem that fast for 5 mins; however it is done directly after squats and 4 mins of single leg hill simulations on the turbo (30 sec alternating each leg for 4 mins). There is no rest between the squats, turbo and treadmill so the effort level is intense and the legs are resembling jelly whenyou jump on the treadmill. Straight after the treadmill (again, no rest) it's press ups, ab work, pull downs, ab work (all with no rest). Then it's a recovery while I change shoes and repeat twice more. Finish up with some core work and a great session is complete.

I was heavy legged on Wednesday, which is normal after the gym work, so it was just a swim in the morning and a steady run of 6 miles in the evening. On Thursday I did turbo efforts in the form of a pyramid. Now this is a hard session and I nicked it off jase Walkley (well, he allowed me to have it actually!). I use power to gauge the effort so it probably means nothing to you out there. The session is:

Warm up: 15 mins with some spin ups.
1 min @420W 1 min recovery.
45s @ 460W 2 min recovery.
30s @ 500W 3 min recovery.
45s @460W 2 min recovery.
1 min @ 420W
Take 5 min spin recovery
Repeat twice more.

This is a hard session but the effort has to be pushed to make it work. It's taken me a while to find the correct effort level. basically, it has to be pretty much full out! The last minute effort on the way down is the hardest.

An interesting technique trialed by Daz Sharp was text motivation! I texted jase telling him that I was doing the session and we exchanged texts during my recovery spins. The contact was quite motivating and made it feel like the session must be completed! Daz did this whilst he did his mammoth turbo 112 mile ride. We could create a turbo help line system!

I was planning to run off the bike but I had to look after my girls. This left me with the possibility of losing a run effort session. There was only one thing for it, do the run effort session the next day. This would eat into my recovery day but needs must.

So, on Friday I cycled to the running track and did 18 x 200m in sets of 3. This is done as 2 x 200m on 60s and take 90s after the 3rd 200m. That's one set. The aim is to run at tempo pace, so I maintained 39 - 40 sec for each 200m rep. The legs certainly felt the bike from the previous night. In effect, I ended up having 2 hard days in a row and just one recovery day before the club ride came round again on Sunday.

Turbo man was back for the weekend so we met up at 0800 to grab an hour riding like the old days. The T man put in a few digs to stretch the Turbo Booster. I should say he is not in bad shape, despite what he says! And he is very proficient at using his mobile phone camera whilst riding his bike. By the time I reached St Ives to meet the club, I had bagged 24 miles. We then set off and completed another 61 miles. So I got 85 miles in total, with an average speed of 19mph. the first half of the ride with St Ives CC was hard and we averaged over 20mph to the cafe stop. I was tired but managed to keep up ok. The ride back was more sedate and I was happy enough to sit on the front of my group for most of the way back. Nevertheless, I was tired when I got home.

Today was an easy swim and an easy run with Roth-bound Nige Porter. Both of us had tired legs, as Nige had moved house over the weekend and was obviously fatigued. We looked like a couple of old men hobbling along the road! A couple of easy days is called for before I hit the weights again on Wednesday.

Race season is ever closer!! Yippee!! The TT Bike is out and fully loaded for action!