Delayed spin effect

:00 E1
:05 2 x 5s HCLR:1
:10 2 x 8s SS PG+2" (L,R):3
:16 2 x 8s SS PG+4" (L,R):3
:22 2 x 8s SS PG+6" (L,R):3
:28 4 x 8s PGRS(80):3
:40 24s HCLR r/up (8:110, 8:140, 8:max)

So this week's spin session was a day late and performed under the cloud of illicit drug use - I had codeine in my system and probably still some anaesthetic since only a couple of hours earlier I'd had a couple of fillings done! So I wasn't really at my best, but put up some interesting numbers...

The HCLR warmup gave a top cadence of 187, a full 12RPM higher than I've previously managed, and I didn't feel like I was bouncing or rocking - though obviously it's a bit difficult to tell in the moment without an assistant! Maybe I should start filming myself...

The PG+ sets were pretty approximate since, well, one can only work with the gears one has! My PG is 53x17 (82") so theoretically I should have been working on 84, 86 and then 88". What I ended up on instead was 85.4, 87.1 and 92.9" - rather higher than suggested! Ah well, so long as it's consistent for subsequent drills I guess. Last week, in my PG calibration session, I managed 155RPM on 82", whereas this week I got up to 158 on 87" - not a bad sort of a result! This week's effort came relatively earlier in the session though, so perhaps it doesn't indicate quite as much improvement as one might be tempted to infer otherwise. My results were slightly higher when starting with the right leg, but not significantly so.

The PGRS sets were a picture in fatigue, decaying from a high of 153RPM (the same as my first PG+3.5 standing start!) to only 138 in the last rep. I felt quite tired by this point (did I mention that I barely slept last night thanks to the pain from my about-to-be-operated-on tooth?) but was determined to push through the last HCLR exercise as solidly as possible, hoping to get the most value out of the session. And, in a pure numbers sense, I did quite well - a top of 175RPM at the end of a 24s effort at the end of a 40 minute session is notable. My form, however, went out of the window - if I was riding a bike, I'd have fallen off so little attention did I pay to keeping myself steady. So... not terribly valid, in a sense, since I do always try to put form over pure speed. Try to. But I was pleased that I managed to put in that much effort all the way through the session, and all the way through the long last effort.

So Hill Sprints this week will be pushed back to Friday, with tomorrow a recovery spin, then another recovery spin on the BBC ride on Saturday before DISC again on Sunday. I'm almost beginning to feel like an actual athlete!

Brief stats here.