Thursday

5 x 5 minutes with 1 minute rest.


This workout was so so. Felt tired most the way through and especially fell apart on the last 2 intervals. 82 rpms seemed to be my most efficient rate. I went out too hard on the first interval but feel that muscular endurance was my limiting factor and not aerobic endurance. I will have to look at the quadrant analysis for this one but I am guessing I am mainly in quadrant II with low cadence and higher power. Wanted bigger gains on this one but that seems how it works. 5% gains here and there and then all of a sudden a big jump. Fatigue was playing a factor here since I just completed a 2 x 20 minute effort 2 days ago.

5 comments:

Cliff said...

New follower to your blog.

Were these done indoors or outside?

I am wondering if overheating/hydration also sucked the life out of you. Did you psot the 2x20s from two days prior to this post?

Try posting in the non-stacked graph, might look different.

Cheers.

Cliff said...

duh, I found it.

Pete said...

Cliff,
These were done indoors on my computrainer. I had a fan going and plenty of water. I think I needed more rest between each interval. You can see on the last 5 minute interval I rested for 3 minutes and my power came back a bit. I was reading Andy Coggan's "Training and Racing With a Power Meter" and in the back they noted that doing 5 x 6 minutes with 6-8 minutes rest is beneficial. I think I may have to rest a bit more on these 5 minute efforts in order to boost my FTP. Once I am able to crank out my goal wattage at 5 minutes with 5 minutes rest I plan on reducing the rest interval by 2.5 minutes and then finally down to 1 minute and then repeating the whole process again.

Cliff said...

I see. I just noted your CTL in a recent post and youa re ewarly in your season (I'm guessing), so more rest between intervals makes a lot of sense.
rock on.

Pete said...

Cliff, you are right. I am wanting to really see how high I can get my FTP. I focused mainly on triathlon the past 5-6 years and really want to hit the magical 300 FTP wattage. If I can handle 2 x 20 minutes at ~ 290 watts with 5 minutes rest I figure I will be closing in on my goal.