A couple of (much needed) recovery days

Wednesday was a recovery day, 90 minutes on the bike in the morning just turning the legs over, to be honest that's about all I could manage anyway, definitely feeling Tuesday's race.  Looking at my 'numbers' from the race I'm not surprised, 10 minutes @ 350 watts, 5 minutes @ 375, 20 seconds @ 1000 watts is a bit tough on old legs, not to mention  my lungs!  Mind you not much compared with Chris Froome's 414 watts up the Ventoux in 2013, there are  key differences of course where Froome's climb was around 40 minutes and he weighs around 12 kg less than me!

When I was driving back from the race I was thinking that when I was sprinting and diving through the gaps I probably ought to have knocked it off when I started 'nudging' people, you'd think I should know better, you don't bounce very well as you get older!

Thursday was a training day, 2 hours with a couple of my interval laps at the midway point.  My legs certainly felt better than yesterday but they were still a bit heavy.  I guess I did race hard on Tuesday, I haven't fully recovered which makes me think I really need to think about my remaining race programme. I'm two years older than the last visit and I don't think that I quite have the training base I had last time either.

So the session was loads of 'sweetspot''/threshold with the combination of one and two minutes intervals interspersed with 15 second sprints.  I felt quite sluggish at the longer intervals but the shorter one and two minute ones were hard but up to power, the sprints were definitely sub standard, I was barely putting it over 1000 watts although on the positive side they were all over that number.

For the remainder of my stay there are races this Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. The ICF world championships is on the last Sunday, currently I am not planning on riding it.  I know there is no possibility of riding all those races, physically speaking and I'd rather have a few good races where, like the last one I can really get into it, so I need to spend some time evaluating the races and possibly the courses. I'd always considered that flatter fast courses suited me better, but Tuesday's course was definitely 'lumpy' so now I'm not sure!

Friday (today) was going to be an easy cruise through the lanes, maybe a couple of burst to be ready to race tomorrow, however my legs felt really heavy again at the start which sort of helped me decide on my remaining race programme.  I think I did too much yesterday not being fully recovered from Tuesday and set myself back a little, so I turned the ride into an easy endurance ride, one up on a recovery ride in my vocabulary, so is was mostly tempo with a few pushes up some of the small 'bergs', at times I felt OK at times I felt very sluggish.  So decision made, I will race on Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday and the following Monday, four races and 'll try and have a good crack in each one.