Hour of Power

Yesterday I raced. Today I'm back at training. It wasn't an A race, there wasn't a taper, so no need to schedule a bunch of rest days after the fact. I don't usually have two hard days back to back, to it won't kill me to do it, and this is the second week of a block, so I'll get lots of rest next week. So with that, I headed to the basement for a workout that was eerily similar to yesterday's race.

I picked up this workout from Xtri.com a few months ago. It's called the Hour of Power, and it gets the name from the 60 minutes at high intensity that's part of the session. After a warm-up, there's 2x20 minutes at 90% FTP with 5 minutes recovery on the bike. After the second interval, try to have a fast transition (no helmet to remove), and knock out 20 minutes (0r 3 miles in my case, ~21 minutes) at marathon pace (Daniels' M-pace). This was a tough workout, the bike required a solid effort, maybe a bit harder than what I did yesterday. The pace on the run was close to my average pace during the second run leg. I could feel the effort for a couple of hours after I finished. Fatigue was definitely a factor, but it is these days that will pay off in September, when I ride this hard, and can hold this pace for the whole 13.1 miles.

Bike: 70 minutes, w/2x20 min @ 270w, 5 min recovery
Run: 3 miles @ 8.5 mph