Woke up with a headache again, but much less severe.  Decided that I had to get back to my routine, so I headed out the door to the gym.  Same workout as yesterday.  But I would aim for 183W.  But I missed.  In the first 20′ section, I again found myself around 185 with 5 minutes to go, so I just stuck with it.  Today, my HR average over the last 5 minutes was much higher (6 BPM), but the lactate reading was down to 2.1.  Another message to stick to 183 for training power.

The second and third intervals I did that, but it felt significantly harder than the session on Tuesday evening.  Maybe short recovery?  Maybe time of day? Maybe phase of the moon?

Last week, I was on vacation.  I did a little cross training the first 3 days (Tues, Wed, Thur).  Essentially a 5km barefott run on the beach, then about 1.5km of swimming, both at a relatively leisurely pace.  Then I managed to catch a stomach bug and I was out of action from last Thursday until yesterday.

Yesterday morning, I was planning on an AM workout, but woke up with a headache and decided to try to get rid of it with a bit more sleep.  By the late afternoon, I was much improved, so I decided to dip my toe back in with a gentle steady state session.

Tuesday PM: 3×20’/1′ r on slides

I am going to try to do a lactate test after the first 20′ of my steady state sessions to try to build a reasonable database and get a better understanding of the appropriate training intensity.  Since all of my recent lactate tests have been on a static erg, and I had the 8 day break, I was pretty clueless about the right initial power to use.  I was going to target 180, but it felt so easy that I changed on the fly to 185, and when I got to the 15 minute mark, I was averaging 186W.  I decided that cutting back enough to bring the average down to 185 over the last 5 minutes might lead to erroneously low reading, so I just stuck with 186.  Lactate reading 2.3…Too high.  but not far off.  Interestingly, my HR was very low.  The lowest I have recorded for any of my recent lactate tests.  Again showing the very weak correlation between HR and Lactate levels.I rowed the rest of the session at 183 and my HR stayed remarkably low.