Yesterday, was a rest day.  I spent the day on appointments and errands

• Dentist appointment:  Which made me unhappy because I apparently have a cracked tooth and need a crown.
• PT appointment:  Which hurt like hell.  I have two issues.
  • My left glute is weak and this is causing a misalignment in my hips.  This has caused a chain reaction of sorts resulting in my left quad being all tight and my legs presenting as different lengths.
  • The very bottom part of my spine above and below my L5 is a bit out of alignment and the PT believes that I have impingement between vertebrae when I lean back at the finish.  I need to work on rocking my pelvis forward in rowing and in real life.
  • First he did some deep tissue massage to try to get my lower spine unkotted.  That wasn’t so bad.  Then he moved onto the left quadricep and tried to work out some adhesions that had formed between the different elements of the quad.  He used a combination of deep tissue massage and active release in two different poistions.  This hurt so much that I wept.  After that, he showed me a couple more exercises to work on strengthing my glutes and obliques to try to support better pelvic posture.  I limped out of the appointment.
• From there, I headed off to the Apple store.  I dropped my phone on a concrete floor on Sunday and cracked the screen.  I discovered that the screen can be replaced reasonably easily.  They said it would be done in about 90 minutes.
• Next stop was a radiology center.  In my hip X-Rays, the radiologist saw a “deformity” on one of my ribs on the right side and recommended a follow up x-ray of the area.  So, I did that.  I wonder what will come of it?
• Then back to the Apple store to pick up my repaired phone.

Whew!

Thursday

The plan for today was a 20 minute test.  I got a good night’s sleep and I headed into work.  I was in the gym by about 6:45.  I started with a 2k warmup.

Workout Summary - media/20171102-1125300o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|02000|07:59.0|01:59.8|213.3|21.7|143.5|161.0|11.6
W-|02000|07:59.0|01:59.8|205.9|21.2|142.3|161.0|12.0
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|161.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00300|01:15.4|02:05.7|159.1|16.1|111.8|127.0|14.8
01|00200|00:46.9|01:57.3|214.0|21.9|133.7|138.0|11.7
02|00300|01:16.8|02:08.1|173.1|19.5|141.8|143.0|12.0
03|00200|00:45.4|01:53.4|235.2|23.2|143.6|147.0|11.4
04|00300|01:16.6|02:07.7|171.3|20.0|149.8|151.0|11.8
05|00200|00:43.4|01:48.4|265.6|24.9|151.2|155.0|11.1
06|00300|01:15.0|02:05.0|188.3|21.3|156.9|158.0|11.3
07|00200|00:39.9|01:39.8|348.6|29.1|157.6|161.0|10.3

Then, I gathered my courage for a 20 minute time trial.  Based on the rowsandall OTE CP Analysis, my projected power for a piece this length was between 245W and 285W (1:52.6 to 1:47.1).  The wide band is the result of pretty funny looking CP curve.

Why does it look like this?  Well, that’s because the data extracted from erg pieces (red dots) is based on 3 strong results (75′, 1km, LP).  The plateau from 50 seconds to 200 seconds is the data from the 1K test.  The low end was set by the peak power test.  The upper end was set by the 75′ test.

Just from recent experience, it seemed that 1:47 was way to big of an ask.  I thought that 1:50 might work, but was risky.  I decided to start there and slow down if needed.

I got myself setup and got going.  I held 1:50 through the first 1250m, but I was in a lot of respiratory distress, and my HR was a bit higher than I was hoping to see.  I basically lost hope and stopped.

Workout Summary - media/20171102-1125450o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01580|06:00.0|01:53.9|259.1|25.1|158.3|172.0|10.5
W-|01505|05:30.0|01:49.7|262.0|25.2|157.6|172.0|10.8
R-|00076|00:30.0|03:16.1|200.8|23.1|172.0|172.0|06.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01505|05:30.0|01:49.7|262.0|25.2|157.6|172.0|10.8

Humph.  That was disappointing.  I sat around for a little while trying to figure out what happened.  I had a bit of DOMS in my quads from the PT appointment, but that didn’t bother me much.  My HR was definitely a bit high and I was struggling, but slowing down didn’t seem to work.  I think part of my problem was just an unwillingness to endure the discomfort today.

After mulling it over for a few minutes, I decided to give it another try, but this time at 1:52.  This didn’t go any better.  I lasted about the same amount of time, and gave up when it started to hurt.

         Workout Summary - media/20171102-1126000o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01211|04:33.0|01:52.7|244.6|24.8|155.4|173.0|10.7
W-|01212|04:33.0|01:52.7|244.6|24.8|155.4|173.0|10.8
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|173.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01212|04:33.0|01:52.7|244.6|24.8|155.4|173.0|10.8

After that, I gave up and just did a cool down.

I wanted to compare these failures to the reasonably successful 6K session that I did on October 9th.  The orange trace was the first attempt.  You can see I started at about 265W and faded a bit toward 250W through the first 5 minutes.   The HR response was much higher today than in the 6K test.  It seems pretty clear that that the fatigue from the first attempt was effecting the HR for the second attempt.

So, now I try again tomorrow.  target is 250W.