Saturday:  Rest day

Sunday: I was scheduled for a 75′ test, but I liked the idea of getting a ranking distance done.  So, I decided to make it a half marathon.  Last 75′ test, I was at a 1:59.2 split.  Last week, I did a hour of power at r22 and a 1:57 pace.  I thought I should probably be able to improve my 75′ pace to around a 1:58.

My plan for the piece was pretty simple.  Try to hold 1:57/1:58 on the screen and keep the rate around 23.  If I felt like I was getting in trouble, bleed off a pace a bit at a time and try to keep the avg pace below 1:58.

The plan worked.  My HR was higher than I expected, but I just tried to ignore it and concentrate on how I felt, my RPE.  I felt pretty good, at least through halfway.  The second half was tough.  My HR was above 175 for most of the second half.  By the time I got to 7000m to go, I needed to slow down a bit more and that seemed to stabilize things.  I just counted strokes in each 1000m, it was usually 89 to 92 strokes and tried to avoid thinking about how much more time I had to keep going.  By the time I hit the 75′ mark at 1:57.9 pace, I knew I was going to make it and I started to accelerate a bit.

The last 1000m was a painful blur.

         Workout Summary - media/20171217-1820300o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21097|82:49.0|01:57.8|214.1|23.4|170.8|181.0|10.9
W-|21097|82:50.0|01:57.8|214.1|23.4|170.7|181.0|10.9
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|181.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00097|00:21.8|01:52.1|215.5|20.0|100.0|112.0|13.4
01|01000|03:53.6|01:56.8|219.6|22.5|146.1|155.0|11.4
02|01000|03:53.7|01:56.9|219.3|22.9|157.4|162.0|11.2
03|01000|03:53.9|01:56.9|218.7|23.1|161.5|165.0|11.1
04|01000|03:54.1|01:57.1|218.2|23.1|165.2|166.0|11.1
05|01000|03:54.5|01:57.3|217.1|23.2|167.0|168.0|11.0
06|01000|03:54.3|01:57.1|217.6|23.2|168.2|170.0|11.1
07|01000|03:54.9|01:57.5|216.1|23.1|169.7|171.0|11.1
08|01000|03:55.2|01:57.6|215.2|23.1|170.9|172.0|11.0
09|01000|03:55.7|01:57.8|213.9|23.2|171.6|172.0|11.0
10|01000|03:55.8|01:57.9|213.5|23.2|172.8|174.0|11.0
11|01000|03:55.9|01:58.0|213.1|23.1|173.9|174.0|11.0
12|01000|03:56.3|01:58.2|212.2|23.6|174.7|175.0|10.8
13|01000|03:56.6|01:58.3|211.5|23.1|175.2|176.0|11.0
14|01000|03:56.6|01:58.3|211.3|23.2|175.0|175.0|10.9
15|01000|03:57.6|01:58.8|208.9|23.3|175.0|175.0|10.8
16|01000|03:57.9|01:59.0|207.9|23.6|175.5|177.0|10.7
17|01000|03:57.2|01:58.6|209.8|23.4|177.0|177.0|10.8
18|01000|03:58.5|01:59.2|206.4|23.4|176.8|177.0|10.7
19|01000|03:57.9|01:59.0|207.8|23.6|177.0|178.0|10.7
20|01000|03:56.2|01:58.1|212.5|24.8|179.7|181.0|10.3
21|01000|03:52.1|01:56.0|225.4|25.6|180.3|181.0|10.1

So, I hit my target for the 75′ fitness test.  I’ve updated the results on the google sheet.  I started at about 85% of my PR watts at the beginning of this 6 week training block.  Now my 20′ test and 75′ tests are both at roughly 90% of PR watts.  I’m happy with that kind of progress.

Tomorrow:  4 x 20′ / 3′ nice and slow.