After having an awful July of being sick I was looking forward to getting back into training again and letting ithlete guide me takes all the guess work out, do I go hard or easy? Have I recovered enough or not? Simply take the test and boom – training is set for the day. So after an easy week after my cold I got a string of good results and some good rides in too, alternating between a few hours Z2 or MAF and then sweet spot intervals.
These sweet spot intervals are designed to stress the system enough to improve fitness but just enough not to stress the body enough to require too much rest. For the time crunched athlete like me they are the bread and butter of training – getting the most out of training without stressing the body to much. ithlete Pro also confirms the need for rest and I’ve had great results combining these intervals with Z2 rides between, ithlete Pro confirms the stress but can also confirm that you are not stressing the body to much when it’s not required.
Sweet spot intervals are great for working at a higher rate but as you can see that the accumulated stress was to soon build up which resulted in drop and a day’s rest before the 25-mile time trial.
Unfortunately on the day of the time trial my result was Red and ithlete advised me to rest! Now I wasn’t going to pull out of the race that I have entered, the first one in 3 years that I wanted to take seriously, one that I have been specifically training for – that’s just it! ithlete can detect stress of any kind and it looks like I was stressing about the race that morning. It looks like that was the case as after a 3-year break you can say I did pretty well. ithlete had guided me to a time that was 20 seconds off my PB from 3 years ago! I came 7th out of a field of around 100 with a time of 57 minutes 54 seconds – now I was happy with that and the knowledge that I listened to my body, with the help of ithlete, I trained smart.
25-Mile Time Trial
Next month I’m starting to build up to my last target of the year, a 30-mile time trial, before taking a few weeks of and starting winter training. Let’s see if ithlete can steer me to a PB!