Spring Series - pre-rides

Lovely weather today, went out and did a pre-ride on four of the Escape Velocity Spring Series races courses...

I've done three of them before, but they have added a new one, the "Snake", which I hadn't. It's very similar to to the Armstrong Road course, and in fact uses half of it. But where the Armstrong courses 7 reps on the hill, and the hill climb is broken into three one minute segments (total about 90m of climbing...) The Snake does the hill as one single two and a half minute climb of the same height. And as the overall length is more (10km vs 6km) we only do it 5 times.

Even though the snake climb is one single climb it actually still has three sections. The bottom part is short but almost hits 12%, then a short section a little less, maybe about 8%, then the final long steep climb at 13-15%...

I dragged the Garmin Edge 305 along, so I'll try and do some Google Earth KML files this week for all of these courses.

My ATL is now close to my traditional high point (90..) Most likely now is the time to start switching to more intensity and wait for CTL to "catch up". So that by the start of Spring Series (two weeks) ATL and CTL can be about the same (mid to high 70..) and TSB close to zero or slightly positive.




Even though ATL/CTL are moving up, this is with a lower FTP... at some point I'll have to look at moving FTP up. Currently the indications are that 295 is still a good (probably slightly high) estimate. E.g. the power distribution curve for the last 28 days shows that the biggest drop is 240-260 watts if 20 watt interval is used.




If a 5 five watt interval is used it is less persuasive, but still pretty similiar.









My shoulder feels comfortable on the bike. So I probably can look at doing one day a week training at the track. Just no racing. Don't want to risk falling on it until it has at least (so I'm told) 3 months... That may mean I can do the May 3-day race.