Treadmill intervals are easier than bike trainer intervals

Wednesday was another morning recovery ride. I once again just churned away on the trainer.


At lunch I put together a solid swim effort. I am still keeping the stroke count low. Counting the strokes seemed to slow me down a little bit but the speed is coming back – and now with a better stroke count. I can’t complain.

Then after work I had another long night. I did not get very much sleep. When I got up I jumped on the trainer for what was supposed to be a hard interval session. I aborted the workout early on and did an easier workout. After the trainer ride I switched to the road bike and commuted to work. I really enjoyed the 6 mile ride. I was not pushing the pace and I was able to enjoy the outside.

I dialed in another timed interval session on the treadmill at lunch. This workout was farther out of my comfort zone. I seem to be able to push the running envelope much easier than the cycling envelope. I did an easy warm up then ramped up the pace. Last week I started with 3 x 3:00 with 3:00 recovery at 9.9 MPH. This was not challenging enough. So today I decided to up the ante to 3 x 4:00 with 2:00 recovery at 10.1 MPH. I was able to complete this first series but my heart rate was sky high. The next series should have been easier – it was just 3 x 3:00 with 2:00 recovery at the same 10.1 MPH. I was overly fatigued from the first series and had to dial the intensity way back to 9.2 MPH. I had blown up! I believe part of that was from the lack of sleep the night before.

After the treadmill I was excited about putting up a good bench press number. Two weeks ago my 1 set max of 70% body weight was 32. Then last Thursday it was 36. I was hoping to improve upon this number. The weight room was busy and I worked in with some guys. I told them what I was doing and I altered the weights to my range. I said I was looking for 40 reps. As soon as I lifted the bar it was heavy. I started putting up the numbers and I actually started to fatigue at around 10 reps. I persevered and topped out at 22 reps. I was a demoralized. I could not believe that I came up so short. I tried again and I only got 10 reps. Vic then tried to lift the weight. He also thought it was heavy. Vic wanted 30 reps but he died at 29. We started to walk back away and call it a day. We were thinking up excuses. The run was hard and the bench press from Tuesday was demanding. Then we suddenly realized that I had put the wrong weights on the bar. I was lifting 135 pounds (87% body weight) and not the 110 pounds (70% body weight). That explained a lot about the workout. I loaded the bar to the appropriate weight and was still only able to eek out 24 reps – but I was majorly fatigued at this point. I would have liked to have known where I was at 70% but there is always next week.

The commute home was great. I tried to push a big gear the entire 6 miles home. About half of this was standing out of the saddle. Once again the outside just felt great.

With the long Easter weekend I plan on getting a lot of volume.