Thursday - VO2 Max Test
Friday - 10 minutes at 70% Threshold followed by a 25k TT
Saturday - 75 miles of nice tempo type pace road riding.

After 3 consecutive days of doing absolutely nothing this was a rather abrupt change.
I think my legs found it to be borderline cruel. Definitely proved to me that the "day before" spin to loosen things up is a good idea. I have often wondered how much benefit a 60-90 minute low intensity ride the day before a race actually yields. Based on this past week I am less skeptical. 3 days off and then the VO2 max test left my legs feeling a little shattered.
Going to have to try not and let that happen again.

Monday, May 4th was nice. Tempo-ish 35 miles in coolish temps, not much wind...helped shake things out a little more and leave me ready for the Wednesday night crit tomorrow, which I have decided I won't be doing after all. I need to give the bike some TLC and at nearly midnight, I should be getting stuff ready rather than tikking around with this stuff. Gonna have to chalk this one off, get a nice solo ride in, and look to next week. Exciting stuff here.

So this weekend is in the bag and I got to mix things up a bit and actually ride my bike.

Over the past 3 weeks I have spent the majority of my time on stationary bikes at Texas Christian University. I volunteered to be part of a trial studying the affects of a high intensity training regimen on a couple different factors--VO2 Max, Lactate Threshold, blood pH buffering...maybe a couple other things that escape me, more on that when the results are in.

I was one of the people selected for the intervention group (yeah, there is probably a joke in there somewhere) which meant I was subjected to laboratory torture sessions 3x a week for two weeks. Sandwiched between a pair of VO2 max/25k TT/Threshold days, I have lived about 3 weeks of not much more than high intensity training. Sundays were the off days when I could go out for the long, slow ride, usually into a 2o+ mph headwind for the entire duration, or so it seemed.

At this point I have entered the final two week period of normal endurance training, so I made up for lost time and spent Saturday and Sunday on the road, as it should be. It was good. Weather started a little cool and wet Saturday but steadily improved, and miraculously, the wind managed to stay below tropical storm force the entire time.

In about a week and a half I will return for the final round of testing, at which point I'll start to get results...I'll share in some form.