I went into last night with a tough workout on the plate, and with legs that were questionable. Ideally I would have shifted the hard work to a day later, but my life schedule did not allow me that type of flexibility. So I knew that if I wanted to keep my build on track I would have to get done whatever was possible. This is what I had planned for the night:

1:00:00 of varying efforts to get warmed up
20:00 @ 250 watts  standing
3:00 on 3:00 off x 4 @ 385 – 400 watts
20:00 @ 290 – 300 watts
17:30 @ 300+ watts

I wasn’t feeling top notch during the efforts in my warm up, but I sometimes don’t open up until during the long standing block.  However, as I pushed through the standing, instead of the usual effortless flow that I experience,  I knew that I wasn’t on a good day.  Everything was fully confirmed by the higher than usual average heart rate that was displayed at the completion of the block. Despite the indicators telling me that I wasn’t perfect, I decided to push on with my original workout plan.

With all of the positive attitude I could summon, I dug into the 1st 3:00 effort. It was brutal from the onset.  I literally muscled through and finished up at 395 for the block.  The recovery period passed way too quickly, and before I knew it the 2nd block was in the cross hairs.  I jumped in with everything I had, but soon started struggling.  I quickly realized that there was no chance I could stay within the 385-400 range for the 3:00. I knew I had 2 options: drop the watts and complete the full 3:00 or keep the watts within the range and drop the time. I chose the later, and dropped the time to 2:00.  Even at the decreased time I struggled with the effort and fell a little short of my goal watts  landing at 380.  I went into the 3rd knowing that 2:00 would be my goal time, and went full gas out of the gate.  Giving it everything I had led to an average power of 374 for the effort, and I felt cooked. Again I made a decision to deviate from the plan.  Instead of going for the 4th effort, and probably frying myself, I recovered for a bit and thought about how to approach the long blocks.

The decision I came up with was consistent with prior 2 I had made – the 1st being to cut the time length down from 3:00 to 2:00 minutes, and the 2nd being to cut out the last 2:00 interval.  With both of those decisions, and  with this last one,  I cut the time length of the blocks(volume),  but kept the planned intensity.  I decided to go with two 10:00 blocks as I thought that they would be long enough to get a solid training response from, but not so long that they overly fatigued me. I choose well and finished up with a 295 and 305 watt average for the two blocks.

I don’t often fail to reach my workout goals. I generally know where I am at, and what I am capable of doing, and plan my sessions accordingly. However, sometimes it just doesn’t go according to the original plan.  All of the decisions I made in this session led to myself  being able to nearly reach the wattage numbers that I planned on visiting for the day.  Yes, the time had to be shortened to make that happen, but I still realized my wattage goals.  And reaching the higher numbers was the priority for the day.  As we are closing in on the racing season it makes sense to me to focus more on higher power numbers for a shorter time instead of lower power numbers for a longer time.  Had this off day happened in early December I more than likely would have erred on decreasing power numbers instead of shortening the efforts.

Sometimes your session won’t go according to you original plan, and you will have to adjust on the fly. Instead of just pulling the plug on your session work up a strategy that keeps the original workout goals in focus, but also takes into account the challenges you are facing and what is in your immediate future.

– Jason