A Day of Two Happinesses

Well, there were two highlights to my yesterday, but I'm sure happiness was a flow rather than a pair of instances.  Here's the first one. (This will probably bore anyone but the me of tomorrow, but it's my log.)
         ;-)

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The Body Electric

First, I performed well in a Computrainer session. It's always nice to have a good cycling day, whatever the venue. But I have been painfully ill three times since the new year, and lost a lot of ground. My functional threshold power, 160 this time last year, is now 120. Without going into details, it has a lot to do with stomach acid affecting my breathing, almost an asthmatic condition. So a good performance signifies recovery progress for me, not just a good day.

I have been working on breathing while I am cycling, as if the process weren't autonomic: measured breaths, reaching, with a full exhale, one after another. I've also been teaching myself to relax instead of tightening under pressure. I've been mentally sorting out stress triggers, and been able to re-categorize a whole bunch of them as unnecessary. And I'm improving my nutrition, trying to recover a better acid balance, although I am dragging my feet all the way as I have to give up one foodstuff or another. Alcohol was easy, but coffee is proving harder.  I suspect in the end I'm going to have to give up meat, but the thought just makes me hungry for rare cow.

For the second time this week, we performed 4 sets of power intervals as follows:

• 30 seconds at 150% of FTP followed by a minute of recovery/Zone 2, 
• 60 seconds at 140% of FTP followed by a minute of recovery/Zone 2, 
• 30 seconds at 150% of FTP followed by 4 minutes of recovery/Zone 2. 

Kay and Barbara during a rest interval

On Tuesday, we did 4 of these sets on a 2% climb; on Friday, we did them on a 1.5% downgrade. With an FTP of 120, I should be anaerobic at 168 and 180, but I'm not; I was well over that in both cases, doing more of an all-out effort on the 30-second intervals, especially yesterday.

So I was able to do it on Tuesday, with Susan, and felt good about that. But yesterday, I did it well.  Pierre coached us through the first two sets, suggesting when to apply power. And in the last two sets, I pushed the final 30-second interval to see just how fast I could go. Oh, how I pushed to break 30 mph! And at the last gasp of the last interval, found enough to reach 29.9.

Definitely a sign of recovery. I may not have the stamina or the climb strength yet, but it's coming back better than ever.  I credit two things for the improvement (besides the coaching):

1. The breathing just seemed to click on Friday. I was doing it right without thinking about it, and for almost the first time, the breathing seemed to mesh properly with the spinning. I have never been less winded for this level of effort. THAT just has to get chronic. Clearly I'm on the right track here. I haven't consulted any online resources yet about this, but like several of the links I found for this post. 
2. I've really been working to develop a smooth pedal stroke. Bouncing around in the saddle turns my tummy into a churning food processor, uncovered and flinging acid right up my throat. I've developed a much smoother pedal stroke so that I can maintain a reasonable cadence. Really high cadence work is out of the question for me right now. But I'd love to run the SpinScanTM Pedal Stroke Analyzer software again. 

Breathe! It's the key to everything.