Tempo Workouts

Since I got sick from my race on Nov 7th, I spent a week of trying to recover.  This week I felt pretty good.  Unfortunately, I didn't feel well enough to race last week and this weekend I'm going skiing instead of racing, so I'm pretty much writing off the end of the cx season.  I'll probably do the Nov. 28th race and state champs race if it's not snowing.  If it is snowing, it's absolutely miserable starting from mid-pack to try and move up.  I did that last year.

That said, reviewing the last couple weeks of training reveal some insight on how my body was recovering.  Last week I did two 60min, 310W Tempo efforts and my average heart rate was up around 175bpm and 174bpm.  Then, this week, I did three Tempo workouts (70min each at 310W) and my heart rate was in the upper 160s.  I think that shows that either I'm getting stronger (which I doubt after just two weeks of tempo workouts), or I'm recovered from that sickness.  Here's the trend if just using the first 60min of data.

Clearly, I can't expect my HR to decrease with a linear trendline, but it is going down as I do more of these workouts which is a good sign.  I'll update this spreadsheet again once I have some more data.

Anyway, the plan is to do another 70min effort Saturday, then do two 80 min efforts next week, then take a week to recover and adjust power levels.  I'm not a fan of long miles in the base period.  I don't have the stamina to toil on the trainer for 2 or more hours at a time at a mindless pace.  I'd rather do tempo workouts every other day to build my fitness.  Here's the schedule/journal for the rest of November (gray areas are days completed).