I am just under six weeks away from racing at Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga.  I have a ‘down week’ this week, then three week’s of peak phase training, before my taper into the race.  Down weeks are typically less intense, and tonight I only had a one hour ride, with a few sprints on the schedule.  I was a beautiful day for an evening ride, so I went outside.

To take up most of my time for the workout, I rode down to the local park. When there, I did one loop around the lake, and then came back towards home.  Near home, I stopped at the local High School, because the parking lot there, is a safe spot to do some bike sprints.  It turned out that the school parking lot was very busy.  There were lots of school sports events happening.  Luckily, the road behind the High School was quiet, and I was able to do my sprints there.

This workout is an easy effort workout overall.  The purpose of the sprints is the keep my legs ‘awake’.  We don’t want my legs going to ‘sleep’ for a week, so close to a race.   This is the first time that I can remember doing sprints on my bike outside.  It turns out that they are very different, to doing them on the trainer.  Not only do you have to push a lot of power very quickly, but you also need to maintain control of the bike.  

I ended up doing really well.  I achieved my second highest ‘all-time’ 5 second power.  The power level I achieved was also significantly higher than the power I had in the same workout a year ago.  A sure sign of improved fitness and strength.

I had no idea when I set out on my evening ride, that I would find the level of power that I did.  It made for great start to my ‘down week’ after yesterday’s rest day.