Day five was filled with some hard efforts, that will be followed by a weekend of high volume. Lots of training stress today, as I worked my legs hard.  They are fatigued heading into tomorrow.

Late morning, I did my first workout of the day.  I went to North Park for a run.  The run was 50 minutes long.  After 40 minutes of Zone 2 running, I arrived at the bottom of my favorite hill for running hill repeats.  The hill is in today’s photograph.  It is not super steep, but steep enough to create a hard effort when running up it.  My repeats today were hill sprints.  Each sprint was thirty seconds long, and recovery was jogging back down the hill. 

The sprints went quite well, even though I didn’t feel like I had any ‘pop’ in my legs.  They sure got my heart rate up high though, and that is the point.  I was working on developing my cardiovascular system.  By the way, don’t be fooled by that blue sky in the photo.  It was cold out there today… just above freezing.

My bike session this evening was big gear work.  Pushing high power in a big gear, at low cadence, really helps develop leg strength and endurance.  Here was my workout.

• 15 minutes warm up at 65% of FTP
• 10 minutes active cycling at 75% of FTP
• 6 x big gear repeats. Each repeat was 3 minutes at FTP plus 30 seconds as hard as possible (this turned out to be about 130-135% of FTP today).  I had three minutes of easy recovery between each interval.
• 13 minutes cool down at 55% of FTP

I can honestly say that it was a tough 75 minute ride.  My legs were really feeling it during the big gear efforts.

Day five is complete and so far, I have finished all of my assigned workouts.  Total workout time is now up to 7 hours and 40 minutes. Now the hours will really start to build….