It was a great day weather-wise today, so there was no way I was going to do my bike interval session on the trainer.  I headed out of town, to a place where I knew the roads would be quiet, and where I have done interval workouts before.

Doing interval sessions outside is very different to doing them on the bike trainer.  There is so much more to consider.  You actually have to keep control of your bike.  You need to watch the road for potholes, debris and the occasional animal on the road.  There are cars and people to consider. Finally, especially in Western Pennsylvania, there are hills.

My power numbers are often not as high outdoors as I can achieve indoors.  I think this is because it’s next to impossible to push really hard for every second of the interval.  With the hills, there are many places, where it’s tough to push high power as you go downhill.  You can push high power going uphill, but on this route, the uphills are short and punchy, while the downhill sections are very long and gradual.

I can however, tell I pushed really hard today. This is because my legs are really fatigued this evening.  This bike block is turning out to be really tough on my legs.  That’s good though, because it likely means that I am getting stronger. 

During big training blocks is where recovery becomes even more important, especially sleep.  My sleep hasn’t been great lately, and I’ll get into that on tomorrow’s blog.