With my foot still too swollen to fit inside of my bike shoe, I had no option but to do my scheduled long bike ride on the trainer.  I also had to adopt the same approach, as I did earlier in the week, and ride with my swollen foot on top of my bike shoe.  A three hour trainer ride is tough, with so many ups and downs along the way.

The photograph above shows my power profile in pink and my heart rate in red.  I have placed a series of numbers on the chart and here is what they represent.

1. This is the 45 minute warm up section of the ride.  During this part of the ride, I was feeling good and took the opportunity to drink plenty of my liquid nutrition.  I planned to drink the same amount of calories during this ride, as I will at my race in three weeks.  I was able to do that and had no issues. It was good practice.
2. This is my first hard interval.  I did it at about 85% of my FTP and it lasted for 20 minutes.  My legs felt tired during this first interval, and I was struggling a little at the end.
3. You will see that my heart rate dropped quickly at the end of this interval (and after the next two).  This was because I stopped peddling for about a minute. I did this to recover from the interval and give my swollen foot a gentle massage.
4. You will see that after completing about two thirds of my third interval, I started to increase power.  This is interesting, because I was dying when I got to that point.  To get to the end of the interval, I went into survival mode.  For me, that means closing my eyes and just peddling, while counting off the seconds, one minute at a time.  This gradual increase in power happens quite often when I do this.  It is because I gradually increase my cadence, which gives me more power when using the same gear.  I think I do this, because I subconsciously think that by peddling faster, the interval will end quicker.  Dumb, I know, but it happens all the time.
5. The last hour of my ride, was supposed to be a solid one hour effort at the top of Zone 2.  About five minutes in however, I was really suffering. My butt was hurting and with almost an hour left to ride, I was not in a good place mentally.  I stopped riding, got off my bike and went to the kitchen to eat a few cookies.  This totally revived me and I was able to finish the three hour, with only a slight break (position 6 in the photo).

So, my three hour trainer ride was a tough one, but I was so happy that I found a way to get it completed.  There were ups and downs, but I got through them all in the end.