The short story is that the mountains were hard. We did the usual Six Gaps of the Six Gap Century route, and added on Brasstown Bald (the highest point in Georgia) at the beginning. On Sunday we did three of the gaps again from the other direction. Everyone had a great time. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5… crap. Lost count. What’s the screen say? 6 minutes left. Crap. I’ll start counting again at the next minute. 56, 57, 58, ok, start counting pedal strokes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…. focus…. 9, 10, 11. crap. lost count again. How many minutes now?

We’ve been working on building strength in the last few weeks at Endeavor Performance, which means pyramid intervals at or above lactate threshold and all done at 70 rpm.

Normally I try to spin at a cadence higher than 90 rpm, which works the cardiovascular system more than the leg muscles. Tonight we were doing the opposite. Slow cadence and high torque quickly fatigued my leg muscles and forced me to eliminate as many distractions as I could in order to finish the intervals. I settled on counting pedal strokes as the best method.

Since we were holding a steady 70 rpm, all I had to do was count that many pedal strokes for as many minutes as each interval lasted. It worked great for the first two efforts of two and four minutes at 105% of lactate threshold. I started into the next interval of 6 minutes at 100% and quickly found myself losing count. Each time I started counting I would make it to 15 or 20, then I would lose the count for a second and forget if I was on 20 or 30. It didn’t really matter what number I was on, as the mantra of counting was offering the real distraction. Watching the seconds tick by always makes it seem a lot harder.

This class was tougher than usual because I had already been through it two days before (two sessions this week since I will miss next week), and because last week we re-tested power levels and increased our training zones.

…63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70. Can’t believe I counted to 70! Look at the screen. 3 seconds left – cadence must have been a bit high. Oh well. Workout over. I know I will be feeling the combined efforts of tonight, last night, and the night before in the morning.

Instead of doing the tempo intervals at a cadence of 95-100 rpm like the last four weeks, Todd instructed us to do the first five minutes at 80 rpm to focus on leg strength, and the second five minutes at 110 rpm to work on leg speed. It was obvious from perceived exertion that the leg speed portion of the intervals were much harder than the strength portion. The 80 rpm segments were easy and relaxed, where the 110 rpm segments required focus and really made me feel the effort. Keep in mind that the CompuTrainers were set to keep the wattage required the same regardless of the cadence being used.

The perceived exertion wasn’t the only difference visible. Looking at the heart rate info from the workout, it is clearly visible which part of the workout I was in at any time. As leg speed went up so did heart rate, even if the wattage stayed the same.

I’ve read a lot about how low leg speed focuses on muscle strength while higher leg speed focuses on aerobic strength. I’ll admit that this is a fairly intuitive connection, but to have a workout demonstrate the point so clearly was good. It’s one thing to read it and it’s one thing to have your muscles learn it.