Two Hard Workouts: Track Intervals and a Long Trainer Ride

I finished last week with 2 hard workouts:

First, I hit the track for 4 x (800 meters then 400 meters) with 2:00 rest between everything. I've done this a few times in the past, and here's a post from November comparing 3 of the times I did it last year. I wanted to be fast, but glanced at my Garmin 200 meters into the workout and saw that I was starting pretty slow... I was hoping to see 0:37 or 0:38 (as I run the first half laps a bit faster usually), but instead it was showing 0:41. D'oh. I picked it up for the rest of that interval.

In the end, I ran 800s and 400s that looked like this:

1:21 + 1:18 = 2:39.8
1:14.8
1:18 + 1:16 = 2:34.7
1:14.2
1:17 + 1:16 = 2:34.7
1:12.8
1:18 + 1:15 = 2:33.7
1:13.8

That wasn't too bad. In November, I dropped my 800 times in this workout from 2:41 to 2:36, so this was better as 3 of the 4 were faster than my fastest back then.

Pace and HR you'd expect to see for this workout.


Can you tell my water bottle was placed on the infield? ;)

And then the following day, I found myself doing a long trainer ride. I had HOPED to be outside, but there was lingering snow, and it hadn't warmed up enough by the time I had time to workout. (Initially, I was hearing it would be 50, which would have been great. But then they said lower 40s, and it ended up only being in the upper 30s by the time I was going to work out.)

I hit the trainer not knowing exactly what I was going to do. After a longer warm-up, I thought I MIGHT be able to put up with efforts of 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 minute. And I was able to hold on to that! That was a total of 2 hours and 12 minutes in the saddle, which was one of my longest trainer rides ever - I think I've just cracked 2 hours a few times. Here was my heart rate, and you can see I took 50% of my "effort" time as easy spinning after going hard (so 10 minutes hard, 5 mins easy, 9 mins hard, 4.5 mins easy, etc):

I tried to keep track, and I think the efforts looked like this:

10: hard
9: hard
8: standing
7: harder gear every minute
6: alternating minutes of standing and seated
5: hard
4: standing
3: alternating mins of standing and seated
2: hard
1: standing

I did a 40 mile ride when I turned 40 a few years ago, then I did 2 hrs and 13 mins on the trainer turning 41 two years ago just before my birthday, and finally 2 hrs and 16 mins on the trainer turning 42 last year about a week after my birthday. So this ride could be a month late ride for my 43rd birthday - an average of 19.5 mph would get me to 43 miles in 2 hours and 12 mins.