Polarized Training

Recently my running and riding has been very polarized. Once a week in each discipline I go hard and the rest of the time I go relatively easy or as many are now talking in Zone 2 or easier. Some early results are promising.

Running
My easy running has improved almost 1 minute/mile over the last 5 weeks. Same HR same running terrain, just running faster. This means I either do the exact same runs in less time or I add to each run. I am doing both of those things. Overall my running volume is increasing without really trying. 5 weeks ago it  was 30 miles. Last week it was 36 miles. I didn’t monitor the mileage just looked at it on Sunday.


Cycling
The hard work has been the classic One minute on, One minute off. I started with 2 sets of 5 and now I’m on one straight set of 16. The on is hard, basically as hard as I can maintain over the entire workout. The off is soft pedaling easy. The remainder of the rides have been outside and as I feel. Not hard at all just how I feel in terms of distance. The other day I met some friends in our local mountains for a gravel ride. We rode 45 miles with 3900 feet of climbing. I told the guys before the ride, “You will drop me on the tricky downhills, but my fitness is good, I’ll catch you.” At one point coming off a big down hill we hit a road. I looked ahead and saw two dots. I put the bike in a as big a gear as I could muster. The first 2 minutes of chasing were over 430 watts then I settled into 230 watts, I rolled up on them fairly quickly. I was quite pleased with my ability to do that. Now it’s time to get out there more often and work on my downhill riding.