Beer Drinkers' Appreciation Society (BDAS) 2020 Version - ALWAYS OPEN (Page 33)

Jenn, everywhere I've seen mandatory quarantines, airline staff are usually exempted.  Hope that's the case for you.

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The illustration is a really good example of lagging HR vs. power output.  In this Trainer Road, 30 minute workout, the red line is my HR, the yellow line is my power output (and the white line across the top is my FTP).  The middle flat interval is five minutes long at 92% FTP, which is the sweet spot between zones 3 and 4 (239 watts for me) and should drive my HR up to the same percentage of my FTHR (max HR for an hour), which is about 128 or so.  I know you can't the see the numbers, but I never even get my HR close to that number.  You can see it lag behind, raising from 94 to about 112 or so at the end of the five minutes.  Then later I do those one minute anaerobic ramp-ups to 130/140% FTP, which should redline my HR, but doesn't.  I still don't even hit my FTHR of 134, maxing around 130 in the second interval.  And notice the lag.

What I'm getting at with respect to DQ's question around HR is that using HR as a measurement isn't useful unless you do REALLY long intervals, or many repeats as the workout below:

In this much longer one (5 x 10' at 88% FTP), I don't reach my target HR at all in the first interval, barely do it in the second.  It's not until the 4th 10-minute long interval that I hit my target HR within a couple of minutes.  Then I crack in the 5th interval...not one of my prouder moments 

Hope this helps illustrate what I mean.

Hey all, 0.2 mile walk for me and my broken toe today. Trying to upload a gross picture for you but can't. All ok but can't ride

Washing up! Slipped on my kitchen floor, and bosh! Owie! Going to try some one legged cycling this weekend just to stave off the craziness!

Managed a 0.5 mile single leg ride on trainer, 0.4 mile walk, and some arms and core too. I am now going to try a whisky taster pack i ordered

The Penderyn Gold Gift Pack tasting set contains three x 5cl miniatures, namely Penderyn Madeira, Peated and Sherrywood finishes.  

Great to hear from you, Andrew.  I was thinking about you this morning when your PM was on the news here announcing the "no COVID cases" date.  First off - congrats to you Kiwis.  While you have the advantage of natural isolation it took a lot of discipline as a country to make it happen.  Hopefully you'll be able to manage it going forward as you open the international travel spigot.

And congrats on Bullfrog #2!!    Good luck with the training strategy...just consider it a 10-week taper.  LOL  In all seriousness IM is a great distance to be able to play around with that, as you lose endurance really slowly.

For Zone 3/4, shorter intervals don't produce much training benefit (other than maybe when you're starting out, as it is getting your body ready for harder stuff).  For zone 3 the value starts at like 20 minutes or so, for zone 4 more like 10 minutes.  Again, HR = lagging indicator so for the beginning of your interval set it's best to go by RPE, as that HR for zone 3/4 takes a LONG time to get up to match the effort.  And outdoors is even worse because managing consistent output is so hard due to hills, wind, stop/start, etc.

Try lengthening to 15 minutes, then do a 2' rest, then do it again.  If your HR still isn't getting up there then you're not riding in zone 3/4, maybe more like higher zone 2 but because you've had a gap in hard training you're just not used to the effort level (i.e. suffering LOL). 

And don't overthinking it!    The most important part is getting out there consistently.