Sore..Check. Tired....Check.

This week has been pretty rough as I've been working like a dog at my job since my sabbatical starts on Friday and I'll be off until August 2nd. I need to get a month's worth of work done in the next 3 days and I'm starting to get a little worn down. I've put in 13.25 hours of overtime since the week started, I was at work last night from 8:00 until 9:30 getting some stuff squared away and that's after being in at 6:30a.m. Needless to say all this extra work is wiping me out as I've been getting up early and on top of that I'm not sleeping good during the night. Regardless, I have been getting my workouts in this week as I did a nice 1 hour recovery ride on Monday and then last night I did 2 hours of Endurance Miles with 4 sets of 8min/3min OverUnders. Basically OverUnders are 8 minutes at Steady State pace which is 92% of max heart rate and then you go immediately in to 3 minutes of Climbing Repeat pace which is 95% of max heart rate and then after 3 minutes of that you go immediately in to the 8 minutes of Steady State pace again. I say 4 sets but basically it is one set as it is 44 minutes of continuous riding at 92 and 95% of max, which is just incredibly hard. It looks like this......... 92%/95%/92%/95%/92%/95%/92%/95%, it's great for building power for road races, especially when everyone else is dying at the end. The 8 minutes at Steady State simulates your pace for a breakaway and then the 3 minutes at Climbing Pace simulates an attack after that, which would be similar to the end of a race.
Tonight I'm scheduled for a 2 hour ride with 2 sets of 6x30 second Speed Intervals. Basically you do 6 max efforts for 30 seconds, in a seated position, with equal recovery, and then repeat after 5 minutes. It won't feel like as hard of a ride as yesterday but it takes more of a toll on the body since the efforts are way more intense than yesterday. It's a pretty short workout so it'll seem easier but my body will be sore tomorrow for sure. Thursday and Friday will be rides of 1.5 hours and 1 hour and then I race Saturday at Elm Grove in a crit. This is the last tune-up race before SuperWeek and then I get to rest for 10 days until my first race at Alpine Valley.
Until next time......