Finishing Touches on Sustained Power Week

Years ago, I did my first cyclocross race which to this day, I feel are THE hardest types of bike racing that I had the pleasure of experiencing. Going as hard as you can for 30 or 40 minutes is, in my opinion, heavy duty, hard-core, true-blue racing. That first race had me wheezing, gasping, and in the end, DNFing because I felt like my lungs were on fire. It felt like I was breathing blood - that's how intense it was. Gunnar Shogren was in the parking lot next to me when I went back to the car that day and when I told him what happened, he said, "it'll get easier." It didn't Gunnar. Yesterday, I was breathing blood again doing the final trainer workout for the sustained power week. The on-off 8-minute intervals at 70 rpm in as big a gear as you could sustain at 70 rpms were the fire breathing part. Then, we had to jump off the bike and start doing as-many-as-you-can frog leaps for a minute followed by wall squats for 3x45 seconds.Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Hard IS good.I was ready to scream like a little girl -- I think I recall Donna saying she DID scream like a little girl for this one. For the 70rpm intervals, I stuck it out in big ring/15 cog. For the frog leaps, I was a big-time wussie. Having not done one of these since I was a kid and did leap frog, I wasn't sure what to expect. I only managed 10 in the first set, 12 in the second set, and 15 the 3rd set. After the 3-hour trainer ride on Saturday and the trainer session yesterday, bring on the rest week. I'll definitely be taking advantage of it!