Heat Session 4
Intervals into Heat Session – Small Signs of Progress
So, for this session I experimented with doing some intervals in the first half hour. I was interested to see how that influenced the rise in core temp. As it turns out, it still took around the whole half hour to get core temp above 38 degrees.
I only did 5 x 1 min around 280 Watts…but without the fans this actually felt pretty hard after the first couple. I did plan to do a bit more, doing a couple of 1 minute efforts and then increasing to 2 mins…but I really didn’t feel up to the 2 minute efforts.
I had hoped that by now there would be a few signs of improvement, but during the session, I actually felt bit worse in the 10-15 minutes after the intervals. However, by the end of the session I actually felt ok and decided to extend the session by 5 minutes, so it was 50 minutes in the ‘heat training zone’.
Though I didn’t notice much through the session and power/HR were comparable (138 Watts @ 144 bpm). It was very noticeable how much I sweat during this session…serious pools of sweat on the floor!! That is a known adaptation…so something is happening!
Heat Session 5
Experiment with the Fan – Bigger Signs of Progress
If the last session presented some small signs of change, today was a much bigger step forward.
The experiment I mentioned was to try again with the fan once I was up to temperature. This time instead of having the fan head on in front, I put it to the side, on the lowest setting and had it just blowing across my hands. Even with this, comfort is much improved, and you can see where I turned it on…temperature started dipping. To be honest I was amazed the difference in comfort and the drop in temp…the experiments will continue.
The plan was to see if I could tolerate an hour in the heat training zone on this one. Again more than happy to adjust if needed, but it was obvious from the start that today it would be possible. I felt a lot more comfortable from the off and once in the heat training zone I decided keep the HR to around 140 bpm and let the watts be the watts.
The good news is, for the hour in the heat training zone the power was 152 Watts at 137 bpm.
Heat Session 6
Technical issues…then over-cooked it!!
So, after great week of learning, and no real issues. I messed up! I’m not sure if the connection with the device wasn’t good or the battery was low, but signal wasn’t right.
Initially, it looked like it was just that I had to work harder to get my temp up, which at first I thought might be a good thing…adaptation? Turns out that was wishful thinking, device seemed to lose connection after about 25 minutes and I was in the dark!
I thought with recent experience I could probably go on feel and complete the session without issues. However, I definitely over-cooked it. I was feeling really good, todays session was to keep HR around 150. For a long time, the watts seemed pretty stable…but then I realised I’d over cooked it and they gradually just went down and down.
I completed the time of the session and just kept the HR where I knew it needed to be…but the watts ended up close to 100 by the end…amazing the effects of the heat! But you live and learn 🙂
Summary
Heat Adaptation – I think there are signs of progress 🙂
There are definitely signs that things are moving in the right direction. I was really looking forward to that 6th session, I honestly felt great and was looking forward to finding more small signs of improvement in the data.
However, without the core data, it is impossible to make an analysis of the session…other than I went a bit too far. I was sensible and didn’t push on and make an even bigger hole. So even though it wasn’t perfect, I think it was a productive session and that’s now 6 in a row.
