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Would someone please go to work for me today? I just don't feel like it.

Oh, and I am in desperate need of a Vet with madd surgical skills. We have a very vocal cat. The bastard. I really can't see any reason, any more, for this indoor cat to have need to make sounds. At night. All friggen night. Kitty vocal chords...gotta go. Sorry Brisco. NOT!

I have a podcast that I've been listening to - besides the Tb'nB show - called Tri Talk. He's got 14k listeners or so, yes, I'm pretty late to jump on that bandwagon, but he's got some really good stuff on there. And he's not funny, so we don't have to worry about losing any "market share". And he does talk a lot about triathlon. And give tips. Basically, his show is the Anti-Tb'nB show.

So his (David Warden's) 61'st episode talks about a method to tell if you are ready to leave base training and go to the build or speed phase of your train-up to a particular event. It's called decoupling. Studies indicated that if you could maintain your output for certain periods over varying durations based on the upcoming event, you could determine the quality of your personal base. For Ironman, he recommends a 4 hr bike. He also recommends that a power meter be used, as HR and speed have too many variables like wind and grade - fortunately I train on a 12 mile circular loop, so the variables get canceled as I go in circles. Granted, I only went 50 miles, or 2.5 hrs, but the results were very positive.

Tri Talk recommends transitioning to the next training phase (based on coaching advise from Joe Friel) only if the first half of your training ride is different from the second half by less than 5%. Oh, and for shorter distance events, the test ride is shorter too - so if you are not training for IM, you can still use this test!

On yesterday's ride, I did the first 24.82 miles at a 20.3 mph avg. speed and 138 avg HR. The speed to HR ratio is 6.8. The second half went 19.9 mph at 143 avg HR, or 7.2 - for a difference of .55% decoupling - not too shabby. The true IM test would be over another hour and a half, and I'd certainly start out slower, but still these results were positive....I've almost got a good base.

edit: oops, that should read 5.5%, not .55% ... and this test is designed to be done in Zone 2, btw....