Im still liking the bike?

Last night we had class #2 of my interval bike class and so far it continues to go well. Our class consisted of:

10 minute warm up

some intensive bike watts building to steady state watts for a few minutes

single leg drills for a few minutes

a few minutes building up to a bit of your V02 max to flush the legs out before the main set

Main Set:

5 x 5 minutes at Tempo watts cadence 80-85, with occasional builds of 30+seconds or more of increasing your watts 40-50 above your tempo ( low end -mid range of V02 max)

2 minutes of recovery in between.

So after last weeks class Coachie decided to revamp my numbers, so my tempo watts increased from 190-215 to 200-225, thus all my other numbers changed as well.

My first set we were going to be conservative and he wanted me to hold anywhere from 205-210 watts, second set 215-220, 3rd, 4th and 5th set, 225-235 watts. After reviewing my power file it looks like I hit all 5 nicely and actually hitting them on the higher side of what he asked me to do. ( off the top of my head I think my last 3 sets were 233, 234, 235)

Now I did hit a good heart rate on the 5th set with 30 seconds to go because he had us pushing 280-300 watts ( HR 172) but otherwise my heart rate average for the class was 152, average watts with the warm up and cool down was 162.

Over the last two years I have grown very comfortable with riding long and slow with occasional efforts of pushing especially when I did Karen Smyers class at Fast splits but otherwise I didn't really push myself too hard on the bike. Karens class had us only really working for 30-40 minutes, I never pushed myself past this point.

I know this season and seasons to come I need to really work hard at pushing up my V02max numbers and working close to holding some of these numbers for prolonged periods of time, thus being able to race more effectively and hopefully run more to my ability off the bike. I certainly not mind working hard but I know this is going to hurt at times but with just a few weeks under my belt I'm already seeing a difference in my bike. Now, hopefully I can lose some more weight to get my power/weight ratio better and really kick some ass on the road. I want to beat the women but I really want to ride with the men, it really pisses them off.