Stupid is, as stupid does

After bagging on Monday's planned ride due to feeling kinda wiped, today was to be my first ride of the new week...the first interval session to boot.

Have you ever had one of those moments where, in retrospect, you should have listened to what your body was saying? When the alarm went off I stirred ('woke up' is too strong for what I did this morning), and began getting my helmet, gloves, glasses, etc. I'd at least like to say that the spirit was willing, but that would be a lie. When it came time to grab the bike off the rack so I could air up the tires I just stood there staring at the bike, having a conversation with myself. It went something like this...

Sean 1: Ya know, I'm kinda tired. Why not go back to sleep and do the ride later this afternoon?

Sean 2: That's not gonna work. A) there's the usual work issues on Tuesday night, and B) you know that afternoon interval sessions don't go as well as morning ones do.

Sean 1: Ok, then what about doing them tomorrow morning, and just get a ride in before the meeting tonight?

Sean 2: I hate to break it to you genius, but that won't work either. We're scheduled to do a long ride tomorrow afternoon with Joe and if we do intervals in the morning we'll be smoked come tomorrow afternoon. And we can't do them on Thursday morning either, because after 3-3 1/2 hrs Wed afternoon I can guarantee that it would not be pretty. Suck it up and lets go!

Sean 1: Fine. Whatever. [grumbles incoherently]

I manage to get myself to my riding location, and once I start riding I wake up and feel pretty decent. I take an extra few minutes for my warm-up, pushing it to 20 minutes. I even throw in a few fast accelerations since today's workout is going to be...violent, for lack of a better term. What kind of workout could be that bad? Lactate tolerance reps.

If you use a power meter, the effort is done in what is known as the CP1 zone...which is your 1 minute critical power (the fastest 1 minute you can do) +/- 5%. For me that zone is 503-557 watts. You're supposed to do 3-5 sets of 4 reps of 30-40sec, with your recovery interval being half of your work interval. That means 15-20 sec of recovery in between reps. That is followed up by 5 minutes recovery between sets.
On paper it doesn't sound too bad, but let me assure you that they are evil.
I am shooting for the 40/20. I do the first one, don't feel too bad, spin easily for the 20 sec, start the 2nd rep and it is immediate and total meltdown. Let's try 30/15 instead. I got 2 reps completed before the check engine light came on. That was it, time to abandon. I was already out there, so I figured I might as well salvage something out of this ride, and decided to get 1.5hrs in total. Let me tell ya, that last 45 min was tough. I was tempted several times to just lay down in the road and let a truck run me over and put me out of my misery.

Next time that I don't sleep well and my body is trying to send a message, I'm gonna pay a bit more attention.