Ouch.

Since 2000/2001 my winter training plan has included at least one day per week on the TT bike. This winter is no different. In November and December I've done one SST workout per week on the Cervelo.

Winter is also the time to do position tweaks. A few days ago I added a new Thomson stem to my P2K. It is the same length as my old stem, but has a 10-degree downward angle (the old one had a zero angle). That lowered the front end 16 millimeters [90cm x sin(10 deg) = 16mm]. I also moved the tri-bar extensions forward about 15 mm. To maintain a similar reach, I shifted my saddle forward about 1.5 cm forward. Shifting the saddle forward meant that I had to raise it a little to keep the same height from the BB. I had to add new shifter cables and cable housing due to the extended new position. To polish it all off, I sawed 2.5 cm off the top of my fork, steerer tube, whatever you call that thing, and took off several spacers.

As I mentioned, up 'till now I've only done SST workouts - 85% to 90% of FTP.

After I made the adjustments, I did a 45 minute workout including 4 threshold power intervals - 100% of FTP - each 7 minutes long. Not what I would call a difficult workout.

For two days after the workout I have been extremely sore. Legs, back, shoulders - it's been hard to sleep, even. I don't know if it was the slightly different position, the slightly higher intensity, the fact that it's my first winter over 40, or maybe all three. But it hurts like hell.

The experience has changed the way I'll approach my TT training for the rest of the winter. After a few more workouts to hopefully 'stop the hurt,' I'll start doing shorter, harder intervals on the TT bike. If many of my TT efforts this year will be prologues or very short TTs in the Georgia Cup series, I'd better get used to VO2max level efforts on the Cervelo. So from here out, it's weekly 355s on the TT bike: 3x5min@L5 (L5 is 110% FTP power).

If I find that there is as much difference between the 355s and the FTP efforts on the Cervelo as I found between SST and FTP, then there's probably more soreness in my future.