My write-up for J:

I think this was appropriately hard.

I was originally going to wake up early and do this out in Ellicott City for the hills, but woke up at 4:30 am feeling really tired, so I rolled over in bed and kept on sleeping. Woke up at 9:30 am! Slept a solid 10 hrs and felt like I could have slept even more. This is me still recovering from my poor sleep on Friday night, but how exhausted work left me. (I’m still really angry at them about it.)

Decided to run in downtown from home instead, even though it’s flatter. That said, it has some very long respectable 5% hills, just not many of them. This would have been even faster if I hadn’t tried to add hills to it.

Every FTP block felt like a 9-9.5/10. I’d finish feeling like I couldn’t continue, then recover during my 4 min breaks despite continuing to run. In a previous life, I would have had to walk in order to recover between these 8 minute sets!

I really love being able to put this fast cadence to work for me!!! My cadence averaged out at a consistent 185 rpm regardless of whether I was clocking 7:55 min mile pace or 12 min mile pace!!! SO AWESOME!!!!!!! My stride length and stride speed remained the same during the FTP blocks, while simply engaging more with the ground to propel me forward more. THIS IS SO COOL JOANNE!!!! Thank you for teaching me this!!

I finished with NOT one more set in me. That said, after every FTP block I thought, “I don’t know if I can do another”…and then I did. So maybe me saying that I was completely done should be taken with a grain of salt. Lol HOWEVER: when I finally stopped, I did get a sudden wave of very mild nausea, so Imma confirm that yes, I was near maxed-out! This only happens after maximal efforts.