Low Confidence But Sucking It Up

Greetings ya'll.

In my other threads, I've posted about how I'm returning to racing after a long layoff. Well, I didn't touch my bike for about two years...got back to it this February. I've been training steadily and keeping the diet in check, especially for the last 2 or 3 months.

I was going to be doing a stage race in September, but I found out that I can't compete as I'm a foreign racer (officials decided not to let foreign racers in the race). Anyway, there are couple races this month and one in October that I'll be doing.

The thing is, I was trying to get up my VO2 work to about 30 minutes by the end of this month. The race at the end of the month (and the one in October) is a hill climb...between 30 and 40 minutes. I figured I could train my VO2 quickly and get a little bit of power, so I got up to doing 7x3 last month (320 watts).

But this weekend, I didn't do the team ride as there was a monsoon here. So I stayed in and did LT intervals on the trainer, which I haven't done since June. A few of you all talked about how I should add them, so I figured Saturday would be perfect day for them. I did 3X10 min. at @250 watts. I felt pretty bogged down doing them...not really fast. I was struggling to hold it at that power.

Granted that was the last day of a three-day block (I did 6x3 min L5 on the two days before). But I'm thinking I should have been able to hold that power better.

Also, I wasn't sore yesterday, but today I have some soreness. I haven't experienced that in a long time. So I'm concerned now that I haven't done enough LT work. I was going to just do pure 3-day blocks of L5 until I got up to @30 mins. this month, but now I'm reconsidering.... I feel like my LT power is low, and it might be a better idea to concentrate on that to get ready for the race at the end of this month.

Like I said, the race at the end of the month is a 30-40 min. hillclimb, 14 km going up 800 meters. The race this weekend is just to get back into things (and not much I can do before then!) so I'm using it as training if nothing else. L4, L5, or a mixture of both this month? Oh yeah, and the race in October is going to be similar....

Well, I'm just following up on the previous post. I worked out this morning, doing 3X10 min. L4 intervals again. This time was muuuuuuch better. I didn't struggle at all. Power was between @250 and @280 (I had to watch it a few times there because it kept creeping up!)

I guess on Saturday's workout I was just tired from the 2 previous days' workouts.

Tomorrow, I'll shoot for the same amount, or if I'm feeling better, maybe even more. (And Thursday, as much as I can handle)

Anyway, any input on what I posted earlier is welcome. Thanks dudes!