Tuesday – One of the benefits of working for the government is you get all those extra holidays, and today was such a day. Veterans’ Day today, so instead of sitting behind a desk today it was a good time to hit the road. My goal going into today was a 100 miler on the Powercranks. But I quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen. I was lucky to even get out the door as morning rain showers almost demotivated me enough to stay indoors all day. But it looked like the rain was moving north and I’d have clear riding as I headed south to see pal and recent track accident victim Dan, who is recovering from busted ribs and collarbone. He lives about 35 miles south of the house, and unfortunately the winds were right out of the south at 15-20 mph. The whole way. The legs felt dead, and I was going into this massive, never ending headwind. I got to his house, visited, and headed back. Of course, now that wind was a heft tailwind and I was cruising at 30+ mph while only putting out about 200 watts. The ride was pretty uneventful, though it now represents the longest PC ride I’ve done at 4:05. I had done an effort of almost 4 hours a month or two ago. You can tell I’m accustomed to the PCs, as even today when my legs felt dead I still had a normalized power some 20 W higher than that previous long ride. When I downloaded the data I was surprised to see I spent nearly 2 hours in my zone 3.
Wednesday – Easy L2 day of 55 minutes on the PCs
Thursday – I was looking forward to a threshold workout today. With the earlier sunsets some of the guys have been hitting a local 1.4 mile park loop near the house. I got to the park with enough time for a 2 hour workout, and as I pulled the bike out it started to rain. I don’t mind getting caught out in the rain, but I hate starting in the rain. So home I go, and I decide to get the Computrainer out and do a ramp test for grins. I decided to first test myself on the Powercranks followed by a ramp test on my race bike with regular cranks. I wanted to test my current fitness as well as see if there was any difference in the results between Powercranks and regular cranks.
The testing sucked. I lacked motivation pedaling in my garage. I was dripping with sweat and my legs, lungs, and heart didn’t want to dig deep. In both tests I topped out around 320 W using a ramp rate of 20 W/minute. Given my FTP of 270-275 W and that I’ve recently done 5 minute efforts in the 330 W range, the 320 W peak was no measure of my current ability. Using a typical 72-77% rule for threshold power, that would put me in the 240 W range. Definitely something amiss with this test today.
So was there a difference between regular cranks and Powercranks? Nope. I wore a heart rate monitor and the heart rate traces were within 1-2 bpm of each other. Cadence was 1-2 rpm higher with the PCs, but honestly there was no difference there either. The first plot below shows power, heart, and cadence all on the same plot. The first test is with PCs, the second is with regular cranks. The second plot shows just the heart rate and cadence data in more detail. What this tells me is 1) if heart rate is a measure of adaptation, I’m fully adapted to Powercranks since the HR-power response is virtually identical, and 2) it does not matter which crank system is used in a ramp test given proper adaptation.
Friday – Felt lazy and didn’t ride.
Saturday – Return to regular cranks on the weekly hammerfest, but today offered a real test as a cold front moved in overnight and delivered some strong north winds. We hammered from the start taking advantage of the early tailwind. We set up rotating pacelines with my pulls in the level 5/VO2 zone. I put in a lot of work at the front in the first hour (NP of 262 W) and didn’t have anything left for the midpoint finish. Then we headed home. 15-20 mph winds the whole way but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. We pushed hard the entire way and I pushed another 264 watts normalized over the next hour. We finished up with over a 21 mph average on this day with strong, gusty winds. It’s a testament to the team. I’ve got a bunch of great guys around me. A half dozen or so of us battling those winds and coming home strong. I set a couple of all time best normalized power numbers today in the 150-180 minute range. Overall, for a 3:15 ride I netted 258 TSS points (IF=0.89), some personal bests, and some really sore legs.
Sunday – Legs a bit dead but I managed 1:40 of PC riding.
PC time this week – 8 hours
PC time to date – 105 hours
Weekly status of power progression – No real change from last week so no summary.
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