Week of November 24

Monday – Frank Day had this epiphany that PCs could be used to reduce drag, but only on downhills. Since it was an easy day, I decided to go out and do some testing to see if I could find out just how much drag could be reduced between coasting both feet down versus both feet in the 9 o’clock position. Ended up with 66 minutes of PC riding in probably my easiest ride of the year, and I determined from 6 tests of each configuration (out-and-back for each test so a total of 24 runs) that coasting with the PCs in the “up” position reduces drag about 12%. An example of a series of tests is shown in the plot below. The normalized speed (speed divided by the initial speed) is on the y-axis, and the x-axis is time (minutes). The initial speeds were in the 20 mph range, so around 12 mph (or 0.6*v0) aero drag tends to diminish quite a bit in comparison to rolling resistance. The red curves are the feet up and the black are feet down. Just from the graph you can tell there’s a difference in drag area. The data below (and from all runs) was compared to a kinematic solution (i.e., solving F=ma with an initial velocity and the only resistance being rolling resistance and drag (with wind included)).

Tuesday – My longest ride on the PCs to date. I wanted to do a 100 miles but the winds were pretty good and I just wasn’t feeling it. I ended up with 4:45 in the saddle with a normalized power of 195 watts. I got some benefit by the ride as I spent a total of 2+ hours in level 3. Later that afternoon the winds went calm and it was just too freaking nice out. I jumped on the fixie for a quick 30 minute spin to refresh the legs.

Wednesday – Travel day to Austin but I got in a whopping 18 minutes of riding on PCs.

Thursday – I celebrated Thanksgiving with a 2:23 ride north of Austin. It was a good tempo ride with an IF of 0.81 overall for the duration. For the first time I was able to pedal out of the saddle on the PCs. That will come in useful for keeping the butt comfy.

Friday – It was rainy in Austin so I didn’t get out in the morning. By the time it dried we were headed back to Houston. No riding.

Saturday – Usual Saturday hammerfest on regular cranks. Had a fair amount of L5 and L6 time but TSS was down slightly from the previous two weeks. I wasn’t the freshest, perhaps due to Tuesday’s long PC ride and Thursday’s tempo effort in the hills of Austin.

Sunday – Plan was for 5+ hours, but cold fronts have a tendency to throw plans out the window. The temperature was fine, but the winds weren’t. What started with winds in the 10 mph range quickly went to 20+ with gusts approaching 30 mph. It sucked. I spent the first couple of hours with the group or our talented junior. I shadowed him on the way back as he was doing tempo efforts. With the wind, my larger body size, and my hunk of metal with the PCs, I was having to put out 20-30 more watts than he was. Ended up spending quite a bit of time in my threshold zone. Once junior left, I headed out for another 90 minutes of riding. The wind really started to hurt by then. Nonetheless, I persevered and ended up getting 4:11 of PC riding in with a normalized power of 211 watts. That’s my best so far on the PCs for that kind of duration, but still well away from my best ever 236 W on regular cranks. For the week I ended up with just under 950 TSS points. A long, hard week.

PC time this week – 12 hours 40 minutes
PC time to date – 123 hours 30 minutes

Weekly status of power progression – No change from last week as most of the riding was tempo and endurance.