Getting dropped is no fun, but it's especially demoralizing when it happens in the warmup of a group ride. That's how it went this morning while riding the PowerCranks. First off, a little prelude. Friday night was spent at the track. It's been almost two months since my last track race, so I was a little rusty. My training this week was also lousy, and I was hoping some hard racing in the Masters and 123 fields would wake my legs up. I'll spare all the details, but bottom line is that the racing did indeed provide a spark to my legs. That was followed up less than 12 hours later with my best Saturday group ride in months (ride was without PCs, since my small training group treats these like road races). My legs were back! Of course, they were also tired from the intense riding over the last 2 days.
Nonetheless, Sunday brings the "easy" group ride. I headed out with the intent of doing the full 38 or so miles on PCs. Of course, with pal Dan on his Specialized Transition TT bike, and his claim that "I'll just put it at an easy 250 or so on the front" I knew that it was going to be a fast "easy" ride. That 250 W or so would be 25-26 mph, and doing that after just a couple of days with PCs would be tough. I was dropped (would never happen with regular cranks), so I just tried to ride a consistent pace. My pedaling with PCs has certainly improved, but my legs were ablaze with pain. The PCs were kicking my butt this morning. I decided to make it a bit of an interval session - turn the cranks 100 revolutions, feel my legs burn, get the heart rate up, stop pedaling, recover by dropping HR by 30+ bpm, and repeat. I did this for an hour, so I doubled my longest ride with PCs. That's 2 30 minute rides and now an hour long ride with the things, and yes, they hurt.
Average HR for the hour was 120 bpm, and that was with a fair amount of coasting. By comparison, Saturday's "hammerfest" portion of the group ride (about 2.5 hours) was 131 bpm average and 233 W normalized. It didn't feel nearly as hard as the PC ride. I came home after an hour, switched bikes, and headed back out to intercept the group. Perceived effort on the non-PC bike was SO MUCH easier. The hardest part of that portion (not very hard), was 117 bpm average and 194 watts normalized, a true recovery pace for me. But honestly, the PCs just kicked my tail today.
Time on PCs - 60 minutes
Total time on PCs - 120 minutes
2 comments:
It's good that you're trying powercranks but you're rapidly heading for over training injury hell by doing both powercranks and regular cranks workouts.
Stick to powercranks only for the first two weeks minimum, this is important so I'll repeat it, stick to powercranks only for the first two weeks minimum.
Other than that hang in there and don't let your pride/ego/whatever get in the way and give up without even trying properly.
My 250 watts was more like 24.7 avg...wasn't sure where you went - Steve thought you went different direction but not sure where. I did crank it up to 27.5 for a little while on way back but not long.....:)
Post a Comment