Week of January 26

Not much to write about this week. A pretty boring week overall. Nonetheless,

Monday - 70 minutes of PCing where the intent was to do some intensity work but I just wasn't feeling it.

Tuesday - 1:50 of PC riding with a 2x20 block in there. Recall my great hour effort a few weeks ago and how I said I need to be consistent to truly be sure I was improving. Today was proof positive of that thought. I completed the 20 minute intervals with no problem, but they were both around 272 watts average. Given the 282 W performance for an hour, I would have expected these intervals to be 15-20 W higher.

Wednesday - an hour of PC riding on the Computrainer. At the end I did some isolated leg drills to see if PC riding affected my leg strength. I reported my results on Slowtwitch (see http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=2184997). I would have figured that if the PC claims were correct, PC riding should have improved any imbalances. To date they haven't.

Thursday - rest day

Friday - 50 minutes of PC riding including a 10 minute TT effort at 293 watts. That's a fair amount below my best since starting PCs (301 W) and a good deal below my all-time best (309 W).

Saturday - Did the group ride with the PCs this week. I was doing well for the first 2:15 with a normalized power of 245 W. But then my legs wanted to stop. The first couple of hours I was having to work harder than usual. The bike with the PCs is a heavy beast (around 25 lbs with the PCs) with lousy, slow tires and 32 spoke wheels. When you add in my more upright position (harder to ride in the drops with the PCs) I turn into an aerodynamic pig. I can easily put out the same watts in the draft as the lead rider in clear air. Nonetheless, the 3:05 ride gave me plenty of tempo and threshold and even a decent amount of VO2 work. Unfortunately it didn't give me the L6 stimulus I need. Do I see riding the PC equipped bike in group rides necessary for training? Not particularly. For mass start racing I need to train my L6 system as well, particularly very high end out of the saddle sprints. I just can't simulate that on PCs like I can with regular cranks.

Sunday - 2:45 of PC riding, mostly endurance and tempo. Not much of note.

PC time this week - 10 hours 40 minutes
PC time to date - 181 hours 5 minutes