Didn't win but don't care

After yesterday's ride, I was feeling really confident and had only one goal: an average power of 260 watts. I didn't care if I was in last place as long as I got that power. That also meant that I might have to sacrifice my first place finish in order to keep the pace high.

Right from the start, we were pushing the pace. It was Rob, Mike, and I pushing the pace. No, let me correct that: it was me pushing the pace with Rob and Mike drafting me. That's pretty much how it was for the first 40 minutes. Then Mike dropped off the group. For the next hour, it was just Rob drafting me.

A few times Rob took a pull, but my power was dropping in his draft, so I had to stay on the fron almost the whole time. Keeping my average power high, I didn't have a lot extra to drop Rob.

On the final climb, just 400 feet long but at 7.5%, Rob sprinted by me and beat me by about 18 seconds. I just maintained a steady pace into the finish, quite happy to see my average power: 263 watts, which I maintained for 1:43:46. We even beat the group in the other bank by about 3 minutes.

I've gotten a few questions from people about wattage and how that translates to speed. The short answer is: it doesn't directly, and that's why we use it. Power is an absolute measure of how much force I'm putting out on the bike. 250 watts could be 24 mph on flat road but only 10 mph on a sleep climb or 45 mph on a steep descent. All of this is ignoring wind, of course where 250 watts on flat road could be 28 mph with a tail wind and 21 mph into a head wind.

Below are examples on relatively flat roads from my training records last year:

• Blueberry Time Trial, Avg Speed: 23.08 mph, Avg Power 222 watts
• 42K on West River Drive: Avg Speed 23.4 mph, Avg Power 232 watts
  
• West River Drive Time Trial, Avg Speed 24 mph, Avg Power 241 watts
• One-way on West Rover Drive, Avg Speed 25.7 mph Avg Power 256 watts
• 5 minute power test, Avg Speed 26.4 mph, Avg Power 299 watts

There's also a bit of a difference between the Computrainer and riding outdoors. My Powertap usually reads 8 to 10% lower than the Computrainer, but sometimes it reads the same or higher. Whether that's actually a difference in accuracy/calibration or just a difference in the way the Powertap reads the trainer vs. the road, I don't know.

So what's next? Maybe I will hit 270 watts before I start serious speed work for the spring. I only have a couple more weeks, but it is a definite possibility.

A new thing for me: Patience

Today in RPM we rode the Iron Man Switzerland course, a 37.33 mile course with 4 major climbs (6% or steeper) and a lo-o-o-o-o-o-ong 10 mile flat stretch at the end. I've always done pretty well on this course, even though I'm not a great climber. I am a decent time trialist and can really move on that last flat part. I knew today was going to be tough riding with a really strong bank of riders.

In the first few miles, the group formed up: Kevin, Rob, Kacy, and me. With that group, the pace was going to be high. Kevin made a couple attacks. I immediately responded, making sure that he know I was watching and if he broke away, I was going with him. Mike, another strong rider on the team, quickly made it apparent that he was taking it easy today. I was kind of disappointed since he has beaten me a couple times and I'm always game for a rematch. As we move into the racing season, I'm betting that Mike and I will be working together in a lot of races. Our power levels are pretty close and he's a decent guy (if he reads this, he'll probably fall over from the shock that I said something nice. I gave him crap the whole ride for taking it easy today).

When we hit the first climb, just 10 minutes in, I gunned it as hard as I could. I had a gap almost immediately and rode away from the rest of the group. Once I had about 200 feet, I slowed down to a comfortable pace. It was early and I didn't want to burn out early. Rob and Kacy caught me before the top of the climb. Kevin was off the back and losing ground fast. I drifted to the back of the pack and drafted Rob and Kacy.

We rode together pretty calmly until the next climb, when I made a move again. Once again, I got about 200 feet ahead, then matched or slightly exceeded their speed the rest of the way up the hill. When I reached the top, I had to make a decision. Did I think that I could hold off Rob and Kacy for another hour and twenty minutes? I decided not to take the risk. I held a decent pace on the descent, but didn't push too hard so they would have to work harder than I was if they wanted to catch me. Once they caught me, I drifted back into the draft and took it easy.

On the third and fourth climbs, I did the same: shoot away at the base of the climb, slow down at the top, and wait for them to catch me.

As we approached the 10-mile flat road, I started planning the rest of the race. I figured if I attacked, one of two things would happen:
Option 1: Rob would sprint after me, leaving Kacy behind. I'd have to either shake Rob off on the road or outsprint him at the line. Not knowing his fitness level, this was pretty risky. Rob is a track guy, so I'd rather not try to outsprint him at the finish.
Option 2: Rob would stay with Kacy. This was risky for me because I wasn't sure if I could hold them both off for 10 miles. If I cracked and they caught me, I may not have the energy left to stay with them.

I know Kacy is strong, but I didn't think she would be able to bring me back if I attacked.

My average power up to this point was pretty low, at 241 watts. Since I'd been hitting the 250's lately, I figured that meant that I still had a lot of energy to burn. It was time to throw down.

I jumped out of the saddle, accelerating from 22 to 27 mph. I stayed out of the saddle until I had ridden them both off my wheel. Rob wasn't countering. Crap. That meant I had to worry about burning out alone on the road. When my lead reached 100 feet, I sat back down, but kept the pace at about 23 to 24 mph.

For the next 10 miles, I had one mission: match or exceed Rob and Kacy's speed. As long as I could keep them a few hundred feet behind me, I would have some time to react if they started getting close. Once my lead reached 500 feet, I figured I was pretty safe, but I still kept an eye on them.

I was safely pulling away almost the entire time. At one point, it looked like they picked up the pace to about 25 mph and started pulling me back. I accelerated to 26 mph and held it until I had gained another hundred feet on them.

All the way to the finish line, I kept watching their speed and mine, paranoid that if I let my attention drift, they would catch me.

It never happened. By the time I hit the finish line, I had about a third of a mile (1760 feet) lead on them, which at that speed translated to 49 seconds.

By the time I hit the finish, my average power had increased to 254 watts. To increase my average power by that much that fast, I must have been doing about 280 to 290 watts for the last half hour or so. I was kind of surprised. It felt like I was working, but not nearly that hard.

The big surprise for me was how long I waited to make my move. It's not like me to be patient in a race. I always want to crush people right at the starting line, even though I know that I'm not strong enough to do it.

After the ride, my shoulder was pretty sore. I got a new tattoo started on my shoulder on Thursday and my bib shorts were digging into it quite a bit. Another day or two and it should be OK, but today and tomorrow's RPM rides will be a little less comfortable because of it.

I'm usually stronger the second day of RPM. Tomorrow I'm really hoping that I can hit a new record. I want to hit 260 watts for my average.

A nice number for a computer guy

256 holds a special significance in the computer world. It's the number of possibilities in one byte of information, it's a common multiple for memory, and it's just 2 to the 8th power.

It's also my average wattage today, 4 watts better than my previous best. I had no help at all. I was alone from the very start, leaving the bank of riders I was in right from the start, so I did 1:42:12 completely alone. I totally buried myself to do it.

My average wattage fluctuated between 255 and 257 watts for the last hour or so. I tried as hard as I could to keep my average in that range. I really wanted 256 for an average. The last 10 minutes, I could barely hang on. I couldn't really think straight, I couldn't see, and I couldn't speak. I was just pedaling as hard as I could. I kept a mental countdown running in my head as I watched my distance covered number. It was a 38.2 mile course. It was actually the same Stage 2 course we used for the Tour de Breakaway three weeks ago. It was a lot easier with people to draft. I was 5 minutes slower today than I was then but I worked a lot harder for it. I averaged 246 watts that day.

When I was done, the first thing I did was cough for about 10 minutes straight. Once my heart rate came down a little bit (from 178 BPM) and I could breathe again, I went over to the other bank to see how they did. I beat them by 3 minutes.

Awesome. That made my day.

I got back on the bike and kept cooling down. My legs were killing me, I kept coughing every few minutes, and my heart rate took forever to come down to my normal range. I didn't care. I had my best day ever on the trainer.

Let's look at a couple numbers. A "good" off season is one where your power increases by about 10%. This year, from October to the present, I've increased my power for these long courses from 205 watts to 256 watts. That's almost a 25% improvement. With the rapid rate of improvement I've seen, I'm wondering if I could hit 260 or 265 watts in the remaining RPM classes. It would be really great if I could. It would be an amazing foundation to start the serious speed work on in the spring.

Oh yeah, and sitting around with a cold all week and eating like crazy, I'm up a pound to 176.

One Sick Individual

I knew I was coming down with something last weekend when I struggled with my field test. By Tuesday, I was coughing enough that I only completed 1 1/2 of my scheduled 4 VO2max intervals. By Thursday, I was dizzy enough to go home from work early. I went home, took a couple sleeping pills to make sure I stayed unconscious, and went to bed. (At some point I posted some pictures to Facebook that night, but have no recollection of doing it!)

Friday I woke up and felt terrible, still coughing like crazy and had a hard time concentrating. I emailed my coworkers that I wouldn't be in and went back to bed for most of the day.

A smart person would have skipped riding today. I never claimed to be smart. I woke up and didn't feel too bad (after sleeping about 20 hours in the last day and a half) so I figured I'd go into the shop and do an easy ride.

As I was warming up, I could tell I was a little off. My body heat was WAY high and I was uncomfortably warm the entire time. I managed to stay with Todd and Jason for about the first 30 minutes, then I dropped off and rode the rest of the course alone. I stayed ahead of Andy and Kacy, who were about a mile behind me most of the time. Kacy has also been sick and been off the bike for about 3 weeks.

It was an interesting day since I couldn't spin over 90 RPM for the life of me. My aerobic system just wasn't cooperating. I tended to stay about 85 RPM, making my leg muscle do a little more work than normal.

I finished the course with a stunning average of 242 watts. That's a decent wattage for any day, let alone one where I don't really remember much of it because I still don't have a lot of focus. Once I was done, I was coughing really badly and all my teammates were giving me loads of grief for not staying in bed.

They're right. I probably should have stayed in bed all day, since now I'm coughing even more and can have that "warm" feeling that usually means I have a fever.

I need to be better for next weekend. After waiting for months, I finally decided to get my next tattoo: it will be the same style as much current one and will be on my right shoulder/upper arm. I called Mony the other day and made the appointment. I don't want to be coughing while he's working!

So now, maybe 18 more hours of sleep and I'll be ready to ride tomorrow ;-)

ADDENDUM: Uhhh..... huh. Wow. I just downloaded my power meter information. I was messing around while I was warming up and tried to do a couple sprints. I just spotted a number I've never seen before: 5 seconds at 1015 watts, with an instantaneous maximum of 1096 watts. I don't know how the hell I did that kind of power, but the numbers are there (and I thought I saw it on screen, but it could have been a delusion). My target for March 1 was 1000 watts for 5 seconds, so I guess I need to increase the goal a little.

Not a fluke

Sometimes you have a really good day on the bike and you wonder if it was just one day.

Today's RPM was the Iron Man Switzerland course, a pretty painful 37-mile course with 3 climbs between 6.6 and 7.7%, each one about 5 minutes long. Ouch.

Four of us gunned it from the beginning. It was Matt, Pete, Ted, and I. We were pushing the pace pretty hard. Pete dropped off after about a half hour. It's his first season with the team and still building his strength, but he's doing pretty well so far.

On the first climb, Ted and I gunned it a little, dropping Matt. We joked about dropping him, but we slowed down a bit and he got back on. On the first major climb, Matt and I dropped Ted. By the summit, we had over 1000 feet on him. On the descent and flat after, I found something: Matt didn't mind drafting but wouldn't help pull. I debated for a second: could I drag Matt along and still keep Ted off? Ted is a great time trialist and could probably pull me back. So I waited. I slowed to to about 17 mph so Ted could catch back on (he was doing a out 21 mph).

Once he was back on, the three of us worked pretty hard together. Ted called out the rotation, making sure each of us took a pull. We stayed together over the next couple climbs and descents. We just had the 6 miles of flat road until the finish.

With about five miles to go, I was just finishing my 2-minute pull. I was debating how long to wait before making a move and this seemed like a good time. Besides, a song I really liked came on my iPod just then. So I gunned it, hitting about 750 watts. I jumped out of the saddle and gritted my teeth. I watched as I pulled away from Matt, as he slipped out of my draft. Ted shot past him and was on me pretty quickly. After a minute I slowed down a touch and Ted took over. We kept the pace pretty high. I was doing about 300 watts when I was pulling and about 220 in Ted' draft.

I took a really long pull the last couple miles. I wanted to get my average wattage up. It was at 251 watts and I really wanted to get it up to meet or beat my old record. I ran out of road.... Ted sprinted by me in the last half mile and I just rode in at the same speed. I finished with an average of 252 watts, tying my record from last week. Matt came in about a minute behind us (I think, I was pretty beat and not paying much attention).

I was thrilled. To push myself so hard in the TT test yesterday and still deliver this kind of performance today was more than I could hope for. Especially since I'm still coughing and feel a little run down.

This week I'll be doing VO2max intervals and threshold intervals, so I'll probably be a little more tired by next weekend. Hopefully my body adjusts to the new higher intensity!

Starting to sound like a broken record

I wasn't really thinking about it and forgot to sign up in advance for the RPM class this week. With some 40" of snow this week, not too many people are riding outside and the class filled up pretty quickly.

Since I was going to be riding the trainer at home, I dug through my courses to find something kind of punishing but still kind of fun. I decided on my old favorite: The Carmichael Training Systems Field Test.

Years ago, when I was still skating, I worked with a great coach at Carmichael Training Systems named Josh Seldman. I always look back fondly on the days when he was my coach. He really got some great results out of me. One of the methods that he (and CTS) used was a test every 8 weeks or so to test my fitness: a 3 mile time trial. It could be done outdoors or on my CompuTrainer. It's long enough to get some good data from and ideally I would do two of them to see how well I could maintain the speed on the second one.

Today I did one, but oh what a one I did.

I warmed up really well. I wasn't feeling great since I was out late last night and have a bit of a cough coming on. I debated doing it at all, but a couple of hard efforts in the warmup felt OK so I decided to go for it.

Time trials are always hard. A 3-mile one is so short that you have to go really really hard in order to do well. From the power numbers I've been seeing lately, I was guessing that I would be able to average about 300 watts or so. That's a lot of power and was going to take a major effort.

I hit the Start button on the trainer, watched the countdown, then gave it everything I had. I was amazed at how quickly I zoned out. I was pedaling a steady 90 to 95 RPM, my head slightly moving side to side with each pedal stroke, and my breathing labored but controlled. I don't remember much of the time trial really, other than looking over to see 2.96 miles on the computer. I was almost done. 2.97....2.98... 2.99... 3.00. Whew! Done!

I cooled down, then started messing with the laptop and realized that the CompuTrainer software hadn't recorded the effort. I hate that software when it does that. At least I remembered my time and average power.

I rebooted the laptop to get to Mac OS, opened my training log, and went to enter my time and power in the log with all my past tests.... what the hell? No, that can't be right... oh my God, it is. It's a new record.

Today I did 3 miles in 7:11.7 at an average 315 watts and 25.01 mph. I was just excited that it was over 25 mph. My previous best on the trainer, set in November 2004, was 7:15.8 (I didn't track my power back then).

I used to fight for weeks to take off a fraction of a second from my 3 field test times. I sliced off 4 seconds. To give you an idea, 4 seconds at that speed means that if I'd done this on the open road, I'd have beaten the old record by 150 feet.

I'm really excited.... and now I'm going to go lay down. That was hard!

Oh, and I'm still 175 pounds.

One easy day and one record breaking day

Yesterday's RPM was pretty easy. We got about a foot of snow overnight the day before, so it was a little smaller group than usual. We didn't go that hard, with Todd, Glenn, and I rolling along at a moderate pace. Todd got a flat about an hour in and Glenn decided to try and drop me. He hit 27 mph on a 2% climb. I clawed my way back onto his wheel. He tried it again. I pulled him back again. I was not letting him get away.

We took it easy all the way to the finish line. I tried to make a move with 2 miles to go, but Glenn shot by me and beat me by about 20 seconds. Did I mention he's a Cat 2 rider? I'd fully expect him to smoke me :-)

Today was another story. We had a really strong group, with Tyler, Charlie, Mike, Ted, and I from QCW and a few new guys who I didn't get to meet.

Very quickly, Charlie, Tyler, and Mike were off the front. Ted and I, along with one new guy named Rob, formed the chase pack. About 30 minutes or so in, Mike dropped back from the lead group to our group. We had a pretty solid rotation. It felt like Ted and I were doing most of the work, but Rob and Mike were definitely contributing as well. We had a pretty good rhythm going and Ted and I worked really well together.

The last half mile of this course is a really brutal climb, reaching 7.9%. Just before it, Mike took off and quickly had 150 feet on us. I tried to bring him back had him down to 70 feet, but I just couldn't bring him back. When the course flattened out right before the finish, Ted came by me and I couldn't hold on to him. In the end, Mike beat me by 15 seconds and Ted beat me by 8 seconds. My finish time was 1:39:52.

The really great surprise was my average wattage: 252 watts. That was my best average wattage for any RPM class (ever, including when I was racing before I got fat). My previous best on this course was 242 watts in early January. I've never held that kind of wattage in my life. Based on that and some other analysis I've seen on the PowerTap lately, I'd guess my functional threshold is somewhere around 275 watts, something I never imagined I'd see when I started my quest to lose weight last May (hard to believe that was 8 1/2 months ago).

With just 8 weeks to go until the start of racing season, I'll be doing more threshold and VO2 max work now, so now I get to find out how my body handles the higher intensity. I'll be spending a lot of time working in the 330 watt range.... my legs are aching already...