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.
