More Than Just Maps

A few years ago, I made the switch from tracking the intensity on my bike with heart rate to tracking it with power. It meant learning a whole new series of terms and training methods which were much more specific and exact than anything heart rate had to offer. It gave me new ways to plan my training, track my results, and make sure that I was getting enough recovery between workouts (and hard weeks).

It was more efficient and effective in almost every way I could want.

In the last month, I've started training with GPS. It's not a replacement for training with power in any way. Instead, it's giving me another way to look at my training. It combines three pieces of information:

1. Where I ride
2. Segments of road that someone has marked as being worth tracking
3. My performance on that segment (both against others and against myself)

Part of living near a major city means that the roads are ridden by lots of people, so many of the roads are marked as interesting. Sometimes there are so many that I find myself telling the system to hide some of them so I don't see them all the time.

Training with power requires a power meter and software to analyze the data, so it can get a bit expensive. All training with GPS requires is a modern smart phone. Of course, with GPS-enabled bike computers, you can also track you speed, heart rate and power as well as the mapping data.

There are quite a few benefits to training with a GPS.

First, cyclists are seriously competitive. Seeing that someone else did better on a road that I thought I did well on gives me an incentive to try to beat them, especially if it's a road that I ride a lot and feel that I should be the best rider on it. The system tracks all of the roads on which you have the best time and notifies you any time someone beats you. For me, I've found a tendency towards short steep climbs (less than 4 minutes) or longer, flatter segments (about 5 minutes or so).

Second, it captures the performance data of everyone who rides on each segment. I don't just see their speed. I see how much power it took them to get it. Now I have something to aim for.

Third, it lets me compare against my own previous times. It shows me every time that I've ridden that segment (with a GPS-enabled device) and how my performances compare. Before long, you start to see the patterns of how you do when you are just cruising along vs. how you do when you are really pushing.

Last, and perhaps best, you can browse a map to find segments that others have marked. It gives you ideas of places to ride near the areas that you already ride so you can try out new and different roads (and of course, have a target speed/time on them!!)

Would I train with GPS and not power? Not if I could help it. I look at GPS as a great supplement to power, not as a replacement.

Deep Blue, Take Two

Now that I'm done complaining about how humid it was, let's take another look at that race and my preparation.

In early June, I didn't care about racing. I was riding enough to have fun, but no serious training, no hard efforts, and no structure to what I was doing. At the end of June, the switch in my head flipped to "on" and I started training for real.

I did 9 weeks of solid, structured training, with volume increased, the intensity increased, and an experimental 10-day taper so that I showed up for the race both well trained and well rested.

I did a "dry run" two days in advance to make sure that all of my equipment was ready to go.

I had my traditional Indian for dinner the night before the race and got a good night's sleep.

I got to the race an hour early and got in a good warmup. I spent 45 minutes on the trainer with a dedicated warmup, then spent 15 minutes on the road. I brought a spare jersey to wear on the trainer so I could race in a dry outfit and be more comfortable.

To counter against the humidity, I drank a lot of fluids before the race. I drank 2 bottles in the hour before the race.

I started the race well, getting a strong start for the first minute and then gradually settled into the power that I wanted. I just forgot to account for the humidity.

Even though the weather did not cooperate, I feel that the factors that I could control all went perfectly.

Like Breathing Through a Wet Sock

I don't deal well with high humidity. I never have. Heat I'm OK with. Not humidity.

Early this week, I saw that it was going to be hot and humid for this race, so I decided to race in my normal road gear. My time trial helmet has almost no vents and my time trial speed suit does not breathe very well, so I figured I would be better off using my standard road outfit and helmet. I was not racing for the podium today anyway.

I also decided to use my road bike, not my time trial bike. It usually takes me 4 to 6 weeks of riding on the TT bike to get comfortable on it and get my power output close to that of my road bike. While I've been training like a lunatic for the last 8 weeks, it has only minimally been on the TT bike.

I was right to plan for this. At the start, it was 78 degrees with a dew point of 72. Really humid and disgusting.

The race was OK. It is a mostly flat 10.9 mile course with a 3/4 mile climb at one end right before the turnaround. It's got several little climbs for bridges that go over streams, but they are more notable for their bone-jarring offset in the pavement than they are for their vertical climb.

I was really happy with my pacing. I started off hard for the first minute, then settled into my goal power  of 250 watts (which was based off a 30-minute test on the trainer two weeks ago). Unfortunately, I forgot to account for the humidity.

About 4 miles out, I could barely breathe. I was inhaling as much as I could, but it felt like nothing was coming in. The humidity had caught up with me. I tried dropping my power, first to 245 and then to 240 and finally to 235. I still could barely breathe and my heart rate was still climbing. Of course, this was right as I hit the hill, so I was working pretty hard to get over that.

Then I hit the turnaround. The crosswinds that were little more than a nuisance on the way out were now really in my face. Nothing like a stiff headwind while trying to make up speed on the descent.

The turn where I almost hit an SUV gave me no problems this year, Of course, having my road bike (which is far more maneuverable) helped. I barely touched the brakes diving through that turn.

When I came through the last curve and saw the finish line, I got out of the saddle and gave it all that I had left, which was really not much.

I finished in  just a hair over 30 minutes, giving me an average speed of 22 mph and an average power of 240 watts.

For as much as I struggled on the course, it's not that bad.

On the plus side, we got a few good pictures :-)