Just four weeks ago, I set a new 20-minute power record at 292 watts.
It was an amazing record for me. For years, my best ever had been 278 watts, set at a hill climb race in 2010. I figured that was unassailable.
Now I'm starting to set a pattern of ever-higher numbers.
Then in January, I broke it, hitting 282. In February, I hit 292. Today, I hit 302.
I never imagined in a million years that I would hit numbers like that. In the fall, I was telling people that I wanted to reach 300 watts for 20 minutes, but I didn't know if I would ever get there. Now I've broken right through it.
Making the number more impressive, compare that with my current weight: 168.4 pounds, which is about 76.5 kilograms, which equals out to 3.95 watts/kg.
Of course, being that close to a nice round number, my next goal will be to break 4.0 w/kg. That could mean gaining a few more watts or losing a couple more pounds (or both). If I can hit 306 watts at 167 pounds, that will do it. It's kind of a small goal, so I'm sure I will come up with something more aggressive in the next month.
Once I'm there, then I need to start working on building endurance for my coming 40km races and make the transition to doing it on my time trial bike. That position is much harder to maintain power, so it will take some work to get the same power on it.
Today's results definitely indicate that this could be a good season for me.
