Power and Trainers

    So, I finally got my powertap back to the house, in the wheel, and dialed in. Of course I wanted to do a threshold power test right away, but it was about a week until my coach worked a quasi-threshold test into the mix. And I learned a lot. Which is another way of saying that things did not go anywhere near the way they were supposed to.

    The deal was that I do my standard warm-up on the trainer: 10 minutes building to a cadence of 90 and HR in Zone 2, followed by 10 minutes of pedal stroke work, five minutes of one-legged drills, and then an RPM pyramid. The RPM pyramids start a 95 RPM and works up in one minute increments to 120 RPM, then back down. This warm-up is exclusively skill work, max wattage is not important, but keeping your stroke smooth and watts the same is. I.E., if you are at 120 rpm, it doesn't matter if you are at 120 watts or 200 watts, just that you are staying as close to whatever number as possible. It's a good way to work on efficiency. So, officially warmed up and ready to go, I began a series of three intervals. As this was the first sort of any test involving wattage that I had done, my targets were HR zones, not watts. First two intervals were supposed to be in low zone four (A "moderately hard effort") for five minutes each, with two minutes rest in between. My average wattage for the first interval was 271, for the second 288. My HR was right on target, and everything seemed fine. The third interval was supposed to be in high zone 4 (A "hard effort") for five minutes then two minutes rest. Once again, my HR was right on target, and my average wattage for the five minute interval was 297. Then, at 90RPM, I was supposed to do one minute in the gear I did the last interval in, then shift one gear down for one minute, and so on until exhaustion. I figured I could do a least four minutes before I exploded. Boy was I wrong. The first minute went great, HR came right up, averaged 314 watts and was cruising. Then I shifted down, my watts jumped to about 400, and I hammered it. Then, I exploded right at two minutes. The last minute averaged about 408 watts, but the real interesting part was that the powertap was only registering me going between 22 and 23 mph. This is a problem. I know I've gone faster on the flats. Last time I checked I could hold 26-27mph on the flats for ten to fifteen minutes and not explode. I was a little irritated. So, generally feeling like throwing something at the wall, questioning my ability to ride hard, wondering if I really knew how to suffer, and muttering four letter words like it was going out of style, I logged my workout on training peaks for my coach to look it. Turns out I'm not too bright…. When you cram the roller on the trainer into the wheel real tight, it kind of makes it hard to go fast. Imagine that. ;)