Monday, February 13, 2006

The Steep Slope

Everyone has a curve that represents their athletic ability. The height of the curves makes the difference between the pros and the amateurs. I'm currently enjoying the steep, beginning slopes of my personal curve. With a little training after months of no serious workouts, I'm feeling those big fitness gains that come early in the season, the ones that can only come when you're a long way off form. I need to enjoy them now, for in three months' time, I'll be working very hard for just a little gain as my curve flattens out near the top of my ability.

In early December when I set up the PowerTap for the first time, I had taken a few spins on the rollers but nothing too frequent or too serious. I did a 20 minute all-out effort and averaged 263 watts. I estimated my power at lactate threshold, what I could average over an hour, at 251 watts by assuming that my average wattage for the 20 minutes was 105% of what I could do over an hour.

Last week, I hit the rollers three days in a row for an hour each, riding at a comfortable mid to high tempo. On Saturday, I popped Barton Fink into the DVD player and put 25 miles into the rollers, again at mid to high tempo. I generally love Coen brothers' movies, and really enjoyed this one, but in hindsight I probably should have watched it without the distractions of riding the rollers. My mind is still digesting it.

Sunday, I hopped on the rollers for another 25 miles and right away, noticed that my wattage was hanging around my defined power@LT, and it really wasn't all that hard. I finished up the ride in just over one hour twenty, and my average wattage was over my estimated P@LT, with my best 60 minute interval coming in at 258W average. The motivating part is, it really felt like a moderately tough tempo ride, not like the effort of an all-out time trial.

So that tells me a couple things. Firstly, as expected this early in the season, my wattage versus perceived exertion is climbing quickly with each ride. Secondly, I really need to do a serious LT test to get a more accurate P@LT measurement so I can define my training to be as efficient as possible.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home