Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, June 13, 2008

This week has been the first of two weeks of two-a-days on the bike. I do this about once every year as a way to deal with the scheduling issues of teaching a summer class that goes into the afternoon and to practice for three race stage races that take place over the course of a single weekend. I'm doing hour long time trial rides in the mornings and then some sort of interval workout in the afternoon or evening. The big thing is that since I'm only riding an hour at a time, I tend to ask my body to go harder during that time with less warm-up. It's pretty intense but it also will mean that I'll bounce back better after a morning TT at a Georgia Cup race in terms of recovering for the criterium that usually happens a little later in the afternoon.

The most interesting part of this has been looking at my power numbers over the course of the week during my time trial workouts. I haven't been as diligent as I'd like working on my new TT position due to trying to get fitness back on the regular road bike. As I've ridden the TT bike I've noticed that I'm feeling more and more comfortable in the new position which is lower and more aggressive than what I was riding at the beginning of the year. This perception seems to be borne out by my watts per MPH numbers. As the week has progressed I've seen the number of watts to go a certain speed drop by about 2.8%. Next week will let me know if the trend continues but 3% translates into about 10 more watts which means a difference of about 1 mph at a pace of 22.5 mph or probably 0.5 mph at a race pace of around 27 mph. That's about 4 seconds per mile or a minute and a half over a 40 km effort. That's a lot and I don't know if the numbers will scale quite that way. Still, I feel a lot more comfortable in the position right now and I'm really hoping that I can realize a 5% improvement once I settle into the position as it now. That's as much as a deep section front wheel or a good skinsuit so it's definitely worth spending time on for the upcoming team time trials and the state championship down the road.

In time, I'd like to get a bit more aggressive with my position by making it lower. At this point that'll take a new bar. There are also some other tricks I've learned about that'll get me a little more speed but the thing I'll need to focus on is what always wins time trails everything else being equal: producing more power for 30-60 minutes. I don't know what my numbers used to be but I feel like I don't produce the power I used to. I'm getting close but I'm not quite there. One more season of training and real focus and I'm confident I can get back.

This weekend will be a team ride on Saturday and a ride out to an old warm springs resort to see if I can get some good pictures of a by-gone era when little resorts dotted the Central Georgia countryside catering to local vacationers and Polio victims. Hopefully there's enough left of the old Lifsey and Wellingham Springs sites to get some cool shots.

Thanks for Reading.

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