Maui Velominatus Dave is tapering for this Saturday’s Cycle to the Sun. It is more mass start, time trial to the sun as there is nothing like 3.3 km of continual climbing to sort everyone out by their power to weight ratios. After 2 km of climbing there is no pack and no draft. Everyone climbs as hard as they can and almost everyone is riding alone.
Dave has been training like a bastard. He doesn’t have a coach but he does have a power meter and an analytical mind. As we talked about his up-coming race he could not contain himself any longer, “I don’t know how you and Frank can train without power meters. They are fantastic. They make your bike an extension of your body.”
What? I had never considered this as a possibility. Isn’t this something we all want; the rolling centaur? This is a feedback loop: the brain to the legs to the cranks to the strain gages to the head unit to the eyes to the brain. The bike is getting involved here. The bike is telling you how hard you are riding it. Dude.
Presently I’m just riding with a V-meter. I’ve used heart rate meters and cyclometers but got tired of seeing how slow I was. I wanted to simplify; I wanted an unadulterated ride. Also, I obviously didn’t want to formally train anymore, just do rides that I barely made it home from. Is that training? To quote Roy Knickman*, “you are what you train.” His admonition is something Abandy should take to heart; if all you do is train in the mountains, that’s all you are going to be good at. I might have been just training to barely make it home but really it was not training. Training should be more work and less play.
We all need cycling goals. We all need something to get fitter for, even if the goal is as simple not to get shelled as quickly on that same climb.
Let us be very clear on the idea of training rides versus other rides. A training ride may not be too much fun and most importantly there should be a clear plan for what will happen, see Rule #71. This is where the power meter has to shine; it is the most reliable, direct and accurate instrument for monitoring effort on the bike. The prices are coming down and the model choices are going up. Here is a nice amateur guide for them.
The head unit stays at home on the weekend group ride to the café and back. That ride is why you did the training ride(s) earlier in the week. Don’t try to mix the two or you will be abused. We do the training rides so we can drop our friends on the weekend, that’s what friends do. And nobody wants to be accused of staring at their power meter when they should be looking where they are going, no matter how well they ride.
I am intrigued by the concept of the bike becoming more of an extension of the body through the power meter. Does this violate The Rules? Does this make you a stronger cyclists?
*Who is Roy Knickman? American Hardest of Hardman of the 7-Eleven and La Vie Claire era, FFS.
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@GogglesPizano "The Bonk" is mentioned around 9:22...
@GogglesPizano
I use the following terms - if it is related to nutrition / bloodsugar levels it is a "bonk" (i.e. I need some serious calories RFN), if it is related to a shorter term over exertion / lactic acid focused in the legs it I have/am "Cracked" (i.e. need ~10min on the back drafting to recover), if it is some awful combination of the two I will have "Blown-up" (I'm a complete write-off and am left on my own to face down the man-with-the-hammer). Interestingly I only tend to completely blow-up around 15-30 min before the onset of brutal Rule#9 conditions
@GogglesPizano Good stuff there.
@pistard Damn. The fifties; when spoke properly, ruled the world, dressed like @Teocalli and ran special bike friendly trains. Where did it all go wrong?
Interesting conundrum @Gianni
Like @Tobin an @frank have said, I go riding to turn my brain off, not sure I need another device to keep it constantly buzzing and thinking and worrying and stressing. By nature Im a ball of stress so a power meter added to everything else in my life would do my head in.
On the flip side of my own argument inside my tiny brain, a work colleague has recently purchased a "Bkool" indoor trainer with virtual feeds and inbuilt power meter ( He's not rule 9 compliant) . His group rides have gone through the roof whereby previously languishing at the back, now a regular at the front and pushing hard.
So, as per the "force", if used for good, not evil, cant be a bad thing Obi Wan.
@The Grande Fondue
I knew someone would bring Froome up.... As you seriously suggesting that absolutly NOTHING other than riding to a set wattage is all that he did? Are you suggesting that tactics, teamwork and the like played no role at all? Maybe, just maybe he used/uses a large number of tools to get him to the front of the peleton at the right point in a race/on a climb and THEN and only then does he ride to a set predetermined wattage. Even then I would suggest that he was going past his predetermined limits because/if he felt strong, he dug deeper than he had in testing because this was the real deal, not a simulation and in those situations we can do so. Maybe, if that was the case, and he had stuck to his predetermined limits he wouldn't have done as well?
@Gianni
I train (with power) 90% of the time alone because I get to do what I need to do without consideration of others. Occasionally I ride with a buddy when he asks what I'm doing that day and our schedules line up. On one occasional we had agreed on a "2hr Easy" ride but I found he kept half wheeling me especially up hills. I eventually asked him if he wanted to move it to moderate and ride harder. He said no, but he was "inimidated" by my power meter and was afraid he was "dragging me down".
I assured him that I was not a "zone junky" and didn't have to stick exactly within a small zone every second of the ride. Intervervals were a different story and I did those solo. What really took me back was that he felt the need to always be pushing just that little bit harder than I was just incase...
I told him... "Buddy, just ride it, if I don't like the pace I'll say something as should you".
@Mike_P
Make sure you get a good Coach with runs on the board! My previous "trainer" (he wasn't coaching me!!) lead me through that exact cycle and when I finally pulled the pin after 64 weeks, he had admitted he'd overdone it but was continuing on the same path! The new coach is actually coaching me (interested in me as an athlete rather than just punching out training plans), I'm actually riding less, feel vastly fitter/fresher and the areas I kept asking the last guy to work on are finally being worked on! The new coach has the runs on the board personally (used to race) and has some successful clients. The last one had a Masters, but that was it, all book smarts and no street smarts. Lesson learned.
@souleur
Funny you should say that. As I mentined in a post above, my previous "coach" used the 'ride more' or TITS principle as I like to call it. (Time In The Saddle). I was always tired, fatigued and my performance plateaued. The new Coach's motto is "Train smarted, not longer" and "Train to win, not to make charts". I ride less (8-10hrs compared to 10-14hrs), and man do I feel fresh on a daily basis compared to before. Performance is moving upward at good rates. The intensity of my training rides is much higher now, but I recover fast and better. Where as before I had DOMs getting on the bike each morning, now, it's gone by lunch time!
Yes having a coach, if you can afford it, or a mentor if you can't, is a good way to start with power. It really is such a different mindset and approach that you need someone to help you.
Quite apart from understanding all the different bits of jargon and TLAs - Functional Power Threshold, Training Stress Score, Normalised Power and don't get me started on Decoupling !
When I started with my coach I complained to him that I felt I was going backwards because I wasn't doing enough. Another guy who started around the same time quite because he wasn't being told to go hammer it five times a week. Fortunately the coach resisted and told me to wait and see, and I came back stronger and better than ever.