Bike thoughts

I did 3h ride today and it was one of the best rides ever. Seriously.
Based on today's ride and few other rides in past 2 weeks, I think that yesterday's disaster was just a one-time disaster and that the plan is indeed working. In some aspects anyway.

You see, couple weeks ago I did 3h ride at avg power 171 and my HR started at 145 and then went up up up very quickly and it was 175+ by the end. So huge cardiac drift. Then I did several rides where I was focusing on keeping that drift in check and I could do around 30min at certain power and HR would be steady and after 30min HR will start shooting up up up again, I had to take 1 min easy spin to get it down and then after 3min it will go up again so I had to go back and forth.
However, for example today that did not happen.
I did 25’ w/up <140 watts, 30’ at 145-155, 30‘ 155-165, 30’ 145-155, 30’ 155-165, 30’ 165-175.

First 1.5h was ok, nothing spectacular, I had a little crisis at around 75min but nothing else worth mentioning, plus I did not really pay attention.

But then the last 1.5h was awesome. 30’ 145-155 felt like soft pedaling, because if I went like my legs wanted to I would be 155+ all the time. And my HR stayed in ~150 the whole time, it did not go up at all. Then 30’ 155-165 was again very easy, I had to constrain myself because I was going up to 170 when I stopped paying attention and my HR was <155 the whole time. 30’ 165-175 was not soft pedaling anymore but it was still pretty easy and my HR stabilized itself at 158, and stayed there for 25min and then it went to 159-160 for last few minutes. Sometimes I had to stop pedaling for few seconds to find more comfortable position on a saddle and my HR would go down to <150 in like 10sec and then when I started pedaling it went back up to 158 and stayed there.

I think that that’s pretty good, isn’t it?

So, my HR is still pretty high for a particular power (or my watts are too low for a particular HR), holding HR ~155ish for 175ish watts would be perfect. But at least I can see that cardiac drift is not as pronounced as it was couple weeks ago.

Also this ride is another example of this: When I ride at certain HR (let’s say 150), my power is low (~140), but then when I ride at certain power (let’s say 150) my HR is lower (~150) than it would have been if I rode at HR representative of that 150 power (if I rode by HR, I would have to be at ~155 to generate 150 watts.). Does that make sense?

I wonder whether it is because when I ride by power I want to keep HR as low as possible thus I can calm myself down by easy breathing etc and keep HR low. Whereas when I ride by HR, I just want to keep HR at the number I am supposed to be doing and I don’t care what my power really is. Basically, when riding by power, I can control my HR, but when riding my HR I cannot control my power. Makes sense?

Ok, now my hip flexors are really tight. I hope that they are tight because I pull up (and forward backward on top and bottom) as well and thus that I do nice full stroke circles.

Also when we moved aerobars little bit closer together, my shoulders started to bother me a little bit after rides but now it seems that they have adapted to new position because I had no problem yesterday.