Sunday, December 4, 2011

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.

1 comment:

  1. That's interesting about your HR/power and your sense of control of it. HR can definitely be variable day to day for various reasons (stress being a huge factor). I know when I used to do MAF tests on the track I would freak out b/c I always wanted to see improvement but the stress I was feeling about wanting to run well made my HR elevate which meant I had to run slower to keep it at the right spot which pissed me off even more so my HR would go up further.... it was just an ugly cycle! BUT ALL IN MY HEAD. Sometimes better if we can disassociate with it and stop placing so much value on every workout... instead just looking for trends over time. The consistency day to day and week to week and month to month is what promotes improvement- not one single workout (as you know). :)

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