The Season so far

My powermeter came in the mail at the very end of February, so even though I had been riding in December, January and February, my season officially started March 2nd with the first of many rides with my power meter. Initially I saw myself as someone that had a lot of endurance but not enough high end power. I got this idea from all the distance riding I'd been doing, bike touring and the like, and my lack of 5 second or sprint power. So, my first goal was to gain more anaerobic power.

I did hard workouts, 1' to 5' long intervals, and my power in those zones went up. I even gained a bit of sprint. As a result, my first criteriums went well. The short fast races around a small loop with several corners tend to favor anaerobic power. I stayed with the pack on the first two races, just learning the ropes of riding so fast shoulder to shoulder, and how to attack and move up in the field. I learned about how to recover and smooth out the undulations in speed so I wouldn't have to work as hard. My third race I sat in most of the time, waited for the sprint and took 5th. In my mind I was strong, doing well and a capable racer.

Then last weekend, the Quabbin road race. Sixty three miles around a reservoir filled with short, steep climbs. I considered it a real test of the legs. I knew I wasn't a climber, but hoped to stay with the pack or at least get dropped and finish the race.

Neither of these things happened. The pack went just hard enough on the hills that after an hour and a half, my right calf siezed up like a rusty engine. I couldn't even walk it was so bad. Initially I blamed it on the heat, which had shot up to 85 degrees out of nowhere. Most of my riding had been in the 60's and below, so this made some sense but why didn't it happen to others?

When I got the powerdata home I found out why. My normalized power was 239 watts for an hour and a half. With an FTP of 245, this meant I was at my limit, and there was just no way for me to hold the pace any longer. Instead of just falling off the back and not being able to hang on, my calf seized up and the race was over for me. If I had worked on my FTP in March and April instead of my anaerobic power, it's likely I would have at least stayed with the pack. Really only 15 more watts and I would have been ok.

So, this blog is about my quest for a few more watts.