Not that it’s any surprise, but today I confirmed that my threshold power is really good right now. After a couple days of recovery, then an aborted ride yesterday (power was just not there) I wasn’t sure what would come of today’s ride. Originally I wanted to go really long, but I decided that doing a medium-length ride at a higher intensity would be better. I went out with my neighbors JH and DP. We headed out towards Middleton and DP started with a really good push right out of our subdivision. Then JH and I just rotated at the same pace for the next half hour. It wasn’t until later that I learned DP was just trying to make the green light at Eagle and Floating Feather and wasn’t really expecting to go hard for that long! We got a laugh out of that later.

DP turned around at Middleton Road then JH and I continued to do the Hamilton Corner loop. On the hill on Old Hwy 30 I did a warm-up interval to see what kind of power I could put out. I was able to maintain good wattage for the four-minute push, so I decided that I’d do a 20-minute LT interval once we reached Hwy 52. It’s the perfect road to do long intervals on since it’s totally flat, has good pavement, and is pretty much straight. I told JH what I was doing and he said that would be fine…he’ll just hang on. I started an interval on my PowerTap and then picked up the pace. I felt good for the first few minutes — it seemed easy to keep my power at, or above, threshold. But after five minutes, my legs started to burn and I really had to focus to keep my power up.

At first, I thought of just calling it quits after 10 minutes. But when 10 minutes came, I talked myself into going to 15 minutes. Partly because I told my JH I was going for 20, and I didn’t want to let him down. He was getting a great 25-26 MPH tow into Emmett. Then when 15 minutes passed, I talked myself into doing the full 20 minutes. I figured it was only another five minutes! The last five minutes were really hard, but I managed to keep the wattage decent, especially the last couple minutes. When I finished, I reviewed the data on the PowerTap and it revealed my best 20-minute power this year! Plus, it was only 7 watts off my all-time high. And that all-time high was achieved on an uphill during a training race. So this was really good for a totally flat interval, especially after riding tempo for 2 hours before I even started.

We stopped in Emmett for a bathroom and water break then headed up Old Freezeout. Once we crested, I could tell JH was dragging, but I really wanted to finish the ride strong. So I ended up pulling most of the way home and kept the wattage up so I’d have a decent average for the ride. I’m sure JH was just like, “What the hell is Uhl doing?!” But I think pushing it like that at the end of long rides really helps endurance. By the time we got home, it was exactly 3:30 minutes with an average power of 220. It could have been higher, but we tuttled and chatted a bit here and there. But that’s why you go on group rides!

I also was able to try Dave Z’s “potato power” idea. I brought a couple of boiled, gold potatoes with a dash of salt. I had one at 2 hours, then another at 3. I was amazed at how easy they went down! Unlike most bars and even gels, after eating the potato, there was no aftertaste in my mouth, no need to wash anything down, and no burping. Really cool! The fact that they are boiled definitely helps with the moisture content and allows them to go down easily. I don’t think regular baking potatoes would work well; they’re probably too dry. The gold potatoes I had were like new potatoes, but a gold color (duh!). But like new potatoes, they are small and are somewhat moist to begin with. Hmmm…I think I found a new energy food. And the bonus is that they’re much cheaper than energy bars!