Today I did another set of microintervals—the kind that makes my power file look like little Bart Simpsons. To test my theory that microintervals make it easier to achieve higher average power, I performed the steady-state interval first and the Bart-like interval second. I learned that, even though they were second, microintervals still produced a higher average power—about 20 watts higher! Though, they didn’t feel as easy as last week. I think regardless of the type, the second interval is always going to feel harder.

As far as why the wattage is so much higher, I think I’ve figured that one out too: My PowerTap is set to display a 5-second rolling average, so when I do the “burst” part of the microinterval, I tend to overshoot my target wattage since the display takes a few seconds to catch up to my effort. By the time I realize it, it’s already been a few seconds so even though I back off, the average for that 15 seconds is higher than necessary. I think from now on, I’ll set my PowerTap to display a 1-second rolling average before I do these intervals. The reason I won’t set it permanently to 1-second is that I like the more consistent display of the 5-second rolling average for doing longer intervals or when I’m just doing an endurance or tempo ride.