Our living room becomes a workout room during the winter with all the trainers, fans, and makeshift tables (for remotes and other riding paraphernalia) but it’s just so much nicer than riding in the cold, ugly garage. For today’s test, I decided to ride the trainer. Since I knew today would be hard, I turned off the heat early this morning so the downstairs would stay cool, then moved Heather’s fan towards my trainer and brought in the fan from the garage. For most of my workouts, the ceiling fan and some of the wind from Heather’s fan is usually enough, but I knew today I needed all three pointed directly at me!
After getting everything set up, I hopped on warmed up for 15 minutes with a 2-minute threshold effort. Doing 300 watts felt harder than I thought it should and I got my first clue that this 1-hour test was going to be difficult! After a quick stretch and setting all the fans to “high”, I got back on the bike for a few more minutes of L2 then started into the test.
I started easy for the first song (gotta do intervals to music!) and then settled into a pace right around 295. I decided I didn’t want to stare at the PowerTap the whole ride so I covered it with my towel and rode mostly by feel. I checked at the halfway point and my average power was 295. I tried to step it up the second half but even increasing the effort just 10 watts felt much harder. I still tried to keep it up, but even without me looking, I had a feeling I was still only around 300-305.
At the 45-minute mark, I ran out of liquid. I thought a bottle of water and a bottle of carb stuff, was going to be enough but I guess at that effort level I was really cranking out the moisture. With all three fans directed at me, the temperature wasn’t too bad, but I did have to towel off quite a bit. I tried to step it up the last 10 minutes but it was in vain; I didn’t have much to give by then. I was only able to push it for the last minute. The test ended up being 298 watts.
At first, I was disappointed, since I wanted to break 305. But it actually was the second-best 1-hour effort I’ve ever done…with a PowerTap, that is. I probably have beaten it on a few hill-climb races, but for those, I usually use Heather’s super-light LEW wheels so I didn’t have any wattage data. I also don’t do 60-minute LT intervals in training that often. The closest I come is when I ride Bogus all the way to the top, but I don’t usually do that as one, single interval.
Being that I can usually produce more power on the road than the trainer, I’m actually happy with my result. I also think yesterday’s workout was a little more taxing than the TSS indicates. I usually perform best when I only ride for 30 minutes, with a few blow-out efforts, the day before a race (or test). So not too bad…definitely a great workout! Total ride time was 1hr 30mins with 123 TSS and 262/277ave/norm powers.
