I can’t believe it, I broke my 1-minute power by almost 10% today! When I see such a large gap, I always wonder if maybe my power meter had a fit. But that’s not looking like the case. Here’s how it played out…

I waited until the afternoon to ride since it rained last night and part of this morning. Even though it was cloudy all day, the temps were really warm and I was waiting for the roads to dry off. By early afternoon, the roads were mostly dry and I headed west out on Floating Feather. I wanted to do a few laps on the former Hillsdale circuit race course and do a mishmash of a workout, kind of like a race prep workout, but longer.

I eased into tempo zone (Level 3) soon after setting out. I did feel a little residual fatigue in my legs from yesterday’s LT workout, but it was easy get my power up to Level 3 without much thought. This was a good sign. I went straight to Hillsdale with a sprint, and then a couple pushes into Level 4 and 5 to “blow out the pipes”. The wind was at my back and I was just flying on the way out…that was fun!

Once I got closer to “the hill”, I eased up a bit so I would be ready for the test. I carried some speed into the start of the hill and punched it right at the mailbox. I sprinted pretty hard and I chose a pretty good gear as I didn’t need to shift until 15-20 seconds into it. I stayed standing and shifted up the cogs but kept the pressure on the pedals. When I briefly glanced down at my PowerTap, I still saw 800+ watts on my display even after thirty seconds. This was a good sign! I remained standing the rest of the effort and managed to make it all the way to the top of the hill by the time my minute was up. That was the furthest I had gone for a 1-minute test on this hill, so I knew that was a great effort, even with the kicking tailwind.

After that monster effort, I spun easy for a couple minutes then went straight back into tempo territory. I rode another full lap of the course, pushing it on the rollers and keeping around 400 watts the second time up the hill. On the way home I went in and out of Level 4 and even did an L6 push. I wanted to do 400 watts for a minute but only lasted about half that time…my legs were starting to weaken. I continued to push it all the way down Beacon Light to Hwy 55, then south on 55 to Floating Feather. That’s where I ended my effort so I could have a few minutes of tailwind for my cool-down home.

After I downloaded my ride, I saw that I did indeed break my former 1-minute best of 608 with a whopping (at least for me) 667 watts! I also broke my 30-second best with 823 watts. Using the MMP chart in CyclingPeaks I could see that I actually broke everything from 25 seconds through 1:15 seconds. Cool!

I checked my PowerTap CSV file to make sure my CPU was properly zero’d and it was. The other efforts at FTP and VO2 levels, all felt about right, so I shouldn’t have so much reason to doubt it. But I still would love to do it again to be 100% sure.

The intensity factor of 1.01 for a 1:34 minute ride confirms the “norm buster” characteristics of this course. That and the fact that I was intentionally riding erratically, lead to a 1-hour NP of 304 watts. No I don’t’ think my FTP has changed that much in the last few days, it was just the nature of the ride. The last two times I went hard on this loop was years ago during races. Back then I also produced NP’s that were about 20 watts higher than my FTP at the time. Today was my second great workout in a row and I’ll surely need a day or two of rest to recover.