Thursday, February 24, 2005

2/23/2005 -- CT Training and Rollers

Racing season is going to start on the 6th of March at the Ice Breaker TT. This is two weekends away. This weeks CT training was designed to be the final TT test before the season kicked off. The plan this week was to do some very short power tests, 3 miles, and .5 mile test. I had hoped we could just skip these shorter tests, but enough of the team wanted to do them that well we did them.

For the tests this week, I road my ultra race bike with the power cranks. The power cranks are fantastic for training and I know are paying off loads in terms of helping me increase my on the bike efficiency, but I also know I'm faster on regular cranks so the following numbers can be taken with a sight grain of salt. For the TT on the 6th, I'm going to run regular cranks.

Any other time three miles feels trivial, but during this TT, it felt like it wouldn't ever end. For the first mile or so on the flat course I was doing over 400 watts then after about a mile in my legs started to tighten. I've found this happens on the power cranks when you're going into the red zone. My wattage then dipped and I was around 375 for the next mile, and then down to the very high end of my 10 mile TT wattage, 340 with a spike back up to ~400 watts for the last .1 mile. I ended up riding 3 miles in 6 min 47 seconds, which was the second fastest time for the evening. In the previous session Josh, was ~2 seconds faster.

The funny thing is I felt like I was recovering at the end of the TT and that I could have ridden on much longer at ~340 watts. Oh well..

After that we did some easy recovery spinning, and then it was back for the .5 sprint test. This is definitely not one of my strengths. If RAO comes down to a sprint between Ski and me I'm going to need all the help I can get. The power cranks sure didn't help my acceleration either.

The sprint started, and I was in something like 4th position, everyone held their spots through the first .3 to point .4 miles at which point some of the leaders started to slide back and I started to move up. I don’t remember the final, .1 miles at all, but in those final seconds, I was going so hard that I lost control of my nose, and shot a huge blast of gross snot out. I know, real classy, Cipollini would just shake his head in pitty. I ended up finishing a solid third. I'm not sure what the time was I never felt like I had really recovered from the first test. By the end of the CT session I had lost my voice, and felt completely sick.

Once I got home, I spent around 1 - 1.5 on the bike doing some easy roller riding. Just spinning the legs and dreaming of RAO.

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