With a dentist appointment already taking ~40 minutes of morning, I didn’t have a full hour to ride over my lunch break.
Having scoffed some sandwiches at the desk around noon, I let them settle for an hour before heading out at 13:30, knowing I’d only have ~30 minutes of riding today.
The plan lately has been pretty simple:
Every two or three rides, put in a solid 20 minute effort.
The idea behind this is that doing FTP tests every 3… ahem, 6 to 9 months is not working for me. With too long a gap in between, when I do get round to doing them I’m super anxious over the process and as was proven recently, perform poorly.
If every other ride (or one in three) is a hard effort there’s less chance I get spooked / suffer mind games with myself, and hey, if I put in a dudd effort there’s always another attempt a few days later.
It’s pretty sadistic.
But it’s working.
Today was another new FTP bump.
Amazingly I felt pretty crappy going into this one. Last night my knees felt really clackety (good medical term there) and I was thinking to myself, hell, I have to go and bang out a 20 minute effort tomorrow dinner time.
Well, I can’t say things improved over night. And today’s been a howler. I’ve dropped some clangers at work. But anyway, like I say, there’s no pressure on me to do anything out there. Just put in the 20 minute stint, and see how I do.
Setting off on the effort I was caught between two thoughts:
- How to best track the watts per kilo for the lap;
- What would be a good / realistic watts per kilo for the lap?
Turns out I’d pre-setup a screen for this (sort of) a while ago:
It’s not perfect. I’d have loved to have seen my 3s power figure rather than only the lap power. But it was good enough.
As I was on the outward leg my lap power was lower. I think it started around 245w, and then began to creep up.
That kinda blew my mind. I was actually getting faster.
At the peak I saw 261w around 10 minutes in. But a couple of points on this circuit require breaking / sharp turns so after the first turn I’d dipped below 260w and never got it back.
In the earlier portion of the lap I’d told myself that anything above 245w would be a solid effort. I fully expected it to fall off as I got further into the effort, but somehow I managed to hold 259w for a long while before it finally dipped to 258w within the last 5 minutes.
Coming back to the start / finish line I knew that on Tuesday I’d done a much faster lap. I could see from the clock I was down by ~20 seconds, so I figured it wasn’t going to be a new PB.
Yet, somehow it was.
Not quite sure how that works.
| Laps | Tuesday | Today |
| Time | 20:13 | 20:38 |
| Cumulative Time | 27:42:00 | 29:44:00 |
| Distance | 12.16 | 12.13 |
| Avg Speed | 36.1 | 35.3 |
| Avg HR | 179 | 179 |
| Max HR | 186 | 189 |
| Total Ascent | 32 | 35 |
| Total Descent | 34 | 36 |
| Avg Bike Cadence | 92 | 91 |
| Max Bike Cadence | 109 | 107 |
| Normalized Power® (NP®) | 257 | 258 |
| Balance Left (%) | 50 | 50 |
| Balance Right (%) | 50 | 50 |
| Avg Power | 257 | 258 |
| Avg W/kg | 3.78 | 3.79 |
| Max Power | 430 | 392 |
| Max W/kg | 6.32 | 5.76 |
| Max Avg Power (20 min) | — | — |
| Total Standing Time | — | — |
| Avg Standing Power | — | — |
| Max Standing Power | — | — |
| Total Seated Time | — | — |
| Avg Seated Power | 257 | 258 |
| Max Seated Power | 430 | 392 |
| L Power Phase Start Angle | 346 | 345 |
| L Power Phase End Angle | 208 | 207 |
| R Power Phase Start Angle | 350 | 350 |
| R Power Phase End Angle | 203 | 201 |
| L Power Phase Arc Length | 221 | 221 |
| R Power Phase Arc Length | 211 | 210 |
| L Peak Power Phase Start Angle | 63 | 62 |
| L Peak Power Phase End Angle | 124 | 122 |
| R Peak Power Phase Start Angle | 62 | 62 |
| R Peak Power Phase End Angle | 124 | 122 |
| L Peak Power Phase Arc Length | 60 | 60 |
| R Peak Power Phase Arc Length | 62 | 60 |
| L PCO Average | 0 | 0 |
| R PCO Average | 0 | 0 |
| Calories | 339 | 347 |
| Avg Temperature | 20 | 19 |
| Max Speed | 42.7 | 40.4 |
| Moving Time | 20:13 | 20:38 |
| Avg Moving Speed | 36.1 | 35.3 |
Tuesday felt like a more powerful ride. And I hardly went easy on myself yesterday.
My current theory is that I’m adjusting to riding like this and will slowly see some further upticks. I suspect this won’t be every ride. Let’s not get too excited. But clearly there is some method to the madness.
After the effort I had to head home. No extended midday riding for me today.
And none tomorrow either. With a three day weekend ahead I’m very much looking forwards to a well earned rest day before heading into three days riding.
