Saturday Training

Power-Tap

Excellent group training ride. The objective of the ride was to test our endurance with a long group tempo ride over an undulating but not hilly course in order to establish whether predominantly indoor Winter training (with a very small number of 70-80 mile outdoor rides) has delivered adequate endurance when riding for a long period at a sustained pace.

All 4 riders involved (one rider was unable to make it) were very pleased with the outcome which has I think dispelled any lingering concerns that we might come up short on endurance when faced with a long ride at a significant pace.

The 100 mile "effort on" section of the ride delivered a TSS of 274 and a normalised power of 240W. This section of the ride lasted 4:41:35 and the 100 miles was covered at an average speed of 21.2 mph, the moving average was 21.4 mph, we stopped at the 50 mile point to exchange drinks bottles and the like, we stopped for 2-3 minutes.

This training effort is the sort of ride I feel it is well worth doing as the Winter (hopefully) nears it's end to see exactly what one's training status is and to find out once and for all whether there are any weaknesses when a hard and consistent effort is required over a long period, as it will be in La Marmotte.

It's been a good day's work, the weather was not too bad for the time of year. The air temperature was a low 7.5 degrees and there was some intermittent drizzle but more importantly there was a significant head wind for half the ride which, as always, was a pain.

Hopefully there will be further gains to be made as L5 training starts in the next few months. Most importantly significant gains should be made when rested prior to this sort of effort, this ride took place following a normal week of training.

This was a really good effort.


[Uploaded 28/02/2009 17:21:41]