I went to do the Family Bikes shop ride today. Usually, the Saturday ride is pretty moderate, aerobic to tempo. If it was on the easy side I intended to go ride a bit extra, just to get some zone 2 seat time in.
Weeeelll... Jay showed up on his fixed gear. He's buddies with Jon, who owns Family Bikes. He's also one of the winningest riders in MABRA over the last 10 years according to Bill Leucke, who keeps track of such things. Jay stirred the pot a bit, attacked a few times, and generally stuck it to us. As the resident fat guy who hates hills, I felt crushed on this ride - we hit the hills by Crownsville Road on 450, the one by the nudist colony / Elks Camp; Honeysuckle Road; River / Old Herald Harbor Road, Dairy Farm Road, plus significant grades that feel like hills when you hit them doing 22-24 on Millersville Rd., Piney Orchard and other places I'm probably forgetting because my eyes were bleeding.
The flats weren't bad, we pushed it a little but because I'm so badly sunk from a hard training week I had nothing for the hills. Given my bloatitude, it was a very hard ride for me. How hard? Here's the power figures.
Average Power: 223. Nothing major, a zone 2 average.
Heart Rate: 141. Hmmm... a bit high for a zone 2 ride. Sure you weren't riding tempo?
Speed: 19.3. That's not high. What's that, the first and last 4 miles were warmup?? Interesting. What did you ride in the middle? Oh, 20.5 through the middle of the ride. No big deal. It was flat, right? No, it wasn't? Hmmm... that's odd.
Normative Power: 333. Hey, that's weird. If your average was 223, but your NP was 333, you must have had some hard efforts in there. Did you?
Peak 5 seconds: 1258. Dude, that's a near sprint-level effort! You didn't do much like that, right?
Peak 10 seconds: 1149. Dude, that was a sprint, right? It wasn't? It was just going over the top of a hill? Some hill...
Peak 20 seconds: 1026. Okay, so you did a couple hills sprints. It's not like you did a sustained hard effort. What's that?
Peak 20 minutes: 278. Damn, that's near threshold level effort. You didn't ride like that the whole way during the hot part of the ride, right?
Peak 60 minutes: 252. I'll be damned, I guess you did.
So there you have it. I finished with a training stress score of 237, and an intensity factor of 1.073, for a ride that lasted 2 hours and six minutes. By way of comparison, a one time trial performed at threshold would have yielded a TSS of 210, and an intensity factor of 1.0. So in the grand scheme of things, this was two hour, race-level effort. It's a real power geek thing to list all those numbers, I know, but don't get the idea I'm getting all hot and bothered about them. I'm just trying to illustrate how a really tough ride stacks up in terms of actual effort. Looking at the graph that plots the recorded wattage data, I see 20 to 30 second surges of >600 watts every couple minutes, and a number of crazy "hills" on the graph where I averaged 400 watts for 3 minutes, or 500 watts for two, stuff like that. To put that in perspective, my threshold power is around 310. Tough ride.
8 comments:
I hope you had fun though. And the ride didn't kill you to bad. You were able to blow right by me at the end after all of my futile attacks.
Jonathan
Thanks for the data. I now know what I want for Christmas. It was a fun ride.
-James
No Jon, it wasn't too tough at all, it hurt but it was a good "let's grow a bit today" hurt. Other than the power, your comments are how I know something is a "hard" ride - because us mere mortals are reduced to whatever it is we do well, only a real all-arounder can do well at everything, the rest of us pretenders hang on and pick our spots. Patrick was saying the hills were okay but us big guys crushed in the flats. I was reduced to mere survival on those hills - get over the top and go like hell to catch up - but then doing my bit out on the flats.
So yeah, that was a good hard ride. Tough to believe that sonofagun Jay was on his fixie, mostly cruising. Damn, he's good.
As for you James... very tough performance. I'm going to call you the Bumble. Weebles wobble but they don't fall down - in contrast, Bumbles Bounce. Way to bounce back. What were you doing when you went down on River? 30? 35? Way to hang.
Not sure of the mph, but I was thinking I was a little too fast for that turn. I don't think it was any faster than 30, judging from the depth of the road rash. The rash isn't bad, but I banged my wrist pretty good. I'll have to heft the Yards with the other hand.
Despite the crash I loved the route. I'll definitely do that one again. I want to know it well enough to really mix it up with you guys. You had me on the rivet during that last attack.
James
BTW James, would you be interested in hooking up and doing some centuries, as LSD (long slow distance/zone 2) rides? There are a bunch of charity centuries coming up that make pretty good training - the Bay Century is always pretty good, so too the Civil War and PPTC. I'd like to build a little more base prior to 'cross season and knocking out a few centuries is always a good way to do it. You can go a hundred on your own, self-directed, but it's always nice to get some swag and have somebody else taking care of the drinks.
Your IF for a 2-hour ride was 1.073? Perhaps your FTP has gone up! And the spread between your NP and Pavg (223 v. 333)? Whoa, that was one stochastic ride, baby.
- Ken the PowerGeek
Already registered for the CWC and am trying to talk others into riding it. Speaking of the CWC, Atlantic Cycling has a metric tune up ride at the end of the month. It is a decent ride. Wigville Rd is a bear. I plan on doing the Bay Century as well.
-James
Ken - yeah, riding with Jay is a stochastic experience. I was stoked, and he handed us our astics. Maybe my FTP has gone up - though I've noticed that if you do multiple, major high wattage efforts, you can drive the TSS up to a stinking high level. The TSS for my 8x30 seconds max effort accelerations was 103 for 40 minutes of work, and a .950, even though the entire rest of the workout (2.5 hours) was zone 1/2 riding. Suffice to say, I skipped Sunday's workout and took today off. We need to talk - my "freshness" curve is perpetually underwater - averaging probably -45 or -50, even after two days off. During a rest week a couple weeks ago, I got it up to -40. Do I need to reset some default?
James - let's talk about this. Bay and CW sound good, might talk to you about the other.
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