It’s hard to believe that we are already in the middle of winter, with the 2013 race season just around the corner. To help track my progress this winter, I signed up for the inaugural Fraser Bicycle Indoor TT Race Series. The race series is a total of 5 events, with the top 4 placings counting towards the final series ranking. While there is no substitute for riding outside, group riding at the Computrainer Lab at Fraser Bicycle with the added motivation of a competitive event, the race series has been great for tracking how my cycling fitness is trending during the long winter months when we are stuck indoors. It really adds that extra motivation to push and really see where your power is at.
Each race is allocated 1.5 hours, to allow for warm-up and cool down time, but the actual race itself has been from 24 minutes to just under an hour. And since this is pretty much an all-out effort, is gives a good approximation of your maximum power at the given durations. A great power test.
Race 3 was a “middle-distance” event compared to the first 2. This course was a 12.5 mile long segment from the Coors Classic Morgul-Bismark course (featured in movie American Flyers), with plenty of rolling hills and a few steep climbs. In addition to testing your maximum power, the rolling courses also provide great feedback to learn proper pacing and execution. Get excited and go out too hard, and you will pay for it by the end. This type of feedback is especially valuable for beginning riders so that they can see how others pace the uphills and maintain close to the same power on downhills. This creates a low variability index (VI), which is specifically helpful in long course triathlon racing where saving your legs for the run is key.
So how did it go for me? As with the other races, it hurt. If it didn’t hurt, I wasn’t trying hard enough. My final time was 33:47 at 328 watts and an average HR of 178 bpm.
The other highlight of my training last week was my swim test. One test set I periodically use is 10x100 with 1:00 min rest. Short enough to push hard, but long enough to see how training is progressing. My test was in the evening after an indoor brick session near HIM bike and run pace earlier in the day. So not completely fresh, but somewhat recovered from the earlier session. Anyway, my new average was 1:21.9/100m in an SCM pool, which is more than 2 sec/100 faster than my last test in December, and about 4 sec/100 faster than in November. Progress! I still have a long way to go, but happy to see the trend going in the right direction with the season just over 2 months away.
If you’re interested in checking out the Fraser Bicycle Indoor Race Series, Race 4 is on March 14-15 and the Final 10 km TT is on March 23. Go to www.fraserbicycle.com for details.
Each race is allocated 1.5 hours, to allow for warm-up and cool down time, but the actual race itself has been from 24 minutes to just under an hour. And since this is pretty much an all-out effort, is gives a good approximation of your maximum power at the given durations. A great power test.
Race 3 was a “middle-distance” event compared to the first 2. This course was a 12.5 mile long segment from the Coors Classic Morgul-Bismark course (featured in movie American Flyers), with plenty of rolling hills and a few steep climbs. In addition to testing your maximum power, the rolling courses also provide great feedback to learn proper pacing and execution. Get excited and go out too hard, and you will pay for it by the end. This type of feedback is especially valuable for beginning riders so that they can see how others pace the uphills and maintain close to the same power on downhills. This creates a low variability index (VI), which is specifically helpful in long course triathlon racing where saving your legs for the run is key.
So how did it go for me? As with the other races, it hurt. If it didn’t hurt, I wasn’t trying hard enough. My final time was 33:47 at 328 watts and an average HR of 178 bpm.
The other highlight of my training last week was my swim test. One test set I periodically use is 10x100 with 1:00 min rest. Short enough to push hard, but long enough to see how training is progressing. My test was in the evening after an indoor brick session near HIM bike and run pace earlier in the day. So not completely fresh, but somewhat recovered from the earlier session. Anyway, my new average was 1:21.9/100m in an SCM pool, which is more than 2 sec/100 faster than my last test in December, and about 4 sec/100 faster than in November. Progress! I still have a long way to go, but happy to see the trend going in the right direction with the season just over 2 months away.
If you’re interested in checking out the Fraser Bicycle Indoor Race Series, Race 4 is on March 14-15 and the Final 10 km TT is on March 23. Go to www.fraserbicycle.com for details.
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