An update on my progress:
I got a bike fit right before last Tuesday's group ride and I think it helped. And I think my FTP is going up. I had a very good ride last Tuesday. Held onto the A group passed the halfway point in the 50 mile ride. Got dropped at the bottom of the last climb about 32 miles in because I forgot about it and went to the front leading up to it, because I was feeling good. My average power was 171 Watts (and weighted avg power was 192 watts) according to strava (riding with assioma DUO power meter pedals). Compare that to the previous Tuesday ride (41 miles) where I averaged 145 watts (weighted avg 177). Interestingly my legs were feeling pretty sludgy and my heart rate was so reluctant to go up for the first 10+ miles of the ride and I was figuring I was not gonna have a good ride, but they really warmed up on the first big climb where I really tempo'd myself and watched my watts, keeping them below 240, and then kicking at the end of the climb. I think that paid off big time. My heart rate eventually started going up, too, as I started to put down more watts (hence the higher average wattage). After that my legs were feeling so good and the rest of the ride was a dream ride. Just felt super great.
Since I wasn't the only one who got dropped I had someone to share pulls with on the way back to the bike shop. And since I stayed with the group so long, my average speed was 20.8mph with 2,710 ft of climbing. It was nice seeing PRs and Trophies again (I was doing quite well hanging with the A group last season, too, especially the latter half). Comparing last Tuesday's ride to a Tuesday ride last year (July 10th, 2018, nine days later than last Tuesday's ride) that was 43 miles and 2475ft of climbing I averaged 18.8mph (2mph slower); so, it's reassuring to see I'm doing quite a bit better than a slightly later date from last year. I'm really hoping I can hang tough the whole ride tomorrow. I'm getting so stoked for these Tuesday night rides, now. I love the challenge of trying to hang! Last week I was super pumped, as I am now just thinking about tomorrow.
I had one less ride last week (I decided to not ride on July 4th since it was so hot) so that should help with having fresher legs tomorrow. One thing that I think helped with my performance on the Tuesday ride is finally getting in that endurance ride on June 28th. I tried to do another endurance ride on Friday but my wahoo died (forgot to charge it) and I misguaged the ride (ended up only riding 3 hours/45 miles solo). For some reason my ham strings were super sore the first hour of the ride, but finally warmed up. This happens every once in awhile; haven't really figured out why. Sometimes I can do a climb at the start of a ride without warming up without any issues, and other times I can warm up super easy and and then do a moderate effort up a short climb 10 min into the ride and my legs will be sore for 40 minutes afterwards (that was the case this passed July 5th). I would love to understand the physiology behind why only sometimes my legs are sore at start of a ride. Maybe they were still sore from the hammerfest on Tuesday or unhappy I skipped riding the day before (the 4th)? I had a super easy spin on Wednesday, but it was longer than I intended it to be (32 miles).
My 15" sprints are getting slightly better, too, but only slightly. Max power on my first sprints with power meter was 946 watts (two weeks ago). Tonight max power was 971. But the sprints are mostly as a tune up for the Tuesday group ride; not so much about building strength (though I do ride completely full gas on at least one of those sprints and about 96% to 99% on the rest).
I have a question/complaint about my Wahoo Elemnt. Something that I find very puzzling, given all the data the Elmnt gives you, it fails to provide one key piece of data that you'd think riders would be most keen to have, and that is
a graph of the power output for each lap. Why isn't this included? It's pretty much the most important piece of data I need. I get a graph of my power output for the entire ride, squished together on a tiny graph, but it doesn't allow me to zoom in on any section to see any useful detail of that power, so it's pretty much completely useless. So basically I have no idea if I'm going too strong at the beginning of the 15" sprint and falling off as the sprint goes on, or what (the bike and I are bobbing too much to read the head unit while sprinting full gas). Anyway, it's a real head scratcher and disappointment for me that the Elemnt isn't able to display the data in a useful way. Anyone else bugged by this?
Thanks in advance if you managed to read this entire post!
