procrit

My power vs rpe has been off this week, everything feels harder than it should. Heart rate has been slightly lower than normal as well, but after a few rest days HR is higher / normal but still have the feeling that my RPE is higher than it should be for any given effort.

To compound things, I’m at the very end of a 4+ week block where I expected some fatigue to set in, but I also just updated my power meter firmware (giant power pro) and it changed my R/L power balance by 5% so I’m wondering if that’s part of the issue if not *the* issue, and I haven’t lost any power at all.

To top that off, my average speed is .4-.5 mph faster on the same routes with the same average power, so im leaning towards power meter but it’s hard to say! Also heat index is 20+ degrees warmer than the past few weeks, so there’s that too!

Am I overthinking this? Lol

TMonk

the firmware bit would have me a bit confused... but ya, there's like at least a few things going on there haha

mschwett 

are you sure your PM / head unit are correctly using both sides post update?

i had a few rides that seemed incredibly hard and it was my PM was just doubling my left power (acting as a single side) and my balance is about 45/55. so it was basically reading 90%.

procrit

I had such a bad week of riding I almost didn’t ride today, but I’m glad I did. Swapped over to the assiomas, and everything felt great. Rpe was where it should be, and I did a few sprints at near max power and the legs felt great and I put up record power for year. That said my body overall feels better than it has all week, and I think I may have been fighting something, but I also think the giant power meter is reading much lower than it was before I updated firmware. 300 watts felt like a vo2 effort this week, where I had just put up like 340w for 15 mins the week before. Crazy.

Doge

You are over thinking it. Morning resting HR, what you can max on HR and maybe a good hill climb will tell you a lot.