Originally Posted by
penlu
I am wondering how much progress you're seeing (in this metric or other figures of merit) month over month at this point. It's been fun getting faster for the past few months but I imagine my rate of change will decrease in not too long. What does asymptotic progress look like?
At this point, month to month progress is already so low, on a percentage basis, that it pretty much disappears in the noise of other things. Quarter over quarter (3 months) I'm still seeing about 1.5% improvement on a good quarter. Luckily, I don't require great amounts of progress to stay motivated. I just need steady,
measurable, progress. This is the most helpful thing that power has given me thus far. I don't train to be fast on a bike. I train to improve my fitness. As a result, it makes no difference what kind of bike I ride. It only matters that I stay motivated to ride.
Up here in Canada, conditions can be pretty rough in the spring. Lots of loose gravel and debris on the roads. To combat that, I typically ride my $300 3X8 hardtail for the first month of the season before switching to a proper road bike. That impacts my ability to train my engine... not at all. If I had a power meter, it would be in the form of power meter pedals which would cost me about $1,200 Canadian. And I wouldn't hesitate to put those pedals on my low rent hard tail for the first month of the riding season. For me, speed is irrelevant. Motivation is all.
I've come to view my indoor training with power as a laboratory of sorts where I test out potential improvements to fit and technique and evaluate whether or not my no-power outdoor training is working. In addition to improvements in overall fitness, I've been able to parse out the efficiency gains associated with some common cycling strategies that I've adopted over time. All of these things have provided discernable bumps in Joules/Heartbeat:
1) Riding in the flat back position that better engages my glutes. This initially lowered my efficiency but it increased after an adaptation period.
2) Lowering my seat to level out my feet at the bottom of my pedal stroke.
3) Shifting my cleats as far back on my shoes as they would go.
4) Pedaling at low RPM for low power efforts. In Z2, I'm most efficient waaaay down at 65 BPM. No doubt that somewhat reflects a general lack of fitness and coordination on my part.
5) Staying well hydrated and eating every 40 minutes.
This evidence based experimentation is also a source of motivation for me. Could I have sorted all of this stuff out without power? Surely.
Would I have? I didn't until I had power. I don't have a coach or even real life cycling friends to help me out with this kind of thing. All I have is the internet -- mostly this forum -- and the data that I'm able to collect.