Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Things I cant explain...

Much has happened since my last blog and most of it is not great from a cycling standpoint. I turned a 4 day vacation (anniversary trip around the first of April) into a week layoff the bike into a decision that I needed to start back running into a decision that I needed to start back swimming into a decision that I needed to start back doing triathlons into a realization that time off the bike along with running was making my cycling suck. That may not matter if I was really sold that I wanted to get back into triathlon, and my legs would certainly come around once they got used to running again, but I really didn't like sucking on the bike.

After having a very strange April and early May and getting my tail kicked on a few Tuesday night rides here in Macon, I have reconnected with the bike with a passion. Whatever reason I decided all the things I did, I am moving forward and while some has been lost, I have salvaged the season. I am training hard right now and am trying to get back into some kind of shape for the Macon race coming up middle of June.

I dumped the ergomo and got a powertap... that has been liberating. Come to find out, it was reading around 40 watts high on average and had other weird things going on that are not worth reviewing right now. They just cease to matter for the first time in a year and that feels good. Bad news... I trained with bogus numbers for a long time and it appears that they were not even relatively right... for instance I could easily maintain power going down a hill with the ergomo and I find that maintaining power downhill with the powertap is impossible. I remember it being like that with the ergomo before I moved it to my new bike and broke my hip. Anyway... enough...

I retested my FTP for a new starting point... wow... low...

30 minute power- 284 Watts

I think that I lost around 20-25 Watts with my hiatus in April (how stupid is that), but I think that can be rebuilt pretty quick. Most of my other measurables are close to where last year before the accident, so all is not lost.