Saturday Morning ~ Endurance and Downhill Sprints

This morning there was no sign of the milder weather that's supposed to be coming our way. I set off at 8:30 into a slight south easterly breeze and once out of the suburbs I found plenty of ice on the roads, and hoar frost on the trees. Today's target was 3 hours riding time, the first two at endurance pace with downhill bursts. For the last hour I would meet up with the Saturday bash and ride at tempo pace.

It took a while for my body to wake up before I completed my first 10 sec "sprint". Rather than attempting all out neuro-muscular efforts, I am trying to understand and develop a better technique. By reviewing the power traces from standing "all out" efforts that I did in November, I can see that power reached a peak very early on in the effort, then the rate of rise in cadence, whilst still rising, dropped off significantly. As a consequence, power plummeted for the last 5 secs of the effort. This in part is because the fast twitch muscles are utilising my phosphagen energy system and quickly running out of the stored creatine phosphate (Pcr) used for neuro-muscular efforts. But of course, once I run out of Pcr, my muscles will switch over to non-aerobic glycolysis and begin to break down stored glyocgen. Power is a generated through BOTH force on the pedals and speed in terms of cadence. It makes sense therefore to limit the drop in sprinting power by utilising secondary non-aerobic glycolysis by increasing leg speed. To do this I am experimenting with standing on the pedals, jumping into the sprint and smoothly without affecting cadence, sitting down and continually increasing cadence. By doing these efforts downhill and in an easy gear, I am giving myself opportunity to learn the technique WITHOUT having to also concentrate on force as well. At around 5 secs, when I would normally start to slow, I am now still increasing cadence up to at least 130rpm. Today I reached a maximum of 154rpm. Power still drops off, but not nearly so rapidly. An all out, standing, uphill effort in November was yielding a peak 10 secs of around 950W. Today, a lower gear, downhill, partially seated effort is yielding 780W. Hopefully, by doing enough of these, the technique will become second nature.

I also tried I pay attention to "on the bike" nutrition a bit more today, frequently sipping an energy drink until it had frozen solid, and also eating a banana after each hour. I have not been very good at this over the past few weeks, regularly getting home without having drunk much at all, but with my base layers wringing wet. Just because it is cold, it doesn't mean you are not dehydrating through sweat. I also want to get used to riding the last third of a ride at a slightly higher pace, so it makes sense to top up sugar levels earlier on in the workout. Again, it's about doing something until it becomes a habit.

When I met up with the Saturday lads they were already a mile down the road. I had to chase to get up to them, but sitting on the back for 5 minutes wasn't doing much good, I was floating along at less than 50%, so at the first opportunity I went up to ride on the front with strong man Carl Dyson. After getting him to ride up the hills seated rather than in a full on effort, we settled into what was (for me at least) a solid sweet spot pace for the last hour, just what I'd wanted to do.

Today's ride,
207tss, 2 hours at 78% with downhill sprints then 1 hour sweet spot at 87%.

For the Leicester folk, anyone recognise where today's picture was taken? The clue is that the group rode past me whilst I was getting my camera out.