Well, it'd been quite a while since I've climbed Mount Palomar in any sort of fashion...So, I decided to give it a go in order to understand how bad things can get at the nadir of my fitness! Here's my "aww...man, this pretty much sux" face:
;-)
http://www.rickclemson.com/UploadScript/Gallery/CM_70759.jpgI've never met Amber Neben before, nor seen her in person...but, if I was making a bet, I'd say I saw her yesterday doing repeats on Palomar. I saw her about 7 minutes into my effort on the way up, and then again after I bailed and was heading back down about an hour or so later...not too many people do repeats on Palomar these days! Can anybody confirm that it was Amber who I saw yesterday git'n 'r dun on this big ol' hill in N. SD county??
Well, despite my best efforts, I was only able to give a maximal effort for around 43 minutes - I couldn't continue past that at the pace I was wanting to do -> now, that's what I would call a maximal effort for the duration, eh?!
uggh-yeah, this effort was confirmation that I'm not going so well at the moment -> I'm up in KG's and down on power -> which is a pretty good recipe for slowness up Palomar! :-)
So, for 43 minutes I made 269+/-W -> after 15 mins it was ~ 276W -> at 30 minutes it was ~273W. I tried my best to make it an even effort, but dang, I just can't make the watts I'd like to be able to right now.
Good news is that these 265-270W are about where I thought things were based on my recent 20MP efforts up Couser Canyon -> which had me in the low 290's or so. Good to know that my perceived exertion and ~20MP efforts are still aligned in terms of predicting my 50-60MP!
Here's the kicker for all the gizmo power fans out there...This past Wednesday - or maybe it was Tuesday - after a hard days worth of sitting behind a desk git'n all puffy and stuff -> I was able to rip off a non-maximal "scatter the plot" type of ride that posted a gizmo power in excess of 300W for 55 minutes. At the time that made me chuckle a bit inside, to be honest. That'd be a gizmo power to average power ratio (non-maximal GP vs maximal AP for the duration+) in excess of 1.1X -> does that satisfy one of the "many" definitions of a "gizmo power buster"??
In order to be thorough, though, I backed up that kinda large standard deviation effort with a maximal steady state deal up Palomar. Oh, yeah, BTW, I'd say I probably stood up on the pedals more during my effort on Palomar than I did during the mid-week ride -> I probably did stand up on the recovery portions of the mid-week ride, stretching/shaking out the Pro/E bugs! ;-) How should we correct for that?!
In the grand scheme of things, I guess I still don't see the relevance of "pinning a single number on the deal". Y'know, I see these type of rides as two separate deals -> one "
fills the right" and the other "scatters the plot". But neither of these rides really focuses on "
raising the left", which is where I've found things to be at when it comes to racing bikes on the road/doing Ironman Triathlons while preparing for these style of efforts with minimal time investment.
If I were estimating my maximal 60MP right now, well, then, I guess I'd put it in the 265-ish range based on the supercomputer and what I've actually been able to do in practice -> which, FWIW, is an all time low by about 5W or so... Not so bad considering I've not really gone hard in awhile...though, I have been doing primarily 75-100 minute rides where I just ride kinda hard/tempo -> I guess this is further reinforcement that for me, "filling the right" doesn't really enable "raising the left".
Anyway, some stuff for y'all to consider (or dismiss as some folks will be wont to do!).
YMMV,
-k
Labels: gizmos, power, powermeter
