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P2 Has Left The Building
Hello Spring.
I can see the grass in my lawn. Less cars are decorated in masks of mud. Grizzly tracks have been sighted. I can’t get the taste of Cadbury Eggs out of my mouth. My bike has a tire bag and a bento box on it. These signs can mean only one thing: its spring in Montana!
Today, the landscape is bathed in sunlight and the temps are in the low 50s. With the sleet/snow junk we’ve been getting day after day, today’s weather is pretty much as exciting as the second coming of Jesus. To celebrate, I decided to roll the boulder off my pain cave and head out on the open road for my first ride on the new bike.
First, started off the afternoon with a quick two mile warm up run on the treadmill. Quick as in the sense of getting it out of the way, not in pace. It took me 18:35 to get loose over two miles. After that, off I went into the wild blue yonder.
Not a cloud in the sky. Apparently a UFO though 
Of course, I knew my carbon P2 was going to ride different than my aluminum P2-SL. What I didn’t expect was that the difference between the two would be like comparing a Ford Escort with 125K miles in it and a fine tuned Mercedes. Gone was the bone jarring rattle of the road. No more constant clinking. No more nausea inducing yellow. My new ride is like a good cup of coffee: smooth and black. That being said, I have a few adjustments to make. The clearance between my rear tire and the frame appears to small. As soon as I ride through any noticeable dirt, I am greeted by a temporary grinding noise. That would be the sound of sand/gravel on my tire rubbing against the back of the seat tube. Position needs some adjustments as well.
My only goal was to finally log a ride on Strava. I have been using the service for near a month now, and almost all of my runs and rides have had no real data because I have been trapped in my garage. After I got back, I uploaded the data to Strava to see how I stacked up agaisnt my fellow Kalispell riders. Much to my chagrin, I ended up earning a King of the Mountain crown for a local hill. FUN! Really, is not big deal, but still fun to play around with. Having some virtual competition is the best part of Strava so far. I think the service has a LONG way to go to get better. Let’s hope they keep developing the software more.
Cool
I know what intel you are really after. My readers know I have been working my FTP up over the past winter. What you really want to hear about is how things felt on the open road after all the hours on Trainer Road. I am happy to say that the normal buffet of hills in the area seemed much easier. It was also much easier to get up and moving between 70-80%. Speed seemed faster in general. I have a lot of work to do in order to be able to hold 225w, my FTP, on the flats, but this is a good start. I certainly feel stronger than when I ended last season.
Looks like the temps are on the trend upward and I am hoping to get out some more this week, at least on the runs. Stay tuned for more exciting data!
Trying another new ride.
Raising the Bar With Trainer Road: New FTP 225w
Big day here in Montana for this triathlete. After a good 5 weeks of the Trainer Road early build plan, today was the day to test my functional threshold power again. As luck would have it, TR just added a 2X20 FTP test workout with instructions. I have never used the shorter eight or twenty minute tests before. Personally, I like the pain of the 40 minute test….well at least afterwards. I will also say that I find the 2X20 test pretty accurate. Here’s the data from Trainer Road.
I skipped over that clearing interval at the beginning as I wasn't having any problems pacing and time was short.
DATA
Based on this data, my new FTP is 224, six watts up from 5 weeks ago. But here’s the rub…check out my Garmin/WKO data for the same ride:
Hmmm..the plot thickens.
Based on this range, which was set by me actually pushing the lap button at the beginning and end of the test, my new FTP is 226. So I have decided to just meet in the middle and say my new FTP is 225w. This gives me a seven watt increase for five weeks, and a w/kg of 3.65. While a seven watt difference seems small, its plenty for me. My watts have always moved slowly, so an increase by 3.2% works for me. What’s even better is that this new FTP is my highest ever.
Needless to say, I am pretty happy with the TR plan and workouts so far. This test was also the best paced one I have ever done. I really liked the prompts the computer gave me to micromanage my pace. I have never felt better after one these than today. I felt so great in fact that I still got in my recovery run of two miles @ 8:24 and 8:07. I followed that by an easy 1000y swim at 16:54 with a 200y cool down.
In short, training is going great. I’m really excited to see how far I can go with Trainer Road. The T6P Strides of March run challenge is going awesome as well. I’m currently have 14 days of straight running in the bag and I’m feeling good. No knee pain. Form coming along finally. And just think….my guys and I have still have the April Pools challenge coming up….
