@Peter Salt looks like a bloody good time? Sub 50 as
@Legs predicted? Don't see his result just yet but I know he was starting late
Bloody good, doesn't give it justice. I'm chuffed to bits!
On my previous PB, I started at a certain power, kept it steady but my HR kept creeping, until I kind of exploded with 5 or so hairpins to go. This time, I started the same way, but my HR hit around 172-173 two hairpins in, and then just stayed there - so I knew it was going to be good. Tried not to get too excited and just kept at it, every hairpin being 2-4s faster than previous PB. Really felt good at the end, and it seemed like I was catching the lot in front, so I upped the game. 3-2 was 10s quicker than PB; 2-1 was 20s quicker than PB; finishing segment was nearly 30s quicker than previous PB. Final time 49:32, so I practically made it a sub 50 on that last stretch. Not bad for a sprinter.
Felt really good today. Had nice food and was well-fuelled. Things also going great in the personal space so I was in a fine mood. I let people get in front on the lead-in to have more carrots on the road - that was good too. Once I noticed the HR trend, I knew it was a matter of putting my head down and just chirping out the watts.
I did find it hard to remain seated at anything over 8% without going into a crazy low cadence. I do find I rarely stand when cycling hills on actual bike but obviously never been near that kind of climb. How do people find their form changes on virtual Vs real life? Should I be forcing myself to grind (the other answer is to lose weight or gain power of course....)
Oooh, interesting that you mention it. The biggest difference in terms of effort, between my indoor trainer and cycling outside, is that I have pretty much unlimited gears on the Wattbike. My indoor sweet spot is around 92-93 RPM and I used to always aim for that. Outside, it's a bit of a different story, my lowest gear is a 34-30 so when I hit big gradients, cadence drops to around 60 and I just have to get up. And I used to be somewhat uncomfortable doing that.
Maybe 10 weeks ago, I decided to get out of my comfort zone more, when Zwifting. I did a Robopacer ride, kept the power steady, but every 8 minutes I put the trainer in a hard gear, got up, and grinded around 65 RPM for 2 minutes. To my surprise, despite it being a usual length Z2 ride, I really felt it the next day. I thought I need to do it more as it will likely benefit my sprint (I always sprint out of the saddle) and the ability to do those puncheur-like efforts. So basically every Robopacer ride I do now, and sometimes even in a race, I occasionally go in a higher gear. When I started, 2-3 minutes out of the saddle felt like plenty, I had to sit down for a while after that. Now, I can get up and do it for 10 minutes. It definitely helped with the Alpe finish today too.
