When Good Training Rides Go Bad
I'm in my 2nd week of a 12-week training program to get ready for this year's Bridge-to-Bridge Incredible Century Cycling Challenge and I was pretty excited about this morning's scheduled 2-hour ride because it called for 35+ minutes of work near my threshold wattage. I got up early to avoid the heat and left the house by 7:00am. The skies were cloudy and it was obvious there had been early-morning rain but more rain didn't appear imminent. Uh, wrong.
Within about 20 minutes--just long enough to get warmed up and get about 5-6 miles away from the house--the rain started coming down harder and harder. Nonetheless, I decided to start a 40-minute near-threshold push which was actually pretty fun due to the hilarity of my being out in a downpour. Unfortunately, I noticed somewhere along the way that my PowerTap was unable to handle the water and stopped giving wattage readings. Drat! But, I kept on going until I finished the 40 minutes.
Eventually, the rain stopped and things dried out enough for me to use the PowerTap again--but the wattage readings were all screwy and in the process of resetting things I deleted the data I had recorded (albeit only a partial recording of my 40 minute effort). So, I decided to do another 40 minutes at near-threshold effort but wasn't really able to convince myself to do a 15 minute cooldown so I ended up with about 55 minutes worth of wattage data.
My best guess is that had I not deleted the data I would have had over 90 minutes of great wattage data that I could have used to determine if I've managed to improve my threshold wattage over the last few weeks. But it wasn't to be. Oh well, the numbers arguably don't matter all that much. I had fun and got in a great training ride despite the downpour.
Within about 20 minutes--just long enough to get warmed up and get about 5-6 miles away from the house--the rain started coming down harder and harder. Nonetheless, I decided to start a 40-minute near-threshold push which was actually pretty fun due to the hilarity of my being out in a downpour. Unfortunately, I noticed somewhere along the way that my PowerTap was unable to handle the water and stopped giving wattage readings. Drat! But, I kept on going until I finished the 40 minutes.
Eventually, the rain stopped and things dried out enough for me to use the PowerTap again--but the wattage readings were all screwy and in the process of resetting things I deleted the data I had recorded (albeit only a partial recording of my 40 minute effort). So, I decided to do another 40 minutes at near-threshold effort but wasn't really able to convince myself to do a 15 minute cooldown so I ended up with about 55 minutes worth of wattage data.
My best guess is that had I not deleted the data I would have had over 90 minutes of great wattage data that I could have used to determine if I've managed to improve my threshold wattage over the last few weeks. But it wasn't to be. Oh well, the numbers arguably don't matter all that much. I had fun and got in a great training ride despite the downpour.
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