Case Study: Personal Best Alpine Rd

2012-05-29 • SEND FEEDBACK •
Related: training

For time trials, I always do a good warmup at a somewhat lower effort. This “opens up” my legs for a full-bore effort; I rest 5-8 minutes between the warmup and the hard effort. I ditched the 1L water bottle (2.2 pounds) for the time trial effort.

This particular time trial is short, and would make for a good VO2 max training effort, which I did the summer of 2011, and plan to do again in summer 2012.

The Ma7 27, 2012 effort of 8:19 obliterated my August 8, 2011 personal best of 8:56 by 37 seconds, even though total riding weight was 8 pounds heavier for the May 27 effort. Now that’s progress!

Based on riding weight alone, with ~6 pounds of fat loss and some mental focus on an all-out effort, I figure that I can drop the time to 7:45 or so.

Two graphs are shown, the warmup then the actual effort (toggle).

Click for a larger graph.

Ascent of Alpine Road, power (watts) and heart rate— May 27, 2012