An Inspired Ride

All I can figure is that I was inspired by reading dude.abides blog for yesterday about how he apparently found his peak and set all sorts of personal bests on his recent training ride.

So on today's training ride I was feeling pretty good, having come off a rest day. The workout, which was the same as last Friday's, was to ride a rolling course and climb longer hills at around 300W and to attack out of the saddle on shorter hills at around 500+W. Since the workout description doesn't specify how hard to go when you aren't climbing a hill, I decided I'd try to go at my CP60 power level (the best I've averaged for an hour), which is 245W. I've never tried to push the pace for longer durations, so my CP values for anything above CP8 are probably a bit on the low side. So much so that I tend to use my FTP for CP30 rather than whatever my best average is.

The day was nearly perfect, sunny and in the mid 70's temperature wise. The only drawback was that it was quite breezy, which became really apparently once I turned west and north on the loop and was running into the wind. Just by judging the ride duration as I passed specific points on this loop, I knew I was doing really well. So well that I began to think I just might be able to average 20 mph on this route, which I had never done before. Heck I'd never averaged 20mph on any of my routes. Given the length of the route, 30.88 miles, I'd need to finish in 1:32:38 to make this goal. This is on a route with 2000' of climbing, so definitely not flat.

As it turned out, I didn't quite make this on the fly goal, finishing the ride in 1:38:23 or just under 6 minutes off the pace I would have needed for the 20mph goal. I did however set a number of personal bests:

Best average speed, any route: 18.8 mph
New FTP (based on 60 min normalized power): 294 W
Best CP30: 279W (294W normalized)
Best CP60: 273W (294W normalized)
Best CP90: 268W (I don't have the normalized value for this off hand)
Best Time on Loop: 1:38:23

So, all in all, a pretty positive day on the bike. I definitely feel that I've made tons of progress in the 11 months I've been riding more or less seriously. I can still vividly remember my first ride last summer when I decided, for whatever reason, to start riding. It was 3 miles, took me over 12 minutes, and left me totally spent. Today, 30 miles is no big deal and on today's ride I actually felt that I might have been able to go a bit harder, but I kept the pace I was trying for which is probably more important in the long run. I've come to realize that, especially on longer rides, keeping to steady pacing is the best way to go faster in the long run.