Race against the clock #5

The background to this week is simple - two long rides in the snow with my friends: Saturday being the group ride, and Sunday being the TransRockies partner jam with Craig.  Both were done on the utilitarian, but somewhat sluggish Moots MootoX 29er with the Rohloff.  There's a little extra inertia and friction that come along with that beauty.  

The stage:

1.  Silence in the trainer room (once again)

2.  Visual stimulus was a closet door (once again)

3.  Two days relaxation, neither nights were great sleep

4.  Pre-game meal was a banana and a powerbar a few hours ago

The result:

10k, 15 mins, 57 seconds, average of 340W.    

The reflection:

That's 10W more and 18 seconds less than a week ago.  The trick was twofold: I rode one gear higher, making more use of my leg strength, which I perceive as a relative advantage.  This shifted me down about 5 rpm, if I'd held the rpm from last week I would've blown.  But where does this leg strength come from?  Simple - Craig gave it to me, possibly for my birthday ; )

Story is just a few posts back.  I looked outside at the snow last Sunday, and mentally gave up.  My best outcome that day would have been an hour or two trainer ride... that is until I tried to bail on my TransRockies partner.  After Craig set my priorities straight, we did a 4 hour ride in the snow with some pretty good efforts.  At the time I even said I was working on my overall torque and leg strength... but little did I know.  5-10cm deep snow, gravel roads, and a 29er wheel add up for a little more pushing than the average road bike.  Add to this my internally geared Rohloff hub, which I've modified with some [higher viscosity] oil that doesn't freeze in Calgary temperatures (hopefully a formula that doesn't wreck some parts inside as noted in the manuals).  I'd suspect this higher viscosity oil bumps up the internal friction loss above the stated 96% or 98% depending on which gear.  I'm gonna ballpark it at 95%, disagree if you will.  But if it takes me 300W to keep pace with Craig on a hill, I now have to do 315W, or in reality, I do a little more then fail to keep up!  For the record, riding with a partner always coaxes more out of me, I'm a poor "front" or "alone" rider and a better chaser.

Out in our 4 hours of training, there's a few topics we covered when we weren't huffing and puffing too much (or maybe that was just me?).  One was this question: Which provides a better workout - more overall workload yet slower, ie. riding the big pig, or, riding faster with higher speeds and higher peak efforts?  I think in some ways it's an unanswerable question, or it just comes down to semantics.  Work is work, and the more training stress your body is subject to, with proper recovery, should be more constructive.  With that in mind, the second stage of the answer in my mind is it depends on the person.  Some people might have the ability/discipline/mindset to blaze out fantastic workouts by pushing themselves on their race bikes.  For whatever reason, as mentioned above, I'm on the "chaser" end of the scale.  I'm open minded to being proven otherwise, but I think the "make it harder with added friction/weight/etc", provided I can generally stay in contact to chase (or have a sympathetic leader), works better for me.

After the TT I aimed for 10 minutes of 400W intervals - 2 mins for first and second one, third through ninth were one minute ones as I was getting a little groggy, and 9th one was really only about 35 seconds.  

If TransRockies is nearing and I tell you I've given up on riding the Moots on gravel roads, tell me to smarten up and get back out there... and thanks again Craig!