substructure

It's 4am. Do you know where your idiot bike racer is?

Yeah, slowly working out the kinks and getting his gear ready for a two hour trip to Greenville.

daytonian

Godspeed brother Sub!

cslone

What the hell are you doing up?

And good luck sub. Get your paybacks this week.

daytonian

eating cereal about to go back to bed

substructure

Thanks guys. Just ask your children to pray I keep upright.

cslone

Why would I put my kids through that?

cslone

Mmmmm......cereal. I'm going to go lay down, but that's going to be short lived. 2-3 hours on the trainer is going to suck tomorrow....er......today.

ridethecliche

I have a quick question for you guys.

I've been doing a bunch of rides lately where my IF has been .9 or higher for durations over an hour. Based on these rides and looking at power dropoff by using 10 watt bins, I've found that my FTP is probably in the 280ish range. I don't want to set it that high till I can actually train at the intensity, though having every ride I do at an IF of .9 is a little nuts.

Do I do any harm by putting it up to say 270, and then re-evaluating how SST and such goes at that?

MDcatV

my opinion - no, no harm in putting your ftp at 270 and then re-evaluating based on sensations. in fact, I would argue that if you cant sustain your intervals at the target intensity (wattage) then regardless of bins or dropoffs or whatever, your ftp or "baseline" is set too high.

ridethecliche

Yeah, I'll set it to 270 over spring break and see how it goes from there. Thanks!

Hocam

Took yesterday off trying to rest up for the first day of powertap usage, but I didn't sleep well and didn't feel at all recovered this morning. I think I need more protein in my diet; going to buy some chicken later and bake it for the week. Not sleeping seemed to be related to being excited about finally getting some power data (kind of ironic..).

Did about 35 minutes of tooling around and then swapped bikes with grolby for about 45 minutes of efforts into the wind. I found out the lower handlebars of his bike were actually plenty comfortable for me, core strength must be doing ok and my back looked really nice and flat when I was on the tops with elbows bent (we went by a bunch of mirrorish shop windows). I can't find the specialized E5 geometry, but if it's the same as the Allez the CAAD9 has a 1 cm shorter head tube and 4mm less trail, same ST angle and effective TT.

The power data was kind of a wash for me except a 5" 931 watt AP, 1032 watt max, felt like crap so i'll have to give it more rest days.

I don't want to take sunday off, so I think I'll do an 2.5 hr endurance type ride with a few shorter efforts, take monday and potentially tuesday off and test wednesday.

Having a problem with WKO+, the registration code the website gave me is too long for the program's registration window. Not sure wtf is up with that, any ideas?

Snuffleupagus

Tweaked my knee something awful lifting a patient. Sigh.

grolby

That was a blast, thanks for letting me fool around with your PTap! I have GOT to get me one of those. Totally geeking out. Not enough data to make any conclusions for durations longer than we tested (5s around 900W, 1m around... um... 320W ), but I guess I'm about where I thought I was. Definitely on my wish list for next season. BTW, moving my saddle forward seems to have been a good idea, but I'll need a bit more riding to be sure. Hamstring is doing okay.

The ride home was a bit of a death march - not a good day to ride north. I was doing 14.5 mph, gritting my teeth and swearing, as low as possible the whole way. Incidentally, since you mentioned bar height - lower bars are probably helpful for getting a couple more watts out of your sprint. I wonder what my power would have looked like on my own bike? Seriously, not too different, I think - a watt is a watt. Anyway, just about 40 miles today, not quite 2 1/2 hours. Some good riding.

ETA: You can find the E5 geometry here, but it should be identical to current Tarmac geometry. For my bike (size 52):

Stand over height: 729
Seat tube (C-T): 480
Horiz. TT length: 537
HT length: 110
Head angle: 73.0
Seat angle: 74.0
Wheel base: 970
Chainstay: 405
Front center: 576
Fork offset: 45

Also, it just occurred to me - you remarked to me upon changing bikes that my E5 was really stiff. I meant to tell you that if you think MY bike is stiff, the Tarmac SL would blow your mind.

bostongarden

Worked through some exhaustion this week (lots of work, little sleep) and stayed on the bike, but, it bugs me to not ride hard (that was the case for Thursday and Friday)...rested a lot today, going for an easy spin now...snow tomorrow, so, off the bike with more rest and then, hopefully, ready to put it down hard on Monday...

ilpirata87

o no! what's the prognosis dude?

Snuffleupagus

RIICE, then we'll see. I was kneeling down on the side of I40 for a while backboarding some dude who flipped his car and when I stood up my knee said "screw this" and it's been saying it ever since. Feels like it just slipped in/out a bit, causing some swelling.

Hocam

No problem, it's good to have someone to geek out with. When we were riding I mentioned trainer power being ~10% less than actual power because your body needs to divert more blood to cooling it's self. So I think your previous FTP was on the low side.

I still think you should move it another 2-3 mm more forward and raise it to 688 mm, that would just about match what you were riding on my bike. Slow steps are good too though.

Thanks for the E5 geometry info, you were right about the head tube length. Otherwise it's identical, including HT angle and fork rake so I'm pretty stoked about that! Honestly, I don't think I'd be able to tell any difference in stiffness beyond your bike, my guads just aren't big enough.

grolby

Yeah, it was fun. Let me know when you figure out the software. I didn't mean to suggest that I had 190 as a previous FTP - since that was avg. power over 90 minutes, it was obviously pretty low. I figure 210-220 or so is about right. If that's where I am at my current state of training, that's very encouraging. I'm only finishing the first week of Base 2, so there's a lot of room for improvement this season.

I'm still considering moving the saddle further forward - it actually was an improvement, I think. It's hard to say, since I practically had to hammer to even go 14 mph, and I was generally pretty fatigued, but my hamstring felt pretty good when I got home, and it isn't bugging me now. Weird that it started being a problem when I moved the saddle forward, but moving the saddle even further forward seems to alleviate it. We'll see how things continue to develop. I'll probably leave it where it is for at least a week.

You can definitely detect stiffness greater than that of my bike, it just feels like the BB is completely immobile. I didn't especially like the feel. You better believe that I don't have the guads to flex an SL! The E5 feels juuuuust right. I'm glad you like it, and glad that it gave you a feel for the CAAD9. I think you'll find it to be a very pleasant, very fun ride. Funny, cause now I have some Bilenky envy. Not for racing, obviously, but for cruising around for long distances, a bike with that geometry probably can't be beat.

ridethecliche

Rode 22 hilly miles with a friend today. Had a good ride.

I normally keep up with this kid and today he was kicking my ass worse than usual. I lifted yesterday so my body is really sore, but my back was hurting more than it has in the last few weeks.

I got home and was looking over a few things and looked at the seatpost, it was 1 cm too low...

I figure that the shop I had it at might have moved it by mistake, or I might have moved it while transporting the bike. Annoying...

Glad I figured it out though haha.

I'm taking sunday and monday off the bike. I'm going to do 1-2 hrs of physical therapy instead and let my body rest. Tuesday morning, I think I'll try going for a 3+ hour ride before class. I can't wait. Hopefully the weather cooperates!

grolby

Arg, correction, still have the hamstring issue, only now the point of tenderness is further up my leg. This is getting ridiculous. Fortunately, I am talking to a professional. He suggests for a start moving back to the starting position, before the problem surfaced. What a crazy notion! I think that I recall feeling less powerful and less comfortable in that position, so I think it's a temporary solution, but I'll at least try it for my recovery spin on rollers tomorrow. Still not a serious problem, but it is quite the nagging annoyance!

vladav

I hate you

LaGrange. Can't entirely tell from your avatar but are you on 'Platinum'?

ldesfor1@ithaca

Day off today, 10km indoor TT tomorrow.

I figure 15 minutes of pain, at most.

This is my proposed split (based on an FTP of 360):

1'- 360
1'- 370
1'- 380
1'- 390
6'- 395-400
3' 400-410 (if possible)
final 1-2'- 410+ based on feel.

I'd love to average 390-400. who knows, though. Hoping for good legs.

will do a long WU and hopefully a 30' SST interval after the TT to make it into a real WO.

(sucks that Bethel Crit was cancelled...)

-L

grolby

Moved the saddle back to it's original position. I now have one question about my original movement of the saddle forward, and that is: WTF was I thinking!!??. This is definitely better - way less perineal discomfort, for one thing. Of course, my effective reach is longer, but whatever. I will suck it up and get an 80mm stem along with bars with less reach. I wonder if I can put out more power with the saddle forward, but it hardly seems like the most relevant issue when moving it forward causes pain and injury (not that going back to my old position has made the pain go away, since I still have the injured hamstring, which I now must heal).

There's still the matter of working out what anatomical oddity I have that could cause such a problem with a 2cm change in saddle position. It would be nice to have better form on the bike. But if sticking with the position I had makes the issue go away, I won't be complaining much.

MDcatV

rice and rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, ... I'm tired of reading about your knee issues, do you have like 6 knees or something while the rest of us just have 2?

seriously, I really hope this is a minor thing

ericm979

Got in a good long ride today- I rode from the nearest town to my club's "B" ride, did that, then rode back. I was on or near the front the whole ride. I split off near the end to ride a little more with a stong woman racer (as in rode the Coors Classic strong). It would have been easier to have finished the ride with the group.

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