Have been getting back into the training groove with my new Powertap. Have been doing a repeat 50 mile ride, pretty much at a hard pace for me where I can hold steady without dying. 6000ft of elevation. Takes me about 3hrs.

Have done 6 of these in a row in the last 6 weeks to get a sense of my power on the rides, and get use to riding more evenly. The first 2 weeks were expectedly worse as I wasn't used to the overall training volume, and I was always tired, but in the past 4 weeks, have been feeling more normal, and getting faster each week.

One notable thing today - because I've been doing a fair amount of hillwork on this ride (none on weekdays) I decided to ride the whole ride at a borderline mash cadence for myself. This meant pretty much turning up the gearing until it was uncomfortable to pedal at faster than 83ish rpm. Def not a big-time mash (those are <60rpm) but definitely a good deal slower than my normal 90+.

End result? Normalized power a whopping 20 watts higher than my last 4 rides over 50 miles. (Compare to 2-3 watt normalized power increases in past 4 weeks) Interestingly, my cardio didn't take a big hit - TRIMP score was actually LESS today (the composite HR score, kind of like a TSS for HR but not really the same) meaning my cardio was still fine despite mashing the higher gears. I think I just respond better to offloading more to the legs than the heart. Was a bit surprising to me, since the common knowledge always says for these long rides, higher cadence = better, but at least for me, I think it keeps me working harder to stay at that borderline mash cadence so I put up a better effort overall.

Powermeter is good stuff for this sort of analysis as well. Although not trying to be totally tongue in cheek, but my average speed for those loops would have reflected the speed increase just as well in retrospect (but obviously not give the granular data.)