Saturday, February 09, 2008

A taste of Power.

I had my eyes opened to the effectiveness of training with power on a CompuTrainer last night. A good friend from my triathlon club offered his coaching skills along with his CompuTrainer to put me through a time trial test. The focus of the workout was to montitor power, heart rate and cadence, in two 20 minute intervals. For the 2 sets I needed to ride at a hard effort and yet complete them in +/- 5% of each other.

The results will be compared in 6 weeks with another test. Since I do not have a CompuTrainer or some other power measuring device I will use my heart rate monitor to train with. In early April I will go back to my friends house to do another test on his CompuTrainer and see what results I get.

Dave, thanks for showing me the way to "Power". I think it's exciting stuff and will translate to improving my biking times.

Test 1 Results:
average speed: 18.3 mph
average watts: 147 watts
maximum speed: 19.6 mph
maximum watts: 183 watts
time: 20 minutes
distance: 6.14 miles
average heartrate: 116 bpm
maximum heartrate: 125 bpm
average cadence: 91
maximum cadence 97

Test 2 Results:
average speed: 18.9 mph
average watts: 158 watts
maximum speed: 22.2 mph
maximum watts: 246 watts
time: 20 minutes
distance 6.30 miles
average heartrate: 124
maximum heartrate: 139 bpm
average cadence: 93
maximum cadence: 110

3 comments:

Janet Edwards said...

Thanks for sharing Lou. I have a friend who has offered to do some testing on me and this review definitely makes me want to try it!

Tri-Dummy said...

That sounded pretty cool.

I've heard the compu trainers are a bit pricey.

Maybe Mrs. Papa will throw you a bone?

GP said...

That sounds fascinating. If only I knew how to ride a bike (or at least ride fast enough for any scientific device to detect my speed and progress ;-).