In the spirit of being truely anal. I discovered that when doing
trainer workout's at or close to my LT (gauged via HR) my power output
I tended to generally (and only very generally) make a sin wave around
my average Power output. I would push a little and it would be above
and then I would ease back and then push a litte etc with maybe a
15-20 second period.
I figured this was because I was watching my power output, so I
decided to do a workout where I didn't know power or speed and only
looked at HR. what I discovered was that speed (or computrainers
version of speed) remained fairly constant, while power actually had
two superimposed sin waves (again very generally) one as described
above and the other longer (maybe 2 minutes) around what turns out to
be me pushing my heart rate up and then easing off to a little to get
it back down.
From this I have a series of question:
1. In your experience is this typical?
2. Is it more or less effcient than constant power?
3. If constant power is more effcient is it something you should
actively train for?
4. Is this an indication of certain muscle make-up?
Inuitively it seems that on a flat TT maybe this isn't so bad since
you can proabably maintain a fairly constant speed, but on hills it
might be a determent...