Planning for Colorado Mountainous Riding.



frenchyge said:
I don't see any contradiction there. Swampy said he did his testing on a fecking steep and long hill and found that the longer cranks performed better. I said that I could see performance improving on a hill where the bike was originally overgeared for the climb, but then longer cranks were used (instead of more appropriate gearing) to shorten the overall drive ratio. Swampy is notorious for prescribing huge gear work, so it doesn't surprise me that he would test his ideas in an overgeared situation. That's hardly an endorsement (on my part) for using longer cranks in the majority of cases where the range of available gearing is typically suitable. It makes a lot more sense to me to adjust the drive ratio by changing the cassette or chainrings than the cranks, but I like to do things the easy way whenever possible.

I test where I need to see results of where I'd like to improve. I also test to see what allows me to go faster for a given situation. IF I end up time trialing at 80 to 85 rpm it's because I tested several times at that part of the season to see what allowed me to go fastest for my state of training. Thankfully my coach was openminded as well as being very, very good.

On that occaison the testing was on a steep hill but the results seem to correlate fairly well when looking at time trial results on the flat where I posted a few personal bests. I'm not sure that I would have topped 29mph for 10 miles on the shorter cranks... Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, maybe I'll never know. Over geared? Not really. I could have used smaller gears on the flat and back then I could quite easily get up 12+% hills on 39x21 let alone the 25 I probably had on the block back then.
 
Thanks for the info. I'll look into sweet spot training, sustainable power, and doing some short intervals for bursts of power. I don't want to tinker with my crank length because my bike is fit to accommodate a past injury. Luckily I live in Colorado at 5600 feet and have access to some serious climbs and altitude for training. I'm stoked to get serious and organized about training for the first time. However, it sounds like two years ago when I had my best season ever I was doing something like sweet spot training by riding at 85% max HR almost all the time, even on mountainous 50 mile rides.
 
...it sounds like two years ago when I had my best season ever I was doing something like sweet spot training by riding at 85% max HR almost all the time, even on mountainous 50 mile rides...
It's quite likely that you were doing SST work whether you had a name for it or not. I remember a discussion between coaches on another board where someone suggested that one reason Colorado has always had such a strong racing community could be because of the abundance of long steady climbs where the terrain gets folks riding long unbroken stretches of Tempo and above on a regular basis. Flatlanders and folks in cities with frequent traffic interruptions typically have to make efforts and stay very focused to ride 20 minute to hour or longer intervals sustained at those levels.

I moved to Seattle this spring and have found only a couple of good roads for 20 to 30 minute SST/L4 intervals and even then they get disrupted fairly often by traffic, folks pulling out of driveways, etc. I miss the open roads of Wyoming for sustained long efforts but just got back from a long weekend of riding in Aspen, gotta love the long unbroken training roads right out of that town.

-Dave
 

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