Hour of Power on the Road

Had a day off yesterday because my legs felt quite tired after Saturday's 3 hour ride. I only had an hour to spare so rather than sit on the turbo I got out on the roads for an Hour of Power around my local loop. I last did this on 2nd March when I set a new PB of 313W.

The long rides of last week's training camp have affected the way I perceive time when I ride now; previously an hour felt like a long session on the turbo, now an hour on the road feels quite short and time seems to fly by.

I'd planned to set 275W as a base between the 450W+ 'bursts of power' but I was soon up to my old tricks and letting my power sit around 300W at base. After 20 minutes I'd averaged 311W and then I went on to maintain this out to 40 minutes when I started to flag a little. With 10 minutes to go my power had dropped to 308W average to I upped my game and even put in a couple of extra bursts in the closing minutes to get my power back up to a respectable 311W average for the hour, just 2W off my last session. Powertaps have an accuracy of approx +/- 1.5% so 2W is really neither here nor there.

Looking at the data, my HR seems a lot more stable and less peaky. This may just be a normal variation between different sessions or it may be a result of the distance and time of the training camp, time will tell. Average HR was 160bpm (163 last time), and NP was the same at 317W. So I probably haven't gained any fitness as a result of the camp, but I haven't lost any either!

Red = HR, Black = power