Powertap

It's raining and I'm bored...oh yeah, highly caffeinated to boot!! This will probably be a short post as well.

At the beginning of April the long drawn out process of me getting a powertap wheel finally ended...HOORAY!!! I was a little excited to try this new toy, mostly out of curiosity, but excited nonetheless.

In the past I have trained and raced with heart rate and had gotten pretty good using what I learned from that. Then all of the cool kids started training with power meters...it was about this time I didn't care about what my heart rate was anymore, so to the shelf it went...I started training by saddle time and that worked pretty good!! I rode well and even won a race or two.

Let me back up a bit...Before I totally gave up the heart rate I bought an electronic trainer from cycle-ops. It was their version of a computtrainer. So I combined the heart rate and started training with power in the off season. I'm not sure how much it helped, not having any power numbers from out on the road to reference, but it certainly didn't hurt. This trainer started to die (a bearing started going bad) and all I wanted was to have it repaired or replaced...

Well the fine peeps at cycle-ops say they don't make that model anymore, and won't repair it. GRRRR!!! So they offer me a sweet deal on a wheel...DONE!!!

As of right now, I've been riding it since the beginning of April and training with power for about a month. I will say this, if you want to average a certain number, you have to pedal...all the time!! Kinda obvious, but, it will definitely keep you honest in your workouts.

Have I gotten stronger? I think so, although I still seem to be getting my ass handed to me on the Tuesday ass kickin session...I think a little can be attributed to the time off I took through the winter to let my old ass heal up...anyway...I have notice some improvement.

As for results, I haven't raced since I've had this, but that will change this weekend. Sunday will be the first MTB race in the era of the powertap. Story to follow.

E