by Wendy Simms
The first time I went riding with my husband Norm, he asked me about my training program. My answer: “when the time changes in the spring, I put it in the big ring.” He just about crashed he was laughing so hard. I used to be one of those racers that just rode my bike. I never had a coach. I never really trained. And as a result, I could never seem to crack the podium. I thought I just wasn’t talented enough. But…then I discovered cyclocross (CX) and after just a few races qualified to represent Canada at the World Championships in France. I was pretty scared that I would make an ass of myself and my country so I hired a coach and did my first interval.
That was over 4 years ago, and it seems that during this time I have gone from anti-geek to super-geek when it comes to training data. Of course it came with a little help. After I got my butt kicked in France and wanted to come back stronger, Norm bought me my first PowerTap. Then I “hired” my brother Kevin to coach me (unfortunately he doesn’t get a cent out of me, but he does get some nice gear). Together, the 3 of us have learnt a helluv of a LOT from 4 years of PowerTap data. I have gone from limping across the finish line in the 30’s at my first world CX championships to leading out the first lap and finishing 7th in 2008. There is no way I would have been able to do that without specific power workouts and careful monitoring of the data generated from these workouts.
So when we heard that CycleOps was coming out with a new mountain bike PowerTap we harassed the local bike shops about arrival dates. We were pretty interested in trying to transfer all of the knowledge and success we have experienced in CX to the mountain bike. I have had some great results on the mountain bike, but they seem to be less consistent. If we could get some PowerTap data from a few typical race courses, we could identify my weaknesses and design some specific workouts to address them. When Xterra World Champ Melanie McQuaid recommended me as a test pilot, I just about smothered David Cathcart with reasons why he needed to get me on the new PowerTap. He sent me one (thanks David!) and below is the first file of data (smoothed out so you can see what is going on). Although the data is probably not quite typical of a World Cup mountain bike race (it was a local race with 99% singletrack, a le mans start and no extended climbs) it got me started on what will likely be many files of data and a whole lot of tweaking of my training. Now I can geek out year round.
