by Kristin Hilger

Looking back at the first article I wrote for the PowerTap newsletter this year, I finished by saying, “train to race fast and trust your training. Believe in yourself.” I believe that as I’ve entered the second part of the season, those statements are still a work in progress, but they having been growing into a greater reality. I can now start to reflect on some improvements I anticipated during the discussion of my last article.

by Danielle Foster

As a cyclist, what is important to you? For many of us, it is the ability to go a little faster for a littler longer-to produce more power with less effort. As Joey Adams stated last month, it’s about producing more power at less cost, aka, The Green Ride.

by Marci Titus Hall

While analyzing my mountain bike (mountain bike) race data recently I began to wonder what was going on with my power during the race. The power graph is always extremely choppy with occasional peaks yet much lower than expected power averages. All the work of mountain bike racing doesn’t seem to be translating to power. A mountain bike race comes down to the rider’s fitness, technical skills, luck and finesse, in addition to the course terrain, weather, and course conditions. In a nutshell it is all about the rider’s ability to ride, as fast and efficiently as possible, over, under, or around any obstacle, any incline or decline, without help or team support, to the finish line. And as I compare my power graphs from my rides and races off-road I realize that there is more to mountain bike effort than meets the eye. But how does this translate to power output? It isn’t as straight forward as I once thought. Here is what is really going on during a mountain bike race.

by Robbie Ventura

Well I spent some – actually a ton of – time in the wind tunnel with VQ aero expert Jim Sauls and the King of Aero himself, Steve Hed. Steve is one who lets the results speak for themselves. He was the one who dialed in Lance Armstrong’s aero position for the last six tours, and he’s spent the last three years working with Levi Leipheimer and the top triathlete in the world. Not to mention he and his wife also have personal experience with Ironman racing! We also brought along VQ’er Bob Weeks, an MIT grad who added great insight to the project. With all this brain power (Jim, Steve and Bob’s brain power, not mine!) I knew the fancy words and complicated equations wouldn’t take long to overwhelm me; in reality it only took about 10 seconds until I was lost. Reynolds numbers, drag coefficients, lenticular designs, boundary layers, K-factors and every other imaginable term were being thrown around constantly, and we joked that we needed to get a helmet made of ice for all the experts to keep their heads from overheating. All these guys were great to work with, and the time I spent with them and Mike Giraud at the A2 tunnel was some of the most productive and educational time I have had as a coach.

by Kristin Hilger

For the past few weeks I have been adding more high intensity anaerobic training, including more 30 second, 800 meter and 2 mile maximal efforts to my training on the bike. My upper end power and anaerobic capacity are lacking in comparison to my endurance capacity. This could be expected since I am a true product of my experience (I’ve kept my focus on the longer distance triathlons since I first started). In addition to wanting to improve those factors alone, I wanted to explore the training theory that explosive exercise will also raise my lactate threshold and have beneficial physiological and neuromuscular adaptations to improve my endurance performance. Additionally, by varying power output (either inadvertently or not) during a race, you can save time and energy. Therefore, by working on my short burst accelerations and efforts I can gain a greater anaerobic capacity and complimentarily improve my endurance racing.