Rev3 Quassy - Half Rev : Official Thread (Page 2)

Did you actually get a power meter at some point? Feel like I'm misunderstanding several things in this post. Otherwise, what Trainer Road is doing is making an estimate of the power you are generating based off the speed your sensor is reading when on the trainer. The Garmin devices don't actually measure power, but display the reading a powermeter will send to it. If you don't have a PM you will need to learn how to correlate the power Trainer Road is saying to perceived effort (RPE) and also to heartrate (HR) if you have that.

Also, I'm not sure what you're planning on with current power and 3 sec power as those are almost the same thing. It's much more common to have a shorter reading like just one of those along with a longer term (or overall ride) one like AP and/or NP. You don't really want to pick a power target as a % FTP and go straight to the race, but use your FTP and the guidance ranges to test out ahead of time in training. Then from the training rides you figure out how to ride the event.

Ok, that makes more sense then. Don't worry about IF not being available on there. It's redundant when out on a ride as you should know the actual power numbers anyway. I do like using NP more for overall, but you can do ok with AP. The PM should have been helping you to tame the spikes in various situations, so with fewer of those NP would not rise up as much. It really helped me calm down there when I first got power. Then also know that AP drops faster than NP in situations like coasting, so if you end up coasting a bunch NP will be more. They separate less when soft-pedaling down the bigger hills as opposed to coasting. I tend to do this more to keep my legs moving yet not put a lot of energy in without getting much in return until the really fast hills. Pushing hard on the downhills doesn't gain a lot of time as the air resistance is so much higher. Being able to hold a good aero position shouldn't really cost anything though.

Over the next few weeks, go with what you can for getting used to outside. The trainer riding is still worth something and can be quite helpful, especially since I'd guess many tend to push a bit too much. More so on the hills. What I can do indoors vs outdoors tends to be rather similar, but more tend to be like jayabusa said. Able to push some more outside. Keep working on developing your RPE. Power is nice, but you also don't want to be entirely dependent on it.

Follow what Dale said. Get in some rides up around 3 hrs and experiment with the pacing. That is more important now than nailing the exact value of your FTP. The 0.80 to start with is just a guideline to help figure narrow it down some. The value you have should be close enough to see how the training rides go. You do not really want to take that value and go directly to the race without at least some practice with it.

Having an upper limit being at FTP on the hills for this is also good, however, do try to remember that this is a cap. Not a target. You might very well end up spending an hours time up at FTP during the ride since there are so many hills. The 5 mile hill alone will be 20-some minutes at that effort.

What is your gear range? Front and back. If you don't know, you want to learn about this. It matters. A lot.

And did you use it? Have to ask as there can be some who don't shift all the way down or don't use the small ring for whatever reason. They'll prefer to just mash and tough it out.

yeah, that's something easy to miss. The slowing down sort of near, but not quite at the top. Keep going until you get there. And actually until back up to speed. I don't actually burst harder here, but try to keep up what I had been doing to get up the hill. When first trying it out, it might feel rather hard. And it likely could be, but that doesn't mean doing this is wrong. Rather that the effort elsewhere may need to be adjusted accordingly in order to accomplish this. Some of this is mental, and just getting used to pushing for that much longer. Another good reason to get outside and ride some hills. Not necessarily the exact course, but at least whatever is available. It becomes easier to pick up how to manage different situations by riding in a good variety in training.