Two Wheel Blogs

There were a couple of comments that came in today which I thought I'd just address as a post. Why? Well because both comments came in on older posts, so I thought it might be good to highlight the original message and thereby bring it to the top of the list. How about that?

The first one to address came in as a comment to my post from late last year entitled Using a Power Meter on Your Bicycle. In this comment, titled More Data Please, Bobber asks:

How about some TSS figures to back up your experience here? Hard to get a handle on what you are describing without some real data.

The easiest way to answer that for me is to just capture a screen shot of my workout log and attach it to this post. There it is, for what it's worth. I was still working on doing not much of anything in particular back in December. Basically I was monitoring the Training Manager output to maintain CTL. I wanted to make enough watts to get a decent TSS score in each of my workouts. Bear in mind my workouts at that time of year don't vary much from an hour in length. That's about all I can stand on a trainer unless I'm really motivated or rested, or both.

So what does my Training Manager log tell you? Well have a look at Thursday the 15th for instance. I took Wednesday completely off the bike, and Tuesday the 13th was just an hour of tempo. On Thursday my Training Stress Balance had gone positive. I felt fresh and rested enough to take on a 40km Time Trial.

The results were about what I expected. A positive Training Stress Balance (TSB) means you're ready to throw down. The fact that I was motivated enough to even do a 40km TT on my trainer demonstrates that I must have felt pretty good. I'm telling you, Coggan's Training Manager rocks out. It's TSTWKT.

I followed up that workout with three days of increasing TSS to make a decent training block and to drive TSB well into negative territory again. Knowing the holidays were coming I wanted to build up a cushion of CTL which would surely erode during the approaching holiday merrymaking.

A question about gearing

In a comment earlier today to an older post, Dino asked the following question:

swapping rear cassette
I currently ride a 53-39 front and 23-12 rear, road bike. I've been doing more mountain riding and I am looking at gaining some gears without spending the money on a triple chain. I am looking at the Shimano Ultegra 12-27 (9 speed). My bike has 105 components. How much do you think I'd gain on the climbs with a 27 vs. a 23 in the rear? Will it make a big difference?

In a word, yes. It will make a big difference.

The difference in gearing from the 23 tooth cog to the 27 will increase your cadence a bit over 17% at any given speed. This means on a hill where you find yourself pedaling at a cadence of 80rpm with the 23 tooth cog, you'll be able to spin at a much more comfortable, for me at least, 94rpm.

There's a great gearing calculator on the web. It will help you to see what your various cassette and chain ring options will do for you. I highly recommend Sheldon Brown's Gear Calculator