My own Hour of Power
Wouldn't you know it would start raining just about the time I had planned to kick out for the day and log some miles. No matter. I'm fresh home from a business trip, tired and rather cranky. I logged plenty of miles on my butt this week so my legs are (were) full of whatever gunk it is that you get when you don't use 'em for a couple of days. A session on the trainer would do just fine. It's Friday after all. There's a weekend ahead where I can get in some miles.
The online side of my SRM decided to work for me today. Bonus! So I had the benefit of computer screen real-time wattage charting to keep me on the straight and narrow. I decided to do one of my own versions of the "Hour of Power" workout.
So you know about the "Hour of Power" workout, right? If not then get Andy and Hunter's book and read up on it. Either that or go to the wattage list and search for "Hour of Power". There has been some recent discussion about it, so it's sort of top of mind these days.
In my opinion the Hour of Power should be top of mind year-round. It's a terrific way to build up the miles in the early season, and to pack more watts into your Functional Threshold Power. It's not a comfortable workout to do; but then, the best workouts seldom are.
My Hour of Power workout today went like this:
- Do 6 sets of 10 minutes steady pedaling followed by 2 minutes out of the saddle
- Maintain approximately the same power level both seated and standing
- Wattage should rise slowly from start to finish
This Hour of Power starts out like that walk in the park; but if done right it ends with a nice endorphin high. The whole of the ride should be in Level 4, or Threshold. I don't recommend you build your wattage at such a rate you're in Level 5 for any length of time at the end. If you do, and you succeed in finishing the workout, then you probably started off to easy and/or didn't build your wattage at a steady rate.
Don't worry, you'll get it right next time.
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Nice work!
I thought that the standing power portion of the HOP was intended to be a slight increase of power. I guess (to your point) I have heard Bill say that he uses them to stretch his legs while decreasing cadence....
Either way, its a great workout. I would only add this for the aspiring crit/road racers:
By bumping the power during the standing efforts to the top of the TH range (possibly slightly higher) and then "recovering" at power near the bottom of the TH range, you are simulating the surges often found in races that are usually responsible for shelling ill-prepared riders.
Depending on your needs you may tweak this little gem of a workout by varying the duration and frequency of the out of saddle work (crits often have more frequent surges that are shorter duration, road races are less frequent, but at times long enough to crack your will to live in the peloton).
criterium training
Thanks. It's one of those workouts that's a lot easier to orchestrate with the assistance of a computer. Any computer will do. Short of using an SRM with the online option you could do the Hour of Power workout by focusing on cadence or speed. It really only takes a regular cycling computer to do this one successfully.
As for the surges and crit training... I completely agree except that the out of saddle efforts in a crit would almost certainly be L5 efforts and they would be much shorter than 2 minutes.
The overall effect of mimicking that in an Hour of Power workout would still be Threshold however. That is, unless you managed to blow yourself up before you finished.
agreed
For a crit, yes. You probably want to shoot well into AC for 10 to 30 seconds to simulate the surges. And the end result as far as TSS is concerned would basically look like a TH effort for the duration.
Either way, I am hardly an authority on Power training, or how to win a race (any race), but the closer you can come to replicating (with training) the demands of the event, the better prepared that training will leave you.
Another point that probably should be made...if you DO manage to blow yourself up prior to finishing the scheduled workout...It is not entirely a bad thing (as long as you got a decent quantity of work done relative to your plan prior to blowing). Said another way, if you are not pushing (very) close to your blowing point with these workouts...you are probably not doing them correctly (IMO).
Anyone else care to weigh in on this?
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