Climbing hills while standing still

I've been doing the rolling/hilly workout from Dirk Friel's menu of trainer workouts once a week or so since mid November.  At first the low cadence of 65rpm really taxed the hip flexors, leaving me stiff and hardly able to walk (yes, you can do that to yourself on rollers).  A month and a half later, the workout leaves me with a sensation of having pleasantly taxed my muscles.  Amazing what this training stuff can do for fitness...

The big change today was the addition of my new power meter to the workout.  I figured my FTP (functional threshold power) last week, but Dirk Friel's numbers for his workout book use a slightly different number based on the normalized power for the threshold test.  That number he calls the CP30, or the power one can handle for thirty minutes.  For the rolling/hilly workout (E1 in the text), he sets the power goal for the first set of intervals at CP180, or 12.5% of the CP30 number.  For me that would be 260 watts for the first set of 2 min intervals and then 270 watts for the second set of 3min low cadence efforts.  As a newbie to powertraining, it's fascinating to see how the wattage numbers correspond to the heart rate numbers I've been using for the past nine years. 

There is a correspondence but the HR drift during long workouts on the rollers is readily apparent as well.  The exact same wattage efforts would result in slightly increasing HR numbers over each set of six intervals.  Strictly following the heart rate limits for the workout would have resulted in a less productive workout, with lower quality efforts as the workout progressed.

This must all seem like a lot of gibberish to some folks.  I remember someone saying once, back when I first started training for racing bikes.  "You have to be really fit to suck" at bike racing.  To do well, requires something extra.  For some, the extra is a physical gift, really high VO2Max (the ability to take in oxygen), extremely high power to weight ratios, freakish builds.  But for others, we have to accomplish our potential through harder and better work and that's where the power meter and HR monitor come in.  A friend of mine, an accomplished rider and someone I consider a mentor, told me that there wasn't a need for these training toys; I just needed to get more miles in.  I agree; I need to get more miles in, but with a family, job and life outside of cycling, those miles have to be the best miles possible and these are tools to help make them so.

They're also a motivator to get my carcass on the bike and workout on a cold, dark morning in the middle of winter...