a man is nothing without power,and the dreaded ramp test

January is the month when everything really starts gearing towards racing ( for me anyway ) , The Boardman TTE was confirmed and i will use the Bike Science test bike for the very early races till my own frame comes in March.
The TTE hits alot of the points i felt the P4 missed, it has the intergrated brakes in the forks and intergrated bars, the P4 was a awesome bike but when really trying hard to make it as aero as possible these little things annoyed me,but i will go into why alot of things have been chosen over others this year in a later blog when i get to really test the TTE.
December and early January where spent without my powertap G3 training wheel , this put me down to soley training on HR which i didnt think would be the end of the world till it happened.
Dont get me wrong i think HR is a awesome tool in training but its just so random, power is power ,if you go out and your not performing well the numbers dont lie and it shows , HR however is very fickle, if your very tired your HR is lower, very fresh its higher, in the cold its harder to raise your HR, really low cadence gives a different reading to high cadence for the same power etc etc,
im a very numbers man ,training to me is about getting the job done, matt often takes the piss as i basically stick to the same roads and same routes like a machine exactly in the range for the training zones,its just the way i like to train. the trouble with this is on soley HR i just look at the numbers to the point that on a session i was going so hard to try and get the numbers i pretty much blew up and got frustrated asking why i was struggling to hit the numbers when i knew i was pushing harder than i should be, was i just feeling week , was i not trying hard enough.
Finally got my powertap back on Saturday  and i was desperate to see where i was in the HR vs Power stakes , it was a fairly steady ride so a good change to get into a pace and hold it.
the relief was unreal as i smashed down the A38 looking at the numbers realising i had really been  pushing hard the last month, i was putting out around 25w more than i should of been to match the HR which is great as i now know i havent been slacking but it probably means the next FTP power test i will be up again so double bonus.
Which leads me nicely onto my lactate performance test,Bike Science have added these to their list of services with the introduction of Alex at the store, so i was really quick to get one booked in.
this was going to be a great info Gathering exercise and a base point of where i was at the start of the year and we can track it over the season. down side was this ment a ramp test.
I rocked up at the store ready to go, Alex suggested i did the session in the tt position so we get the data that relaates best to what we wanted to knwo which was TT performance, most will know i bloody hate the turbo so as i jumped on the battle had already started in my head,
the jumps in power where every 3 mins and the power changed automatically on the turbo so my job was just to keep peddaling ( sounds easy ) at race cadence.
the start was easy as it should be, was chatting away happily, then the intensity increased, holding the ramps in 3 min blocks really gives the best data,i said to alex i didnt want to know the time or power i would just keep going,it got to the total silience stage and my eyes burning a hole in the back wall with a total focus on holding my cadence.
i stopped at the point my cadence started dropping away, two reasons for this , i wanted the info to be at race pace , and i didnt want to be just grinding it out to a complete stop just to try and get a better result on paper. we had already spoke before about targets etc and the results where very promising and we got some really key information we can look back on and re test in a few months.
i think the key for me this year is getting things right and not guessing at things, im very luck to have some good people behind me so ive really got to make the most of it.
right i could go on a super ramble here but i would probably lose the interest of 99% of people so i think i will do another blog in a day or two, got so many other things to write about including , Custom fitted and designed skin suit from www.nopinz.com wheels for the TTE gone for the Mighty Hed Jet disc and the Flo 90 front clincher , up coming Aero testing , and ive just started working with James at www.jwhitingnutrition.com in a area i think ive got alot of gains to make, doing the national 100 and jersey pocket making a special bar for longer events , and just started testing the www.sciencefitness.co.uk Glyco scource range , so loads going on , and i want to talk about the kit coming out of Prologue Performance in Ireland from a very small company with big ideas and what David is currently doing with my sram red raer mech