Welcome to the forum
Chain gang, Tues 26th June 2018, 7.30pm
We are half-way through the chain gang 'season' and enjoying up to 4 laps with the late sunset. The first lap is smooth and as inclusive to all as can be. It tends to crank up thereafter. Hold on to your hats. Great training.
The forecast is super hot with only a light breeze.
Sunset 9.25pm. But bring lights anyway.
If you've not been on a chaingang for a while, or have never tried one: why not give it a go. Just hang on at the back if you want - particularly an idea at the start until the group gets into a rhythm.
7.30pm riders leave The Three Tuns, Ashwell.
7.35pm approx, meet other riders at Steeple Morden church/pub just before the turn to begin the first lap.
Come on down and sharpen your group road-riding skills, communication - calling out on potholes, on-coming traffic and vigilance on every turn - as well as boosting your summer fitness.
Lap route:
https://bikemap.net/en/r/996158/
The forecast is super hot with only a light breeze.
Sunset 9.25pm. But bring lights anyway.
If you've not been on a chaingang for a while, or have never tried one: why not give it a go. Just hang on at the back if you want - particularly an idea at the start until the group gets into a rhythm.
7.30pm riders leave The Three Tuns, Ashwell.
7.35pm approx, meet other riders at Steeple Morden church/pub just before the turn to begin the first lap.
Come on down and sharpen your group road-riding skills, communication - calling out on potholes, on-coming traffic and vigilance on every turn - as well as boosting your summer fitness.
Lap route:
https://bikemap.net/en/r/996158/
Comments
After the chaingang, I'm going to ride on to the Pig & Abbott pub for a mid-summer pint. Whether on the chain gang or not: see you there. Likely just after 9pm.
Thanks
Maybe up to 12 riders last night, with riders dropping in and out over the 4 laps.
Great to see the Yoof out. Harley - I think going further than ever? And a big shout out to 15 years-old Sam D, who has got better and better over the summer and smashed out 2.5 laps last night. Next year, he'll have us all grovelling for mercy.
As it was, our chief-grovelmeister was Nat again. In a quest to maintain 300 watts - whatever that means - he had us in pieces on the fourth lap. Great workout.
Reminds me: last weekend I raced at a crit in Gravesend. Apparently, our 'normalised power' was 276 watts (1hr race). Is this high? Average? Please tell me it was high. Because I was in bits throughout.
That said, another variable is how much you exposed yourself to the wind - in theory, you could do very little work hidden away in the bunch for the whole race, then pop out and win the sprint but still show a very low average power - compared to being in the break for a whole race, but getting swamped at the end and not winning - but having a massive average power...
20 minutes, 309W
Very steady effort, you can see there are no real peaks or drops in the power output. After all, it's a flat course. (The little blips will be where I was trying to get out of the draft of any riders in front.)
So from this you'd expect the normalised power to be fairly similar to the average power... Which it is, it's 310W NP
This is an example of a e12 crit. You can see pretty obviously where I got spat
To break this down into something meaningful. Below is the first 50 mins of that above ride, 240w 300 normalised power.
So the average for that first part of the ride doesn't really tell much of a story. 240w is not high power, but the normalised suggests that there was a lot more effort being put out than the average. As is crit racing, all of those peaks are 450-800w and then back down to just cruising. Repetitively. It's constant attacks at mk.........
Below, And then when I got dropped, the last 25 ish minutes of that ride (I spat myself actually, remembering back, I thought I had a puncture 20 seconds before the fast bottom corner, didn't want to hit it with a flat, and when realised I didn't, couldn't get back on!). I just rode at a steady low top of zone 3 bottom of zone 4 where the average was 290W and normalised was 295W NP because it was a steady effort again, with no large differences in power output.
Heart rate is an okay measurement for your ride but it's nothing compared to power. Buy a power meter before buying wheels ("invest in your legs"). Power and heart rate combined can show you how fit and fatigued you are, and if you are ill (ie, if power doesn't match the HR you should be at, you're either fatigued or ill)
And to add another point of reference:
For the Essex Roads race Martin, Dave & I competed in, I had an average power of 246w (for the whole race, ~2hrs), whereas my normalised power was 290w. Normalised power is an attempt to equate hard variable efforts to a steady state effort. I definitely worked much harder than the 246w average for this race, the 290w normalised feels about right, I'd say.
I worked harder in the earlier laps (~25w higher). It took me a while to 'relax' into riding in the group properly, so I had to worked harder to not get dropped out of some of the corners.
In other words, a better racer (such as Martin) would not have been working as hard as me during the early laps as they can work the group better - more power in this case showed that I was not riding well.
To equate this back to the chain gang: The earlier laps tend to be around 240w normalised power for me. When the pace picks up (and the group tends to thin out) I need to push more like 280-300w NP. I think this shows what excellent training the chain gang is - both in group riding skills and fitness (as well as how the pace gradually increases).
Hopefully, more race experience and more chain gangs will help in my next race (on Sunday, the Lea Valley RR near Saffron Walden).
Which kind of brings it back on to the chaingang. I got it wrong: Sam D actually did 3.5 laps on Tuesday. Which is amazing. The third lap averaged nearly 24mph. The fourth lap went over. He's achieving it through fitness - but also improving skill, and power conservation, through able riding in a bunch.
Mat: good luck in the Lea Valley race. I wish I could be your wingman. I'm going to get a few road races in the calendar soon and will let the forum know as I think there's a general idea of trying to get a few CCA together and helping each other out.
More detail on my race over in Gravesend in my race blog here.