Friday, June 6, 2008

You spin me right round...


...baby, right round...

Oh, the tunes of Dead or Alive. It's a stretch, but the new compact crank was definitely spinning better up Hwy 9 than my old standard gearing. I took it easy and climbed about 40 watts less than I usually like to do up the 6+ mile climb, but that's part of the new plan on keeping the back healthy. No need to push it hard right now...

Back to the data. The last time I climbed 9 my average cadence was 75. Today it was 82. So you may ask, "Todd, can you actually feel that difference?" Yeah, I felt it.

Not so much on the climb though it was somewhat noticeable, but more so afterwards. I get a pretty good gauge of how hard my climbing usually is on training rides by how the legs feel when I walk down my stairs. On those hard days my legs almost don't support me as I come down my 13 steps. By the time I get to the bottom the legs feel pretty weak. Today there wasn't the fatigue I was expecting.

Ok, so I didn't push it hard on the climb, but given the lack of training/fitness, I was expecting the perceived exertion to be pretty high. But the stair test was found lacking; the legs felt pretty good. So maybe there is something more to spinning up these hills.

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