Higher cadence...

I spent all summer doing high cadence drills on the road bike.. Last night was the first time at the track that I think we started to see some progress.

The chart on the right is a quadrant analysis chart showing pedal force to pedal velocity for 2 track training rides last December, a representative race from the 6-day last January and the training ride last night.

The dark blue and green show last years training rides. The light blue is the 6-day points race. The light purple last night.

What we see is that last year we had the highest power output (section I, top right) for the race. And last night we had numbers slightly higher than that... 

Also we see that at levels we see higher cadence numbers (more samples on the right) for the race and last night... 

So while not conclusive it seems to indicate that we are a) spinning faster and b) putting out higher power at the same cadence.

Both of which where the goal of doing higher cadence drills.

SFU via Barnett - 10x1m high cadence drills

Out to SFU via Barnett, doing 10 one minute high cadence drills. These where supposed to be at random power so the rolling highway was suitable. I think I managed to do over 110 average RPM for each interval. I still get the bouncing in the saddle syndrome about 122-125... 

Followed that with some L4 climbs (10 minutes and then 5 minutes) up to SFU and then home.

Ford Road - L2/L3 - higher cadence

Another Ford Road L2/L3 to open the week.

The trip to the physio yesterday seems to have helped. The shoulder pain (trapezoids?) that has been really bothering me for the last few weeks and making riding really unpleasant was almost absent today... It was making it very hard to keep any focus and effort etc. Which is why the TSS totals for the last two weeks has been falling.

The legs (probably because of the low TSS load last week) also felt great.

The higher cadence drills from the last few weeks also seemed to be helping. I saw a definite improvement in my ability to stay up around 95-100 RPM for extended periods... Still not getting a lot of power at high RPM... but it appears to be getting higher.