I haven't seen the official results but I was told my time was 23:34 (about 25.45mph) which is slightly slower than the last two results when I was using a 20 degree steeper seat angle. Oh well, so much for that and I'm glad because now I can focus on the position that allows me the most power. I never was too crazy about riding laidback. It always felt like I was taking too much muscle out of the equation.
After a couple of days rest I used my Powertap (my second used one) for the first time. I installed it on the bike pictured at top. It's no speed demon, for sure, but what I like about it is that it has the exact same body angle (~124 degrees) as the one below it. That bike (the one below) was GOD, and I felt like god riding it. It allowed the perfect balance of glute, hamstring and quad activation (much glute and hamstrings, little quads) and because of that it not only allowed me to produce more power it enabled me to train with higher intensity and more frequency. As I have said many times before that, I believe, is because my glutes and hamstrings are predominantly slow-twitch (and therefore my nemesis when I was a powerlifter) and my quads are fast-twitch (my nemesis in cycling).
Mind you, I've never ridden this bike in the current configuration before (excuse) and I'm back to using 170mm cranks after using 140's for the past month (another excuse) so my pedaling technique and overall efficiency wasn't too great. Anyway, in the middle of a 30-mile ride I did a 3-mile threshold test. I ended up with a 275 watt average (at a bodyweight of 84kg). I was a little higher on the ascent portions and a little lower on the flats and descents.
The important thing I learned (besides how pathetic I am... but I already knew that) during the entire Powertapped ride was how lazy and sloppy I've allowed myself to get with my pedaling. The Powertap lets you know what efficient (watts produced/muscular effort) is. I've been allowing myself to evolve from an efficient turbo to a lazy diesel. This wasn't a surprise as I've notice my cadence drop in the past two years but now I can easily see the consequence. I could see the power drop as I went from an attentive spinner to a mindless quasi-masher. Job one this off-season will be to rectify that.
The other thing I need to figure out is how to inject more intensity into my training without burning out. The way I've been training (lots of steady state but relatively low intensity) for the last seven years has worked okay but it's only going to take me so far and the low power outputs are okay when you assume an extremely aerodynamic position but I'm not doing that anymore. I need to get in real shape.
For starters I'm going to try doing a ride of at least 30 miles while staying above 200 watts the entire time and then follow that with however many short rides (6 miles) at below 100 watts it takes until I'm ready for a ride at 200+ again. 200 watts is pretty easy but it does require concentration if I want to maintain it without going into mash-mode. If I hope to nudge the output up over time I definitely need to avoid mash-mode and it's ability to find my weak physical link and destroy it.
Another thing I've changed is protein consumption. In past seven years I've probably averaged 70-100 grams per day (counting only animal sources). Now I have upped that to 140-200
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