I do intervals ranging from 30 sec to 20 mins and try to maintain a certain wattage.
Why does it seems "easier" to maintain a wattage when going up a steady incline, rather than on the flats.
Is it easier to pull a weight uphill than to move an object fast on the flats??
Does the feeling of velocity in the flats just make me think I am pulling a higher wattage and thus my PE is higher?
Cycling Training · Public discussion
intervals - flat or uphill?
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I have made the same observation and prefer to do my intervals uphill or upwind for that reason. My thoughts on why it is "easier" to ride at a constant power uphill is that a slight increase in power accelerates the bike on the flat more so than uphill or upwind. When the bike speed accelerates, we can either hold cadence (speed) and the watts will briefly drop off or we can try to hold power in which case we have effectively increased the bike speed; eventually, it will take more power to hold the higher speed. I eventually learned to manage power by managing cadence and simply accepting a fluctuation in watts. This approach to power management has moved me toward riding at a wide range of cadences (e.g., 90-120), but has allowed me to get pretty good at managing power fairly precisely since at ~100 cadence each rpm = 1/100th of my target power. So, let's say I'm trying to ride at 250w. Every rpm is 2.5w and I can tweak my power pretty precisely with cadence.
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