When power isn't power...

In theory should not the gravity aspect of climbing make keeping watts up on climbs easier (at least that's what Dr. Ferrari said at one point).

Cadence? If you are spinning much faster on the flat then perhaps you are not using a low enough gear? When I get tired and my cadence drops too far my watts suffer on climbs versus the flats on doubles unless I get out of the saddle, whereas normally my watts on climbs are higher for the same PE.

Is it possible that you are psyching out and holding back on the climbs?

swampy1970 said:

So I've come across something odd that befuddled me a little when out on a ride in the hills the past couple of days.

On the flat I've no problem with cruising along at 290 to 310 watts. It takes some concentration to make sure it stays there, as I'm not used to training at that level for long periods outdoors, but as long as I'm in the big ring, life is good.

Where the problem comes in is when I have to drop it down into the small ring as the road climbs. Perceived effort goes up - the power goes down, which is the opposite of what I'd originally believed. i.e. it's easier to put out bigger numbers on the hills. 300 watts on the flat takes concentration - 300 watts on the hills is pretty much living hell after 15 minutes.

The only two things that I could come up with is the higher torque required when climbing. Most of the time when I have been out getting lots of riding in the hills I've been pacing myself for 3 to 5 hours of actual climbing on sometimes really steep hills so I've been shying away from really hard efforts and the associated high torque efforts. The other thought is the heat - it's been getting pretty toasty out here the past few days - over 100F by 10.30am. On the flat you have a breeze, on the climbs, well... I'm sure that a juiced Iban Mayo could create his own breeze climbing a la Alpe D'Huez in 2003 at warp speed but when I'm climbing the wind goes somewhere else and leaves me to fry.

Thoughts, ideas and comments welcome...

I will look at some ride files, but I definitely have no problem generating bigger power numbers on hills while riding the small ring (and I have a compact crank so my small ring is probably smaller than yours). In fact on an hour TT, I always end up with a better average when the route includes some rolling hills as opposed to a flat run along our river path. Unless it is just a cadence issue and don't have gearing to keep it at a good cadence and are forced to go super low?

Maybe its the powercranks?😄

On the climbs I like to keep around 75rpm when seated. As a test I rode in the same position (hands on the tops near the stem and sat in the middle of the saddle) and stuffed it in a huge gear and rode like that on the flat at ~75rpm. For the same PE I get around 50 watts more on the flat than on the hills.

Maybe I just need some short quality time on a hill, rather than the longer sessions that I've been having...

Maybe I've just been doing a little too much and my legs are not upto it. LOL

Another problem solved (or maybe somewhat resolved...) seems like I'm slowly ticking them off one by one as I 'discover' them.

Bike fit. I thought my position on the bike was pretty good. It'd evolved from the postion that I had when I used to race, with the exception that the stem was a little shorter and a fair bit higher. I'd been dealing with niggling back and shoulder pain and recent hard efforts had lead me to notice that the bike was oddly leaning to the left when I was riding in a straight line - leading to slight saddle sores and chaffing.

After what seemed like an hour of measuring, flexibility testing, befuddled looks, remeasuring, consuluting and re-consulting the Specialized BG fit guide it was decided that I was as asymetrical as they come... After another hour of adding shims to my left shoe, setting the cleat positions (using a weird looking set of what I can only described as a machined aluminum pedal with a turn plate on the top and two pointers that stick out the side), moving the saddle back and the bars closer a bit I ended up with a new position. The only thing that didn't change was the angle of the saddle and the seatpost height - everything else changed. Front of saddle to bar distance was about the same but the bike felt 'smaller'.

The result? I went out this morning for a two hour ride - an easy ride out towards the hills and if all felt well I'd give it some grief using perceived effort up several hills where previous times were recorded. Being that I was surprised a couple of weeks ago with the results of my Monod test and subsequent 2 hour session to verify said test I was even more blown away by the results of this mornings efforts.

All timings were done from a slow rolling start and marked using the interval function - results within a few seconds are normally considered equal due to the nature of the start and finish 'button pressings' - but none of the times fell within this margin of noise.

Climb 1. Middle half of Mix Canyon. 2.97 miles - gradients ranging from steep to 'wall like'. I was considering doing the last mile but I have no data for that and I need to change the brake blocks before doing that descent. 😉

I knew I was going better. Bigger gears all the way up, felt much more comfortable, especially out of the saddle, but I could tell I was going faster. This was the same for the rest of the climbs during the day. The feeling of once again having "momentum" for those short increases in gradient was nice.

Previous best: 29:12
Today: 24.27

I'll gladly take that ~1.5 mph increase for the same perceived on-the-bike effort.

Climb 2. Average grade 8.9% - 0.90 miles

Previous best: 7:11
Today: 6:03

Climb 3. Average Grade 4.5% - 0.93miles

Previous best: 4:55
Today: 4:02

I'm not sure what this new position will be like for efforts on the flat - I really dont have a whole bunch of places that I have 'data' to check against... but since my main goal of the year is coming up in the next few weeks - and that's ~16 to 18 hours in the mountains - I'm not really to bothered about riding on the flat right now.

swampy1970 said:

After what seemed like an hour of measuring, flexibility testing, befuddled looks, remeasuring, consuluting and re-consulting the Specialized BG fit guide it was decided that I was as asymetrical as they come...

I feel your pain. I'm way lopsided. My right leg is more than 1/2" shorter than the left with my foot canted a bit off as a result of some traumatic remodeling. Also as the result of an accident, my right shoulder is 2 cm closer to my spine than my left. As a result I've got a 1/4" wedge under my right cleat and my handlebars are moved to the left, in the stem clamp, by 7 mm. Oh, and my right brifter is rotated up about 5 more degrees than the left as a result of a bad decision made when I was working as a skydiving bum. Without the changes, an hour on the bike would leave me in cruel, unkind state.

Things are bit more balanced since I like to hang to the right.

Traumatic remodelling... I guess that's one way of putting it.

Not sure when I got all lopsided - I never really used to have a massive amount of back issues but since I got back on the bike a few years ago I've always had a nagging doubt that something, if not several things, were not quite right. Turns out that my right leg is ~ 2 cm longer than the left. Maybe the left is 2cm shorter than the right... :p I still have to fine tune the brake lever setups and final stem length - but for now, since the bike actually makes my back feel better than sitting in this computer chair I'm not going to change the stem for a while - or at least until I've got some of the up-coming long rides out of the way.

I'm not sure what I'm happiest with - being comfy or being able to go faster. Sure speed is always good but I was starting to have doubts about being on a bike for 3/4 of a day in the hills...

All I need to do now is head off down to Psoas Massage and Bodywork in San Francisco and I'll feel like a million dollars.