I don’t have a power meter and I’m not buying one due to their cost.
I want to maintain constant effort up and down hills, etc. and throughout a race. I have a cateye cadence meter but I live in an area that has no hills or bridges that I feel comfortable biking over. What approach do I need to use to maintain constant effort throughout a bike leg? My goal is to maintain constant effort without being drawn into chasing people down, etc.
I don’t have a power meter and I’m not buying one due to their cost.
I want to maintain constant effort up and down hills, etc. and throughout a race. I have a cateye cadence meter but I live in an area that has no hills or bridges that I feel comfortable biking over. What approach do I need to use to maintain constant effort throughout a bike leg? My goal is to maintain constant effort without being drawn into chasing people down, etc.
A good rule(s) of thumb would be, never overtake up a hill, never get out of the saddle, relax and have a snack.
Ya, and supposedly you want to speed up as you crest, right? Maintaining cadence the whole time.
The best approach to maintaining constant effort is to be in tune with your body and maintain your perceived exertion. If you have a heart rate monitor that can confirm how well you are doing in maintaining effort. Trying to maintain effort down hills however is going to be a losing battle. Those who DO use power meters will tell you that it’s impossible to maintain their power output down hills…they go super fast, maybe top out their gearing and still can’t maintain their 250W or whatever.
All that said, I don’t think the way to ride over rolling terrain is to maintain constant effort. You will ride faster if you push harder up the hills and recover down the hills. What that does to your subsequent run I can’t say…but it is the fastest way to ride the course. Personally, I can hammer the hell out of my legs periodically and as long as there’s a rolling recovery I’m good to go again, pretty much for hours. But when I’m on a trainer trying to put out a reasonable power output for a long period of time with no break, I start to feel stale, tight, fatigued.
Weight means everything when it comes to climbing so if you can figure out a way to melt the extra kilos off your ass while at the same time preserving power, then that would help a lot.
Of course, if you are riding a 20 pound tank, upgrading to a 14 pound bike would also help.
Maintaining the same effort up and down hills is not a good idea. You should push a tad more up the hill and recover on the back side.
The other poster was right, you need to work on calibrating your RPE. You don’t have a cadence meter on your run and yet you can run up and down hills, right?