You are certainly in a different group than I. What you are saying though, is that you probably had (among other things) a more efficient (shall we call it “rounder”?) pedal stroke than many others. Your ability to ride so well so quickly is amazing to mere mortals like me.
As far as predicted results: besides the mathmatical differences in improvement of 2mph at 18mph compared to 2mph at 26mph, etc., improvement may be related to your initial ability to ride with the PC pedal stroke.
What I am trying to say is: if you are able to adapt very quickly, like you did, you may not see nearly the % gains of someone that feels the PC stroke is extremely hard at first. This would be because you were apparently already fairly efficient, compared to me.
At the LEAST, a PC pedal stroke is more efficient compared to the stroke that uses (and therefore wastes) extensor power to lift the rising pedal/foot/leg/crank. At the MOST, a well developed PC pedal stroke may actually ADD power to the chain, as someone well trained may actually be able to pull back-up-over sufficiently to do more than just nullify the wasted power the extensors used to do to get the foot past these areas. THIS is where the unknown is…can you develop this ability to a greater level because you were apparently already pedalling in a “rounder” fashion than most of us, thereby attaining gains as astounding to you as my gains were to me?
For those naysayers that are waiting to pounce on the “total energy requirement” equation, and are going to point out that hip flexors aren’t as efficient as extensors…hold your horses. I don’t know if hip flexors are more, less, or the same in efficiency as the extensors, but, it doesn’t matter. The limiter to exercise, at least in something as short as, say, an IRONMAN distance, is NOT “total energy requirement of the organism”. The limiter is local muscle fatigue caused by a lack of energy delivered/available at the local sarcomere level. Yes, cardiac output must be adequate to provide enough blood flow to deliver the nutrients and remove the wastes, but, in a trained individual, cardiac output isn’t the limiting factor. Therefore, recruitment of the hip flexors is an obviously fine strategy to decrease the load on the extensors (saving glycogen by decreasing the forces at the sarcomere level) AND/OR increase power to the chain by using the hip flexors in an additive manner.
It will be interesting to follow your progress. Please keep us informed…good, bad, or indifferent. (I’ll bet there will be NO bad progress reports!) Don’t forget to include running results. They usually show up first.
