I tried to sift through the hunderds of past powercrank posts for a related topic and didn’t find what I was looking for. I’ve been riding my PC’s full time for the last 15 months and noticed that when performing race pace intervals (usually for half or full IM), I find it very difficult to achieve a target HR on the PC’s that is easily maintained on standard cranks.
I just started training with power and have a target IM wattage that I’m now playing around with. It was also very difficult to maintain target IM wattage (215) during race pace intervals where I did 2 hrs @ 205W followed by 1.5 hrs @ 215W. I was dying in the last half hour.
So on the PC’s the perceived exertion is really high, and the HR and wattage are low compared to where I expect to race.
The question then is this: is it a problem if I can’t practice IM pacing but then expect to go out and maintain a given HR (125 bpm) and Wattage (210W) in a race on standard cranks?
Normally, I would say the answer is obviously yes, but I can race at 266W in a half IM for 2.5 hrs and still get off and run just fine. I don’t do any intervals at half IM pace in training as I’m focused on IM this year.
If you plan to race Ironman on regular cranks, you better ride your regular cranks too.
I don’t care what people say, the two are different, and you have to train on the equipment you race on. For the record, I have been on PC’s for a while, now on my 4th season. I don’t train with power, but I have good results when I mix up the training between regular cranks and PC’s. First 1.5 seasons were exclusively on PCs and racing on regular cranks. When I switched to training more on regular cranks, I started getting better results.
Agreed. I plan to switch over to regualr cranks for some focused training this weekend and hopefully will find it’s easier to get the HR and Watts up.
Do you think that if you could eventually train the hip flexors to allow you to perform your race pace intervals at target HR and Watts on the PC’s that it would make you that much stronger?
I’ll take a stab at my own question… Even if you could train at your targets, it’s not like you’re going to change your tactics on race day though when you slap on the regular cranks and then say “OK, I was training on the PC’s at 210W, so now I’m going to ride at 220W.” That’s too risky for me.
Having no powermeter, I have to say going just by HRM and perceived exertion, I could go just as hard with the PC’s. I may have been putting out less watts, but my heartrate could be just as high. Conversly, for all I know, I may have been cranking out more watts going hard with PC’s. Bottom line is on regular cranks, my quads and butt burn first. On PC’s my hamstrings and hipflexors burn first. If you flip back and forth between the two you get the best of both worlds, so that way when you go to regular cranks, you can recruit more muscles. You will still be limited by your engine regardless. Anyone can push 500W. The problem is pushing 500W for any appreciable time frame. Being able to use more muscles is beneficial in a TT. For example, I’ll do 10 strokes push down hard with left leg and pull up hard with right leg, and then flip over and over and over. It seems to allow me to sustain a better average speed without frying one specific muscle group. If anything this is the biggest benefit of PC’s, that and the fact that you are not wasting quad power to push you recovery leg up. Both are working together for forward propulsion.