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Clear signs of progress using the PowerCranks. Today, my plan had me doing a 2.5 hour ride with power intervals. Put it into my hardest gear and go hard for 6 minutes, then 5, then 4, with the rest interval being half the length of the hard effort. Then repeat the entire cycle. Because of the crappy weather, I decided to do this workout on my trainer. Being on the trainer for 2 and a half hours is not my idea of a good time, but I just couldn't bring myself to face the 40 degree, rainy weather again this weekend. I had enough of that last weekend.

So I did my warmup for about 15 minutes, then I shifted into my hardest gear and went at it for 6 minutes. I was holding around 230-250 watts or so for the 6 minutes. Then 3 minutes rest and then do it again for 5 minutes. I made my way through this workout and it wasn't completely horrible. Very, very hard, but not horrible. Then, after about an hour total of intervals, I still had 1.5 hours to go on the trainer. So to pass the time, I started doing 10 minute stints with 30 seconds of rest for my rear end in between the sets. I tried to alternate gears a bit for a variety of efforts. I was still holding around 160-180 watts for these intervals, so overall I averaged 177 watts for the 2.5 hours on the trainer. Normally, on the roads, I average much higher power, but for the trainer, that was pretty good. I am making clear progress. My first decent rides on the trainer after starting to adapt to the PowerCranks were about 125 or 130 watts for 1:15. Now, I'm up to 177 watts for 2.5 hours. That's about a 35% improvement (over a longer time, even). If that improvement translates to a 35% improvement off of a 2:40 half-iron bike split, I will be stoked. We shall see. Also, if I think about the iron distance bike split, my ride at Wisconsin in 2007 was 6:45. 35% off that is gigantic. We'll see how Louisville goes, but I HAVE to be better; just not sure by how much.