Results...

Results!

After about 2 months of using Trainer Road and 5 weeks of following one of their training plans, I believe I am seeing some truly measurable results.

The graph at left shows 3 rides of the famous (or infamous) Sufferfest video ISLAGIATT.  My latest ride was yesterday and is represented by the green line(s).  As you can see, the bold green line (which represents average power throughout the ride), is consistently higher than the other two and by the end of the ride my average power was almost 9 watts or 5% higher than on the other 2 rides.

At "first glance" you might think a 5% improvement is pretty minimal, but over the course of a two hour ride that's an extra 1.1 miles on my total distance!  Not that I race much, but in a business where wins are sometimes measured in centimeters and fractions of a second that's huge!

Now granted it's indoor training and not on the road.  And there are some variables that could affect my (absolute) power readings.  But as I have noted in a previous post, I have found the results produced by Trainer Road to be very consistent.  Each time I ride I use the same gear ratio (39/17)@90 rpm to check my power right after warming up and then again during my cool down... and it's always the same within +/- 1 watt.  You can't ask for better than that.

So I believe the results to date to be real and would highly recommend the Trainer Road system and the Sufferfest videos to anyone looking to improve their riding results this season!

http://www.trainerroad.com/features
http://www.thesufferfest.com/