“How did it go?” I asked a young Frenchman when he’d finally retrieved something akin to a normal breath after the 7.2kilometer individual time trial at the recent Tour of Friendship race in Thailand.
“Ah, putain!” he exclaimed, working his facial muscles into a look of disgust and wrangling a soggy baguette out of his back pocket. “My SRM console screwed up, stopped working, so I didn’t know how hard to go…”
I just stood there looking at him, unable to find a comment that wasn’t going to insult his intelligence. I mean, seriously? The guy had become so dependent on his power meter that, when it ceased to function, he didn’t know how to judge his own body’s effort.
This obviously is an extreme case but as ever in life, it is often only at the extremes where we really begin to learn anything. This guy had gone over the edge, way beyond the line where a power meter went from being a tool, a guide, to a point where it had become his own personal cult leader.
“Yes,” you may be thinking, “that guy went too far. But I use my SRM to tell me my limits.”
But therein lies the problem. Accepting limits.
Two examples why. The first involves a guy who used to be on my team, who would never attack but who always finished in the pack, seemingly content with a 24th place and not getting dropped out the back.
Now, some kids on my teams come up and ask me for advice, and I can talk to them all day about training and recovery, about how to limit lactic acid build-up in a race and about when and how to attack. It’s a pleasure, to have young riders seeking ways to get better, and to be able to help them.
On the other hand you have guys who blatantly need help who never ask anything. Whether it’s shyness or arrogance I don’t know, but I’m not about to start telling someone ways to improve if they don’t first seek it out.
But this guy, he obviously had talent, and one day I’d had enough of him soft-pedalling in.
“Why do you never do anything in the race?”
“What do you mean? I always finish.”
“Finishing top 40 is worse than attacking and a DNF! You never attack. How do you expect to ever learn anything or to get better?”
“Yeah but my heart rate monitor tells me I’m near my limit. If I attack and get caught, I’ll get dropped.”
So, ‘knowing his limits’, and worse – accepting them – was leading this kid to play it safe every race. Yes, if he did attack with 5km gone he would probably get dropped once he got caught. But so what? Getting dropped through hitting the wall toughens you up. The first time he might only have managed 50km.
But the next time he might manage 60. Then 70. Then… well, who the heck knows? And that’s it – nobody knows how good he might become with real dedication and a willingness to risk it all. But if he rides forever thinking ‘I know’, with his current attitude, then he’ll never improve.
Second example. A guy is on his indoor trainer, riding with power. He does a test. He finds he can do X watts for 60 minutes. He trains each week for 6 weeks to get ready for a race, using the power meter each time he rides, indoors and out.
Studies the lines, crunches the numbers. Examines data. Goes on FB to tell his pals he is improving. Then, race day comes.
Boom! Straight off the line the pace is mad, he’s looking down and can barely see straight, then it goes uphill and ‘holycrapIcan’tdothis!’ – and then sure enough, he pulls the plug.
The fact is that his beloved numbers have obscured from him the fact that almost always in a race, without fail, you are going to be riding harder – a lot – than you can in training, no matter how regimented and serious you may be.
Improving is not always about a steady progression, in anything in this world. Every once in a while, amongst the grind and the slow push, you need to get turned inside out, strung out, dropped from a great height and just plain old battered.
You need, from time to time, to glimpse the other side of the wall. To hang in there with someone who is on another level for as long as you can and to go home with a footprint on your backside – but one well earned.
I remember my first race. Once my 15-year old self had just about gotten over the size of the muscles on the legs of the older guys around me, we then went up a hill that I rode all the time alone, but this time at a speed I couldn’t even begin to get my head around.
But I went up it. With the pack. And we did it another 5 times in total, and I almost won after being in a three-man break for 30 of the 50km race, but bonked so hard with just a few km to go that I fell over and just lay there for a minute until a car came by and asked if I was ok. Despite having entered another dimension of time and space, I think I said ‘UGH’, and they left me there, my feet still strapped to the pedals and half of my sweaty face covered in small pebbles and a cigarette butt.
Possibly a rabbit dropping or two.
Next race on the same coure, about three weeks, it was the same story all over again, except for the ending: this time I won. My solo attack (I took off a mile into the 33 mile race) almost petered out and the pack was just 100m behind me as I crossed the line, but goshdammit, I won. I fell off the bike straight away yet again, but this time with a huge smile on my face.
We are surrounded by limits. We encounter our first at home, then a truckload more at school, the ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ – some perfectly reasonable, some less so – along with the ‘you can’t do that!’ lot, which are far more insidious. And then, as if there weren’t enough limitations imposed us by society, we then begin to impose them upon ourselves.
I’m too fat.
I’m too old.
I’m too ‘me’.
Well, shove all that. You’ve all no doubt heard those tales about mothers driving down the highway. The car flips. The woman gets out. Her child is inside. There’s a flame. It’s growing. She runs to the car and tries the door, no good. Then, knowing that she must do something or her child will be dead, she gets a grip and heaves and strains and lifts the car.
Extraordinary strength brought on by extraordinary circumstances. Think she’d have done that if she was using a power meter?
Exactly. Not a chance.
We are extraordinary beings. We are of stars, of this universe, from this universe, and that universe, most wondrously, is within each of us. Whenever we say ‘I can’t do that’ – however essentially, unarguably true it may seem – we are denying the limitless potential of the human mind and spirit, of will and the determination to succeed.
You don’t start riding to accept limitations, you start, by and large, to be free. To escape. To just ride, and ride fast. Then we become more ‘serious’ and start to get into the science of it all, and that’s fine, I love science, I wish it would shine its light on more of the world and our befuddled attempts at existing in it. Yet to allow it to rule us is to deny the very unscientific elements that, ultimately, make people achieve such wondrous and unfathomable feats.
It’s the immeasurable that makes it all so worthwhile.
Amundsen and Scott didn’t have power meters. Neither did the first men to set off on rickety vessels across the great oceans. Nor the early climbers of the high mountains. Neither did Eddy Merckx.
Now, I’m no Luddite, and yes, modern technology and power meters and the like can be extremely useful, but let them guide, not rule. Put them away a few days a week. Try not using an SRM in a hilly race. I’d wager that something like 85% of people who have them don’t use them properly.
I know because I was one. SRM sponsored me for a year, and the console just stopped working after 2 weeks. It was 6 months before I sent it back, and to be honest, I just kept it on the bike to scare people. Because it meant I was serious. It worked, too.
[NOTE this article was written in 2013 when not many riders our here had PMs- CP]
Riding is so much in the mind that your philosophy of riding can have a profound effect on everything you do.
See what you can do. Feel your body and its incredible ability to adapt.
And, most of all, feel limitless. Go on, give it a try…
*this article first appeared in The Roar.
Great timing considering my new power meter will be here Thursday. Started in the 90’s using a mix of RPE and hear rate so not sure how this whole wattage thing is going to work. Hopefully I can manage to squeeze it in with the tried and true methods to get some solid results.
ah, had you told me i’d have posted about how wonderful PMs are 😉 good luck with that, the examining of data was what killed me, that and the 30 minute power test…!
usually it’s a 20 minute test to measure FTP
Fantastic posting !
Olivier Baillet
This is a great post and something I have been thinking about for quite a while. We have just to listen to our incredible body and we will learn its ways. Thanks for this post! Awesome read 🙂
merci!
Crankpunk, I just ran your posting through my blogometer, and it recorded 100%. So it must be good….
haha awesome, hope it is still functioning 😉
Better to burn out than to fade away!..Love it!
i’ve seen Gordon ride. he speaks the truth….
Yep, not knowing how hard you go can help you more than having data limit you.
And probably this article was approved by Jens Voigt 🙂
wouldn’t that be cool, if i could get an ‘approved by Mr. Voigt’ stamp… still, the Jens Voigt Army like cp, so that’s good to know…
Use the PW to break our limits instead. Love it!
PW? did i miss something? what’s that?
Auto-correct function. I meant power meter
ah, gotcha!
So as part of your new training programs – will you be analysing power data from participants? 😉
i work with a VM – Vomit Meter. these, thankfully, are free.
time taken to puke increasing = improvement? simple. I like it.
🙂
I told some folks I know about a climb in a race in the spring and his I had puked at the top. And they said it must have been awful. I Said it was awesome. I read about a guy not long ago who crunched his power meter numbers and came to the conclusion he’d never be any good and quit. What a maroon. Great blog.
thanks Brian, glad you enjoy it! yes i still believe in the power of the mind rather than a belief in numbers. number can guide, but they should never ever dictate…
You make me want a footprint on my back!!
You blew my mind and then put it back together again with a new power… be limitless, disintegrate the mold. Exciting!! Thank you!
And on a complete side note…. loved the ‘be battered’ photo 😉
me too, re the batter foto! i was wondering if anyone else had noticed 😉 haha!
yes, dismantle and put back together, that is the key… crank on Rebecca!
I just ride till I drop…. No power meter, no HRM, just legs frozen in multiple cramps, head spinning, but smiling always… Started at 40km all cramped up… Now at 80km still no cramps… At 100km back in pain… But mileage is building… Arguably I would improve faster watching the HRM… But I guess I’m too stoopid for that… I just love the ride whenever I can find the time and trying to hang onto the next level of riders… Never mind getting kicked off the crit in only 20minutes of a 1 hour race… 90clipless shoe prints on my ass, but guess what… I stepped up… Was an amazing experience…
sing it, Jimmy, sing it.
may your crank stay firm and true.
My Fav is the VM, Vomit Meter! You know you’ve been at it awhile when you detect the difference between puking from nerves and the puking from riding so hard that all functions lose control, dry heaves, shits, stop sweating. Seriously, those were my favorite races because you KNOW you gave it all and THAT is why we are there!
I like your post. It reminds me of the HR fanatics that would drop off in order to keep their HR at a particular number.
I use my powermeter as a recording of what happened. The powermeter is like a dashboard. My car’s tach doesn’t set a rev limit, it doesn’t determine power, it just tells me the engine speed. Likewise my powermeter simply tells me what my body is doing. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, other times I’m disappointed, but I won’t back off because of a number on the screen, I back off when I need to back off.
A friend who questioned the wisdom of using power to “limit” oneself couldn’t get this through his head. He thought I looked at the thing while I raced (in crits, where power is frankly unimportant). Sure I’ll glance at it, primarily to make sure it’s still on, but I don’t know my numbers until I download them to my computer.
I don’t train scientifically so my powermeter is really a post-race analysis kind of thing. Plus the software makes for cool graphs and such.
(I admit I use wired SRMs. In my best recent year 2010 my crank battery died in about May and I didn’t bother replacing it until the end of the season – I used the head just because it would record speed, cadence, and HR. Then I misplaced my HR belt. And the wiring harness failed. I still brought the head to races for some reason.)
Better to invest in Coach Puppet… See how you can be motivated!
If only i’d had a PM that fateful april day….I could have dropped old man Rodgers up an unkown Taichung hill….on my rented POS! 😉 hope you’re getting sorted mate, just rode 110k sunday, first time over 40mi in years~….no PM needed!
just saw this – and you’ll NEVER drop Old Man Punk…
I believe it’s Jonestown, not Jamestown after the ill-fated people that followed Jim Jones to Guyana and drank the cyanide laced kool-aid, not everyone did.
I use a power meter faithfully, I have one on everyone of my 5 bikes, 2 road, a cross, TT and track bike. I train with a coach who gives me specific workouts based on the type of race that I’m training for and I use my PM to help me achieve the goals I have set for myself, but by no means do I feel dependent on a power meter to tell me if I’m working to my limits. In fact my PM helps me to exceed my limits.
After taking a test to determine my approximate functional threshold power level or FTP, I can use my workouts to actually increase this level by holding my power for certain lengths of time it allows me to be able to increase that amount of power I can hold so that eventually my next FTP can be higher. I usually test several times during the off-season to see if my power increases as a result of my workouts. In fact some of my workouts are designed to simulated what a race might throw at me like when someone attacks or when the pace suddenly ramps up to the point where many are thrown out the back. I know that I will be able to keep up that brutal effort because I’ve done it many times while training and using my PM to record my efforts.
Trust me, using a PM does not have me accepting my limits, anything but, it helps me to improve myself so I can make it to the next level instead of just finishing middle of the pack. I do not care specifically how old my opponent is, what cat rider they are or even what their palmares reads, although I do respect the more experienced riders, in fact using a PM allows me to takes risks I might not otherwise do in a race like attacking off the front with 25k left in the race because I know what I can sustain for 40 minutes.
Part of the reason for using a PM is I can train more efficiently, sure I still do the long miles, but with only so many hours in the day to train, yes I have a full-time job, no I’m not paid to ride my bike, I’d rather make the most of my workout by training in an efficient manner by utilizing the efforts that make the most of my workouts, something I feel without knowing what kind of power you’re producing would most likely lead to under-training.
Say whatever about people relying on PM’s to train for races like babies sucking on a teat, but this is how many of us train so we aren’t laying on the side of a road with several km’s to go in the race with rabbit turds on our sweaty faces. I’ll see you on the road while you suck my wheel all the way to the finish!
ok, maybe you will be the one in front of me, but they’ll be plenty of wheel suckers behind me!
Clayton S for the win. I won’t let the power meter define me as I sure as hell won’t be even looking at it at “those critical moments”. It may guide me when I’m soloing tho (as I used to be totally rubbish at that….and with a PM I’m just plain bad…..significant improvement!) and it’s certainly opened my eyes as to how incredibly badly I used to train! My easy days were not easy enough and I sure needed to HTFU on my harder days. They’re a tool, not a “be all and end all”.