I have been selling Powertaps for about 2 years so have to admit up front that I am biassed! However, for the first time in 2 years I accepted some coaching to get fit fast for the recent 3 day Sani 2 C MTB race The brief to my coach was ... 2 Very little kids, 2 very hectic businesses .. I can only train every second day (for about 90 mins) and one longish one weekends. I need every session to be a quality one. The beauty of the powermeter is that you can stumble out of bed in the morning and know to within about 10watts exactly what you will be doing for the next 90 mins. You cant bullsh&t yourself and you very certainly cannot bullsh&t your coach (it is like having him sitting with you on the bike peeking over your shoulder!) Well, the results astounded me... all my training (weekly rides) were at FTP and I found in the race that my "grind" was awesome. It was a real pity my partner (Barry Pauw) got sick as we slipped from our day one position of 8th overall (1st masters) to 11th. We were certainly up there and good for 6/7th overall had he not faded. I could feel the specificity of the training i had done. Anything around FTP, I was like a lion. This was great, coz in a nenduro event like this, you are primarily "grinding" away 4 -5 hours per day The two obvious problems in the race you would guess If i rode out of my FTP zone, eg when closing the gap on riders trying to drop us, my legs really burnt and recovery too slow. On long races like this you dont do it often but you would obviously train this aspect more carefully given enough time My legs were not used to 3 days in a row! My recovery after the race was longer than it would normally have been There is now doubting the fitness gains (or time saving) from the very specific training one can do with a powermeter! Best Frank Soll
