Matt Wilpers Power Zone Training made my most recent century ride a breeze

Living the dream

To be honest I’m a pretty experienced cyclist with plenty of years of racing under my belt. To be brutally honest...that was a long time ago. I am now much older at 52, a bit heavier at 248 lbs, and taking pre hypertension meds as a result of the latter. Am I fit? I like to think so. I ride often albeit at a much more casual pace, and shorter distances, and usually it's between pubs where I do enjoy having a few craft beers.  But I still ride.

I have a few bikes these days. My prized custom made carbon fiber Landshark and last years birthday present to myself a Faraday Porteur electric assist bike for the occasional work commute. Gone are the days of 7 bikes, one for each specialty and terrain. No need and no room these days.

My wife Elise rides as well and as long as she can stay off the road on side walks or trails or where she deems it safe, she rides with me. We live in Tampa so we have quick access to the Causeway, the Pinellas trail, and the Suncoast trail, each affording us safe and scenic riding for many miles. We also have access to the beaches where we can go from St Pete to Clearwater and beyond when the mood strikes us. When we travel, we rent bikes. Austin, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Panama, Bogota, Medellin, and Honolulu are all places we’ve enjoyed the local bikeshare programs.

When Christmas rolled around last year I purchased a Peloton for my wife. It was a last minute decision, the barrage of commercials leading up to the holiday reeled me in. That and the fact she was spending quite a bit of money monthly riding at the local spin studio. It's a great studio and I’ve gone there as well, but there has been a lot of turnover in instructors and there’s never any parking. Having the Peloton at home has solved those problems.

We set up the Peloton, created our accounts and were on our way, trying out different instructors and classes to meet our specific goals. I love the Peloton, but I will still head outside and ride in the real world given the opportunity. Opportunity, at least in the case of cycling in Florida is defined as...when its not hot and humid as hell outside. So Mid October through Mid June. Anywhere in between, and you’d better plan on starting your around 5am and finishing before that big red ball of heat cracks the horizon.  

My neighbor Jim, who I ride with often also received a Peloton for Christmas, so between the three of us, we kept each other challenged with the social connectivity aspect of the Peloton. My neighbor and I also ride together outside often. We both have the goal of losing some weight and being more fit in general. Riding does this for us. Jim and his wife Lisa also join us on many of our adventures around the world. Besties you could say.

On one of our nights out Jim and I decided to set a goal for a long ride and make it an adventure. I wanted to do the longest climb in the world (Christine D’Ercole...sush) Alto de Leteras in Colombia. 52 miles of uphill fun, but Jim wasn’t ready for that. Oh it's going to happen, just maybe not this year. I had to scale it back a bit. We decided to ride instead 100 plus miles from Key Largo to Key West. Our wives could fly down and meet us in Key West where we’d have a great weekend. If you want to hear more about that story, see my video and blog posts. Search using the keyword: Key largo, or Key West.

Matt, Matt, Matt...

This post is about how Peloton and more specifically Matt Wilpers Power Zone Training helped me prepare for the ride. We picked a date of Mid April for our ride, which gave us about 4 months to prepare. Since Jim and I work different hours we decided to do one long ride each weekend, lengthening in distance as we progressed towards the ride. Basically, we’d add 5 to 10 miles each weekend until we peaked around 60 then taper a few weeks before the ride. During the week it was up to us individually to determine how much riding we needed to do. We were both riding our Pelotons about 3 to 5 days a week during this time, so we were getting enough miles in. How we trained was a bit different.

I can’t speak for Jim, but my training leaned more towards endurance and cadence. I was never a believer in high cadences as professed by the Lance Armstrong era, but rather i’m a grinder in the style of Bjarne Riis or the “Big Mig” Miguel Indurain. Wow I just went Pro Cycling on ya’ll. One the Peloton, I felt good in the 85-100 cadence range. If I went above for a long time or tired to hold that out of the saddle I’d wear out pretty quickly. Watching my heart rate wasn’t going to be enough information for me, so I began looking for options in the classes. This is where I stumbled upon Matt Wilpers and Power Zone training.

I won’t get to into the weeds on the details of the program, except to say that we all work out at different levels of effort and to truly know what level of effort you are training at you need to determine your power zones. Based on a scale of 1 to 7, these zones will help you train more efficiently. To determine your power zones you take a 20 minute Fitness Threshold Power (FTP) ride where you determine your average output over those 20 minutes. Enable Power Zones in your personal settings, then input that number. It will calculate your power zones and they will be displayed as an additional set of metrics the next time you ride.  

To ensure you are training properly, You want to be working in zone 3. This is where you can maintain a sustained level of effort for long periods of time and still be able to hold a conversation. This is pretty much the sweet spot. Using power zones, you can concentrate on which zone you’re in adjusting cadence and resistance to suit. What I like about power zone training is that I get maximum benefit out of my time in the saddle.

If you do enough power zone training on the Peloton you will learn where that sweet spot of zone 3 is at any given cadence in combination with your level of effort and speed. Adding a cadence monitor to your road bike will allow you to carry this over to your outdoor riding as well. Sure you could go all out and buy a powertap rear hub, but that’s pretty expensive and not really necessary unless your a pro or hard core club rider. I am no longer either of those.

Again my personal goal was 100 plus miles in about 4 months time. Using Matt’s power zone training and taking his classes I learned over a few weeks that my optimal cadence was between 80-95 on flat roads averaging around 22 mph on the Peloton and around 20 mph when riding outdoors. Cadence is the key, if I fell below my sweet spot of 80-95 I was putting in to much effort and would wear out...change gears. If I was spinning at a higher rate I would also likely wear out...change gears. I became cognizant of what my level of effort was and how to manage it.

I outfitted my bike with Garmin speed and cadence sensors that paired instantly with my Garmin Fenix 5 watch. Using these I set up screens to display cadence, and speed, average cadence, and average speed, cadence and heart rate and so on. Now I could track these metrics real time while riding. What a huge help. Not only in preparation rides, but during our big ride. I watched these metrics, especially cadence like a hawk.

I’ve done a lot of 100 plus mile rides in my days of cycling, but not recently. This one went down in the books as the one that I physically completed with an above average level of energy remaining. We rode hard for 7.5 hours into a steady head wind. We had to adjust for that. My average speed over the course of the ride ended up being 14.4mph and my cadence averaged 79 rpm. Just on the lower end of my sweet spot. Likely due to that headwind.

Looking at a graph of my speed with cadence overlayed you can easily see that the both held pretty constant with little drop off over the course of the entire ride. Meaning to me anyway that I did stay right where I needed to be regarding level of effort. Something I had not been able to do in the past I credit Peloton and Matt with his Power Zone Training program for giving me the tools to understand and manage my effort on this long ride.