Just did Strade Bianchi ProRide for the second time. I love this ride.
Like the first time, at around 35 minutes I was thinking, “I might bump the intensity…”
At 1 hour & 5 it was, “Thank god for that that freewheel section”
Starting around 1 hour 20, “I might die”
I tried to do some of the earlier efforts at a low cadence (60-70) to get some climbing work in, but found that I could not hit the power targets at those cadences. I had to be in the 90s. I was in the small ring up front, biggest cog in the back - as suggested here - and wonder if there just wasn’t enough resistance in that gearing (I’m too lazy to check my gear ratio, but I do have a compact up front).
For context my FTP is only 205, so I’m not too beast for this ride , and my trainer is a 4 year old Wahoo Snap (wheel-on).
So I’m thinking next time I may move back to the middle of the rear cog and see if that allows me to grind some of the climbs. I wonder how this will affect my hitting the power targets during the many quick-change segments. For nearly all of the shorter efforts I was only hitting the power targets as they ended.
Also, I did not fall into the “spiral of death” on this ride, even though I fully soft-pedaled several of the last efforts. Are the ProRides somehow different in that they let you get away with this? Maybe the lack of a linked cadence target? Whatever the reason, I was pretty happy to be able to sit out a couple sections.
Anyway, love this ride. Can’t wait to do more of them.
I did also Strade Bianche Proride this morning, as asked in my plan.
It was also the first Proride for me, the principle is really fun, that’s what we could really call a simulation !
This ride really exhausted me, reaching a very high heart bpm. I found it even tougher than the Full Frontal test
Fortunately the second ride planned “in a row” was easier. I hope I could manage tomorrow’s workout, 18x10s sprints in a 3h15 ride…
I appreciate that next week will be a recovery week !
I did this for the first time on Wednesday evening, it was dialled in just right for me,
around 40 minutes in it was feeling like a super easy tempo ride( should I be dialling this up?). Same as you at 1hr5, at 1hr15 my HR was rising and because I’m running the app on my phone the preview graph is only showing the next 5-10minutes and I could not remember how hard the rest of the session was going to be. By the time I got to the point where I could see the cooldown I was in my 9th Hammer mindset, heck my legs lost count and I had renamed the workout out 27 Hammers inside my head.
It was a tough workout, perhaps because it was not quite what I was expecting. Strade Bianche is a beautiful race to watch, but filmed from handlebar height you have a better view of the tyre in front than the scenery, which really works well for Pro-rides like Hammer Chase 1 where it really gives you the feel of being tucked down low on a TT bike. I’m not sure I’d ride Strade Bianche again. I much prefer the camerawork of the On-Location rides but appreciate its not possible to get the camera at the riders eye level.
Yeah. Small ring (34) and more toward the middle of the cassette works best for me on my trainer. My trainer does have plenty of resistance even in the lowest gear but I like the feel and ERG change response using a cog closer to the middle. Depending on the trainer, it may not be able to provide enough resistance to hit the power target at low cadence when using the bike’s lowest gear.
@JGreengrass Strade Bianche was my 1st ProRide and it definitely hooked me to the series. I will have to check it out again and see if notice the same. 1st time I was probably looking at my stem last time so didn’t see much.
