Mel, I noticed sometime ago that you have been using Powertap power meters and assumed that you use them on your road bikes.

My new coach has me training on my offroad rides on heart rate _base_d upon pre-season lab test results. I would have thought that the unpredictable nature and constantly changing profile should suggest that perceived effort may be more appropriate to _base_ endurance build period. So I was wondering (and this is where the _title_ comes in to play) would a power meter be a more reliable tool for training offroad? After all, as current thinking goes, a watt is a watt is a watt. That said I had previously thought that it would be impossible to keep a certain wattage, but then surely no more difficult to stay in a certain HRZ?

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Julian

I believe that most training should be done via perceived effort. The only time I use watts and look at the number would be when I am doing a specific interval for a prescribed period of time with a certain amount of recovery.

When you do your offroad rides, have fun, ride singletrack fast and be in that "sort of uncomfortable" pace for most of it. That is what I think is a training day on the mountain bike.

Powertap is rumored to be coming out with a PT wheel for disc mountain bikes. That will be awesome for me because I will then do some interval training with my mountain bike... whereas I do most of it on my road bike with a PT.

So, use perceived effort most of the time but when you challenge yourself with specific workouts, try to use a watts measuring device so after the fact you can be _object_ive about what kind of day you had.

Thanks Mel for your response. Would you use PE over HR training in these instances?

I think the biggest problem with heart rate is you cannot keep anything steady mountain biking anyways.... so just go by feel. You will go over and under the heart rate average you would want to aim for when ascending and descending... so it is not that valid. If you go by a perceived effort you can be sure that the ride was "sort of hard" or "hard" rather than "holding 175-185bpm...". You know what I mean?

Although the bike portion of an Xterra is a time trial of sorts, you are trying to hold maximum effort as long as possible while going above and below maximum constantly. It is a different game than a 40km road time trial. This is why you need more volume and more maximum power intervals... to ensure you can recover from those big efforts. Getting in touch with how you feel will ensure you are training in the right zone more so than keeping an eye on your heart rate, since your heart rate is guaranteed to be all over the place.

Indeed I do understand what you are saying, Mel. That's pretty much how I interpreted the situation too.

I'm currently at the stage where, on XC races I can hold pretty much 95% effort for the first two laps but am dying in the saddle on the third and final lap. I guess it's a case of learning to pace myself whilst racing all over again.

Thanks.