R.P.E.

I rode light on Monday. I did some non-base stuff yesterday. Today, I just wasn't in it. After 20 minutes on the trainer, I was ready to be done.

How did I know I was ready to be done? The PowerTap didn't flash a message up saying, "What's wrong with you, go harder!" or, "Stop. This workout is worthless." No, good ol' fashioned RPE told me that today was just not going to happen as far as riding on the trainer. I banged out 35 minutes and called it quits.

RPE stands for (depending on who the author is) Rating of Perceived Exertion. When my heart rate monitor gave out sometime mid-Spring last year, RPE was my lone training device. It worked out really well. I was in great form when I wanted to be (from mid-July to early September: 1st at Freedom Tour, 10th at 'Toona Circuit race, 2nd at Medford, 2nd at BHOF Labor Day Classic--would've been top-3 at 'Toona Crit and Basking Ridge had I kept the rubber side down). I trained how I felt after laying down about two months of base (real base, the very boring kind). I had a plan, designating certain days for sprint work, some for threshold, others for recovery or endurance. No training aid necessary other than what my body told me.

Then I got a PowerTap. I started becoming a slave to the numbers again. Well that's over and done with. Starting about three weeks ago, I set the PowerTap computer to display Max Power only in the Power field. It freed me from staring at the instantaneous readings, judging where I was at all the time. This is how I plan to continue training for the rest of the year. Sure, I still eagerly plug the computer in and download my data, going over it for about 10 or 15 minutes after each ride. But it's more of a validation tool to indicate that my plan and training via RPE is heading in the right direction.

So, kiddies, the moral of the story is: Don't buy expensive equipment, be it frames, wheels, power meters, whatever. Your body is the best training device you could need.*

*-If, like me, you have money to burn, go ahead and buy all the useless garbage you want.