What Jens Said...

Jens looking
at me with worry as
I stalked him at the
Montreal Grand
Prix, 2010.

Joy here...One of my favourite professional cyclists is Jens Voigt.  I'm not alone in this; he's a favourite of a number of people and is hugely popular in the peloton as well.  He's freakin' hilarious in interviews; he's tough as nails (tougher actually) in a bike race; and at nearly 41 years of age, he's a real inspiration.

He doesn't know it yet, but he just might be my BFF.

He's known for coming out with amazing one liners, like predicting that all it would take for his team to win the Tour de France one year would be for the rival team (with the previous year's winner on it) to be attacked by bears.  Then, according to Jens, his team could just "smoke" all the way to the finish line.  In another instance, he was asked how he keeps going through all the pain in his body, and he said that he just orders his legs around:  "Shut up, legs!  Do what I tell you to do!"

That kind of advice was sure to come in handy for today's ride.

The Spinning Instructor and I were heading out to Pink Lake to tackle some hill repeats, but unlike Friday's ride with The Professor when we did two repeats, or last Wednesday's bilingual ride where we managed three repeats, today we were set for four repeats up that hill.

The sun trying to shine
through the clouds and trees.

My aim was to keep my wattage at around 240w for the duration of the climb, which takes about 4 minutes.  Now, that's not my maximum power output or anything, but it seems to me to be a kind of output that I can hold for the length of an interval (the 4 minutes of the climb).  To put this power talk into perspective, during one race, Jens Voigt's average power output was 515w and his maximum power output was 1187w (oh yeah, and that was in a race that was 216kms long!).  So when I say my aim is to merely hold 240w while climbing up a 4 minute hill, that's really hard for me to pull off, but it would be like a walk in the park for Jens Voigt.  Actually, Jens could probably do that in his sleep.

We rolled into the park under grey skies still clearer than last Friday's ride in the clouds as the sun gamely tried to make its way through the cloud cover, and we approached the overhead power lines that mark the start of the climb. I looked at the Spinning Instructor, smiled, and then pushed my pedals hard, measuring my breathing and feeling the burn grow in my legs: push, push, push, push, click down to an easier gear, push, push, push, push, click down to an easier gear, push, push, push, push, click down to the easiest gear...push, push, push...wheeze, huff...okay I'm almost at the top...phewf!

I did that three times, trying to keep my wattage around the 240 mark; sometimes it was 218w, sometimes 269w...but it's not an exact science!

As I tried to pull my tired body up the hill that final, fourth time, feeling my body covered in sweat and hearing my legs scream at me, I thought to myself, "what would Jens do?"  And the answer rang clear in my head in his German accent:  "Shut up, legs!  Do what I tell you to do!"  I channelled my inner Jens and shouted at my legs, and they kept going.

The Spinning Instructor did hers just behind me, and we high fived and had a snack at Pink Lake.

Here's the graph of my power output; those four bumps in the middle represent my four hill repeats....and even though the fourth doesn't quite reach the peaks of the first three, it wasn't too bad!

Then we roared down the descent topping 62km/hr before riding out of the park, finishing a ride totalling over 50kms door-to-door and just over 2 hrs of riding time, and then finally I rolled into my driveway and arrived home.

The Pink Lake perk of our hill repeats.

Even Jens might be proud of my four-time hill repeat today!

Over and out,

Joy