Lost in Translation

Reality checks are important.  CompuTrainer sessions are great.  Love 'em.  I know, not necessarily a universally shared position.  But I love long sessions in a controlled environment with uninterrupted efforts and gobs of feedback.

But, numbers are what they are.

What matters is how it translates to real rides.  The time trial portion of ABD's Fall Fling a short, but very real reality check.  It suggested a number of possibilities.  One is a pure and simple failure to increase power.  We're not totting a watts meter on the bike so we can't fall back to numbers, but there's always the stopwatch.  And the elapsed time was well off the majority of riders in the age group.  

It's also possible we were dealing with a bit of over-training, but if that's the case, that's equally troubling considering the amount of training we've been doing - in comparison to the typical training regime of the 70.3 or IM athlete.

Since it was the last of the season, it signifies the official start of the next winter of training.