A little about me: I’m a CAT 4 rider in my second year of racing and I train about 12-14 hrs per week. My goals for the season are built around road races and time trials. I decided to try PowerCranks to see if they could help me get faster. My plan is not to ride these exclusively at first, but I’ll progressively do more of my workouts on the PCs as I build strength and competency with them. My typical training schedule includes 6 days of workouts (with one day usually in the gym), and one day of either recovery riding or off-the-bike rest. For the first few weeks, I’m going to start by using the cranks for 3 workouts each week.

As a baseline, I produced 305 watts at threshold on my last LT test, and I averaged 320 watts during my last 20 min functional threshold test on the trainer.

Week of 4/14:

Day 1 – Mark at Cadence installed the PowerCranks on my bike today. I’ve read a lot about these and I’m excited to try them out. The last time I saw PCs on the road was about 6 weeks ago. Some guy on 9W was riding them and I remember thinking they looked really weird when our team passed him. Later, the same guy blew past me while I was doing repeats up River Road at tempo. My curiosity was definitely piqued.

As for the installation, you need to make sure the bottom bracket you are using matches the PowerCranks (they come in Shimano, ISIS, and square taper versions). To use Shimano, you’ll need an Octalink version 1 bottom bracket to work with the PowerCranks. These are a challenge to find at the LBS, since Shimano switched to an external bearing BB standard a few years ago. Another complication is that it’s easy to confuse Octalink version 1with the version 2 BB, which is only for mountain bike cranks. Luckily, I was able to track the right one down on the internet.

I did my first PowerCranks workout on Wednesday. I was scheduled to do a 60 min recovery ride. My coach actually gave me recovery workouts for most of the week, which is perfect since I sprained my wrist pretty bad by crashing in last Saturday’s CRCA B race (along with 20 other guys). Needless to say, I’m confined to the trainer, which as it turns out, is the right place to do your first Powercranking session. Stepping into the pedals was a very strange sensation — both feet were at 6 o’clock and I felt unbalanced. Once I started pedaling, it took a few minutes to even out my cadence so one leg didn’t catch up to the other. Right away, I noticed that it was pretty much impossible to “cheat.” If you stop working at any point in the pedal stroke, your foot immediately falls to the 6 o’clock position. The cranks are really heavy too, and this becomes more noticeable if your cadence slows. As a result, I was putting out more than 200 watts (where my endurance zone starts) just to keep the pedals turning above 70 rpm. In a word, Powercranking hurts. It feels like doing one-legged drills (which I hate) all the time. It wasn’t long before I felt the burn in my hip flexors, calves and upper hamstrings. This was a little more intensity than I should be doing on a recovery ride, so I cut the workout short at 30 minutes.

Thursday and Friday were a little better. I did 35 and 40 mins on the trainer with the PCs. Still working harder than appropriate for a recovery effort, though. I discovered the way to make the effort easier was to get in a big gear (53-14) and pedal a slower cadence. The real work comes on the upstroke, and if you’re pushing a big gear, the time between upstrokes is lengthened, thereby relieving some of the lactic acid buildup in the hip flexors and hamstrings.

Saturday and Sunday consisted of long endurance rides on my standard cranks. I’m definitely not strong enough to ride these on the PCs (yet).

Week of 4/21:

I was supposed to do an 80 min Endurance Workout with cadence drills on Wednesday (4 x 8 mins >110 rpm). I had a really hard time keeping my cadence up on the PowerCranks. I’m doing 70-75 rpm in my Endurance zone, then spinning up to 85-90 for the cadence intervals. My hip flexors were working to exhaustion, and I couldn’t hold the intervals smoothly (a lot of stop/starting). My calves were burning, too. I slogged through the full 80 minutes, though.

On Friday, I did a 1 hour endurance workout on the PCs. I rode in a bigger gear, and as a result, was able to hold my cadence around 70 rpm a little longer with less stop/starting. I think once I master spinning the cranks without stopping, I’ll work on increasing my cadence. If I understand bicycle science correctly, the two things you can do to increase power are 1) apply more force through the pedal stroke and 2) spin at a higher cadence (power = torque x angular velocity). The idea behind these is starting to make sense to me now.

I finished the week with a team ride at Bear Mountain on Saturday. No PowerCranks. I woke up sick as a dog the next day and had to take Sunday off (I even had to stay home from work on Monday).

Week of 4/28:

After a few days off for a bad cold, I tried to do a Vo2 max interval workout on the PowerCranks. I made it through the first interval, but I was breathing too hard and felt like I was going to cough up a lung from lingering congestion. As a result, I had to abandon the workout plan even though my legs felt good. I rode out the rest of the hour in my Endurance zone, and I found it easier to maintain a 75-80 rpm cadence this time. I think the extra rest from being off the bike for a couple of days helped.

On Thursday, I rode a 90 min Endurance Workout on the trainer. This is the longest stretch I’ve done continuously on the PCs so far. I’m starting to feel more comfortable on these things, even though my hip flexors and calves were still on fire by the end of the workout. Friday was an hour of recovery riding on the PCs, which was also a little smoother. I’m going to try leaving the trainer and taking it outside next week.