Power Outage

On Saturday I met with 5 friends for a flat 55 mile ride from Lodi to Thornton to Lockeford and back to Lodi. It was really an incredible day to ride after all the hot weather of the summer; cloudy with temperatures in the 60’s and almost no wind. There were even a few showers possible.

I started out feeling really good. I took a few pulls, then sat behind Marlin and his brand new very nice e bike. Marlin is really strong and on this flat road he had the battery off. On flat rides he and I do quite a bit of riding at the front of the group, trading pulls and letting everyone else follow. I think we have gotten pretty good at doing this. When we pull through we know how to ease just enough to let the other get onto the wheel, and once on the front we don’t surge. We keep the same speed and try to keep the group together. On the regular Tuesday club ride heading west on Collier Road into the prevailing wind I get quite a workout doing half the work.

I felt really good for about 20 minutes, all the way to Ray Road. When we turned right something went wrong. I took a drink and got dropped, but I caught back to the group. As I sat on the back I felt like I was really struggling just to hang on even though we weren’t going that fast.

When we turned onto Kile Road I was really dropped. The gap was so big Marlin spotted me in his mirror and slowed down to see what happened. I wasn’t sure myself, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do 55 miles feeling like this.

I’m a big cycling data guy. I always ride with a heart rate monitor and all three of my bikes have power meters. I enter all the data from each ride into a spreadsheet. So I have a really good idea about the relationship between my heart rate and how much power I can generate. And what I saw yesterday was that my heart rate was much higher and my power level was much lower than usual. My heart rate was in the 120’s and my power was only about 120 to 150 watts. On Thursday I averaged 112 beats per minute and 166 watts. Normally on flat ground if I’m doing over 120 bpm the power is 160 to 200. Not yesterday.

When we got to Thornton I told my friends I had to turn around. They were nice and concerned and offered to help or ride back with me. I told them I felt fine, which was true. I didn’t have any chest pain, or leg pain, or cramps. I just seemed to have zero energy.

So I rode the 10 miles back to Lodi going about as slowly as I ever have. I was crawling and trying to figure out what was wrong. I didn’t ride on Friday so I wasn’t overtraining, although a heart rate higher than normal is a sign of that. I often have trouble after two hours of hard riding when it’s hot, but that certainly wasn’t the case on Saturday.

Back home, I took my blood pressure and it was a perfectly normal 129/78. My pulse was 58. After a very hard hot ride on Thursday I was really kind of wiped out and my pressure was 101/65. Then I used my Kardia to do an EKG; could it be A Fib? I had a single incident of A Fib way back in 2016, but it never recurred, and my Kardia has recorded well over 200 normal EKG’s since then. Including yesterday.

So what happened? I don’t know, so I don’t know what to do about it except worry. Did I just have an off day? Certainly possible and I hope that is all it is. In Europe this year I rode 8 days out of 9 and never got ‘overtrained’; my heart rate/power relationship was normal. A day like yesterday on an expensive cycling trip would be quite a disappointment.

This morning my blood pressure and EKG are still fine. I do feel a little light headed, but not really dizzy. I’m going to walk the dog and then do a trial ride and see if things are normal. Stay tuned…

And here’s the update: I went for a ride to see what would happen. I watched my heart rate and power and decided to try to do 1 hour over 150 watts, which is well within my capabilities, except for yesterday. But I felt good and rode better than that: 1 hour at 173 watts average power. My heart rate averaged 122, drifting up over 130 for the last 10 minutes or so, which is completely normal. After the ride I felt fine. So maybe what happened on Saturday was a one time event. I sure hope so. I have a really nice two weeks of cycling in France planned for next year, with some of my cycling friends on roads that I really love (more on this trip later). I’d really hate to spend parts of in a van with a ‘power outage’.