Monday was an important day in my training. It was the day I was to set my benchmark for my maximum power output. Coach was after my 5 second, 1 minute, and 5 minute power. I sure hope I got what he wanted!

I knew time would be of the essence, so I left to start the test at 4:30 PM. It was the earliest I could get out there. The test was supposed to take about 1.5 hours, so I hoped to be done with some light left.

Thing is there nearly wasn’t a test at all. On Saturday my Quarq CinQo stopped conversing with my Garmin 705. My first thought was that the problem was the Garmin. I reset it and tried all kinds of things to get it to pair once again with my power meter. Finally, I contacted Quarq early Sunday morning to get some advice.

I told them what I did with the Garmin and that I had changed the battery in the CinQo as well as made sure the magnets were in the correct position. Their response was that I did all I could do and that I would need to send it back to them. They were very helpful and sent my a FedEx shipping label and all.

Problem is I needed something to read my power for Monday! My crank and power meter on some plane somewhere heading to South Dakota wasn’t going to help me with my test. So, I went in search of something to use.

First, I went looking for an iBike. At some point, I would like to get one of those things. In the future it would be a good option for my second bike anyway. However, I wasn’t really wanting to fork out that money at this point. Plus, I wasn’t able to find one.

Jim Cunningham offered to allow me to use his SRM, but I knew that would be a lot of work to get all that switched over from one bike to another. If there was another option, I’d prefer to avoid all that stress. What to do?

I sent a text to my friend and Sunshine Cycle Shop manager, John James. I knew I was asking a big favor, but I wondered if he would let me use his Powertap. I knew this would be a good option because it would not take nearly the time or effort to setup as the SRM (or so I thought).

John was great (as usual) and I dropped my bike off in the morning to have the harness and rear wheel moved to my bike. Just before heading out on my test the bike was finished. Turns out it was a bear to get going. John had forgotten a part and called Strad Helms to do him a favor and pick it up from his house.

Then with everything installed, it still didn’t work! It seems that this entire experience of having a coach and trying to get this training underway has been one comedy of errors following another. However, John got it tracked down to a weak battery in the rear hub (one he had just recently replaced).

Soooooo, finally, I was underway. Of course, heading out of town there was a good amount of traffic at that time of day. Thankfully, the program started with a 10 minute warm up ride.  That nearly got me out of the city limits. I was able to start the first segment of the test with only a little bit of interruption because of traffic and traffic lights.

It was a good work out and as long as I used the Powertap correctly, I think I’ll have something good to show the coach. The only problem was that the last three segments were in the dark. Even before 6 PM things started to really get dark on me.

My front light ran out of battery and all I had was my rear light. The last two segments were to do an all out sprint for 15 seconds. I did it on a section of Old Buncombe Road with no street lights. I’m sure I was doing over 30 mph with absolutely no idea what type of asphalt was in front of me!

Thankfully, I didn’t hit anything — and nothing hit me! As I continued toward home after the test I kept trying to avoid the cars coming out of side roads. I felt bad for them since they could not see me. Only once was there a car that started to come out into the road. I was thankful for those that came up behind me. Their lights helped me see where I was going!

I’m afraid that there is going to be a good bit of trainer training going on this winter. If I lived out in the country, I might be tempted to ride at night with all my lights working. However, there is just too much traffic around the downtown area. Maybe I’ll try riding in morning next time… at least it can only get brighter.