FAQ ~ Cascade Sessions
Match power levels in and out of the centre recovery period
Cascades ~ why are no power or heart rates prescribed?
Asked by most people...
It's not possible to give a power or heart number for the Cascades, because we're all different and these sessions are used to help you find those differences.
If you took 10 people with exactly the same FTP and 20 minute wattage, you wouldn't even get two of them with the same range of wattages for the 4, 3, 2, and 1 minutes for the Cascade Elites.
Each of these "micro-efforts" use slightly different mixes of the aerobic, anaerobic and neuro-muscular energy systems.
These are one of our bed-rock sessions that allows you to find your ten minute, mid, and short term pacing efforts. Your job, is to find, and fine tune these efforts on the Cascades Elite & Pro Sessions.
You will never get them right! They always feel "wrong", because over a three week period you might add 25 watts, or 2 kph, to your 3 minute pace, but never change your two or four minute!
This is why they are such a fantastic session. You have to really, really, really concentrate and really pay attention to get them consistent.
This information, if you assimilate it, helps you on your future sessions and your chase down, breakaway, time trial abilities, in the season to come.
It's through the "failures" of these sessions that you are truly able to nail the future ones.
Pacing
Personally, I try to keep the same cadence and use the gears.
Moving up a gear every level from say 15, 14, 13, 12 REST 12, 13,
14, 15. But you really have to concentrate and hold on in there at
the right cadence.
Your objective is to find the limits of each effort level, but keep them balanced. The last four minute effort should closely match the first four minute one. As should the three, two and one.
If you can't, you've found a problem you can address. And as you can see from the heatmap above, it's much, much, harder than it looks!
Kat Guillemot
Cascading to a ladies race win on the final climb Mont Cambrai RR
