Of all the training tools I've benefited from over the years, three primary standouts, um, standout: the heart-rate monitor, the power meter and my PowerCranks. The first two enabled me to accurately gage the intensities of any given workout (or, as it was in my case, all given workouts!), while the PowerCranks helped to improve a number of factors, specifically my pedal stroke and hip flexor strength. Without any of these I am sure I would never have made the gains I had. So important were these items, in fact, that if asked to loan them out, my reply was quite simply, "no". No excuses, no himming or hawing, just plain ol' "no". Sometimes, for good measure, I'd even throw a "get your own" response out there. To me, letting others borrow such priceless gear would be like "loaning out" toilet paper on a camping trip. Toilet paper is trail money and you wouldn't go throwing out money, would you?

It gets me wondering why anyone would just as soon drop a whopping four grand for a carbon-fiber bike with all the bells and whistles but yet refrain from picking up the gear that would really help them. My suggestion: save your money and buy a two-grand bike and invest the rest into your body's performance. After all, your body is the only thing you'll truly have for the rest of your life and it is, without a doubt, the single most amazing, wonderful, phenomenal instrument you'll ever own.

The PowerCranks come pretty close however.

Before I let you in on a few secrets, let me first say that I am not sponsored by PowerCranks in any way, shape, or form. I had to purchase my pair and it's partly why I hate loaning them out! "I'll loan 'em to ya," I'd tell a friend. "If you let me borrow your wife for a week or two." He knew he'd get his wife back eventually, but I knew I'd never see the cranks again.

Now for the secrets. The biggest secret is that there are no secrets. If you want to reach your potential as an athlete you need to make use of every street-legal avenue available to you; don't take the high road and avoid this fact, as regret is the biggest injury you'll ever face. Trust me on that one.

The PowerCranks are one of those avenues. I have owned a pair since their inception in late '98, when I could barely manage a measly two minutes on them. On that fateful day I loaded up my jersey pockets with gels and bars and fruit and left as though I was heading out for a day-long ride. Indeed, that was the plan. Two minutes later I returned home, however, hip flexors a-burning. I knew right then I had to improving to do.

So I went about it by slowly increasing the time I spent on them. At first it was two minutes a few times a day, with my bike attached to the indoor trainer. Then, very gradually, I worked up to ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch, outdoors. Within a month I was able to ride close to an hour nonstop. Songbirds sang, girls swooned, smiles were had.

There were hassles though. I was unable to spin much over 80RPM without blowing a gasket, nor could I use the PowerCranks in my aero-bars or whilst standing on the pedals. I went about working on these things and a month later I was spinning at my customary 100RPM and able to do so in the aero-bars. The standing up part would take a little longer to master, but eventually I had ingrained that into my system as well.

The effects of all this were immediate and profound, and not just on my cycling, but primarily on my running and my kick-boxing. (Okay, okay, I don't actually kick-box, but if I were to have I'm sure it would've improved as well.) This came as a surprise, of course, as Frank, the head hauncho at PowerCranks, hadn't originally thought of the benefits the cranks might provide to a runner. My cycling steadily improved throughout 1999 and I began to win races that I had been eternally second or third in. But it was my running that made the difference and the PowerCranks were the only training stimuli I had changed from previous years. Sure, training is an accumulative thing and maybe '99 was when all those years finally added up in my favor, but I'm inclined to think (and, in fact, know) that it was the implementation of the PowerCranks and power meter that made the difference.

Here are a few examples of tests I performed during that season. While they may not be entirely systematic and scientific, they meant (and mean) something to me.

Test #1. First ride on PowerCranks, Dec '98: two minutes to complete and utter failure. Hip flexors give out and inform me it's time to start training them. (Hip flexors, for those of you unaware, are the muscles that essentially lift your knees, and while you don't necessarily want high knee-lift in a half or full Ironman, you do want those muscles to be resilient, as they're a big part of what propels you).

Test #2. Fifth ride on PowerCranks, Jan '99: thirty minutes to fatigue, nonstop pedaling. An achy knee of mine, my right, no longer aches and would cease to on all but one or two minor occasions for the remainder of my career. Hmmm.

Test #3. Five months on PowerCranks, May '99: By now I can ride the cranks as long as I want and my race results begin to progress. Third place at Wildflower, third place at Ironman Lanzarote. One training ride lasts more than seven hours on the cranks, in Northern California's mountainous countryside; I come home hungry and a bit too tanned but otherwise in fine shape.

Test #4. Eight plus months on PowerCranks, Aug '99: At this point my average power output is hovering near its highest levels ever, 310 watts sustained aerobically, for hours on end. Second place while training through Vineman and a win at Ironman Canada tell me all I need to know. Standing and pedaling with the cranks is now no longer a chore.

Test #5. Ten months on the PowerCranks, Oct '99: Hawaii Ironman is the only race that doesn't go according to plan that year, but an illegally accepted handout in the form of a beer might have had something to do with it. I assist Frank at the PowerCranks booth and bet $5 of my own hard-earned cash that any bystander who wants to give the cranks a try cannot ride them for two minutes straight. None do thankfully. (With my limited income, $5 of mine is like $500 of yours.)

Test #6, ongoing. Eleven months on PowerCranks, Nov '99: The test from this point forward is to learn to say "no" to people who want to borrow my PowerCranks.

-Chuckie V