A Good Week
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Rolling Nowhere
Yeah, I'd definitely have to say it was a good week. After the tough speedwork session at the track on Thursday afternoon, Friday brought about a beast of a 2800m swim, followed by an hour and a half of easy riding. The ride was a great way to end the week, actually. A cold front was on it's way into town, and so with slightly overcast skies and a calming pallete of greys, blues and browns to immerse myself in, everything about the ride said "relax". An interesting note on the use of power meters when training on the bike: sure they help guide you on your hard training days, but more importantly (as I'm learning) they're invaluable for guiding you on your easy days. That is, I've been consistently amazed to see on my easy days just how quickly I naturally "drift" up into zones of higher power output. As an ardent subscriber to the old adage: "go hard on your hard days, and easy on your easy days" - being able to quantify those efforts to the degree of accuracy in which the power meters provide is truly beneficial.
And speaking of power...
Bolder, over in Boulder, recently subjected himself to an LT-test on the bike. Though it's always fun to read about everyone elses test programs and results, ff particular interest to me was this very nice table he provided on his website, compliments of Andy Coggan. For those of you scratching your head, Dr. Coggan is one of the leading pioneers of power-based training tools and methods for cyclists. Anyways, the beauty of this table is that it provides a relative gauge of one's fitness based on power-to-weight ratio - that wonderful number we go through great lengths to measure. Digging through my old records, the last time I did an LT test on the bike 
I put out an average power of about 335 watts (okay, 336W, but who's really counting?) over 20 minutes. Given that I weigh (hold your breath folks) 148lbs, and my bike weighs about 18lbs, that's a total weight of around about 62kg, therefore making my W/kg ratio equal to 5.42 - or - Exceptional. Now that's cool.This weekend has been a bit of a challenge, given the cold, raw and rainy weather we've been presented with. I never made it out the door to train today, rather, I spent some quality time on the trainer (guh) watching the tube and listening to the rain fall outside. The workout got done, but - damn - it was boring. Tommorow's weather calls for more of the same, meaning it's going to be one very soggy long run.
Squish. Squish.
Keep it easy.
14 Comments:
what!
you are supposed to add in the weight of your bike too!
you are lance armstrong.
i am a failure.
i rue the day i met you.
but, to help you along, and drag you down to my level, and since i am canadian, and well versed in the metric system.
148lbs is 67.132kg
Man... Bold's totally right. I Ehf'ed that conversion up big time. False advertising.
148 lbs (me) + 18 lbs (bike) = 166 lbs (total) = 75.3 kg
Therefore, my actual W/kg ratio is more like: 4.46, meaning I'm really just more "Very Good" than "Exceptional", according to the chart.
Thanks Bold - Crazy metric system ;-)
Even more bad news...FT is NOT 20' but a 1H. Check out http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/threshold.html...
Another good point, but not as definitive an "error" as a unit conversion foul-up ;-)
N.'s right in that Functional Threshold is ideally measured over an hour, or more like a 40km TT, but has been shown to correlate reasonably well with what an athlete puts out over long intervals (like 20 min pieces) during training; the shorter interval being used to compensate for things like lower motivation in training than in racing (cf., http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/PowerTrainingChapter.pdf)
Anyways. I suppose it really doesn't matter where on the chart we end up; I thought it made an interesting conversation piece, and that it offered a nice compilation of data from Coggan.
You tri guys and your charts! Impressive. I like your blueprint from hell on Thurs. post!
By this time in the year I am so sick of the trainer. But then we get to deal with spring rains. I'm not sure which is worse.
But keep getting it done. Whether your "Very good" or "Exceptional" is besides the point as long as your "consistent."
I agree with Bolder, I don't think you should be including the weight of the bike. It is not relevant. If you were calculating the power requirement for a given climb at a given speed, of course it would be, but that is not the point of the charts. If you had a really heavy bike, would that mean you were any less of an athlete? Of course not.
Solobreak - I like to include the weight of my machine because it helps quantify my race performance relative to other racers. I'm a light guy on a light bike - if another light guy puts out the same power as I, but rides a heavier bike, then I can expect to perform better because the total mass I'm responsible for moving is reduced. You're absolutly right in that this does not make me a "stronger" athlete, but it will reflect my projected performance. Of course, if I wanted to compare myself to specific others (perhaps the point of Coggan's chart afterall) then you're probably right in that bike mass should be neglected (or assumed the same amongst all athletes - and therefore dropped).
During the off-season I tracked my P(LT) from tests I conducted every 4 weeks or so, and guided my training using the appropriate percentages of those results. Ultimately, I gathered these data to keep my power training levels "up-to-date" and to ensure I was attaining "improvements" in power output over the off-season.
To your point, you can also use the numbers to: gauge efforts in a race, back-calculate a required power for a given climb, quantitatively compare aero positions on a TT/Tri bike, etc. Power is a beautiful number to work with because of all the quantities which go into formulating it, and subsequently, all the parameters one can extract from its measured value.
I know a lot of folks are rubbing their temples and squinting their eyes at this stage of the conversation... I could talk about this stuff all day (no kidding?) so if we want to continue, please drop me an email and we can bounce more ideas off one another!
AJV -
Yes, I understand, but my only point is that Coggan's charts are based on the weight of the rider only. For the purposes of finding where you lie on the charts, your CP20 is in fact 336/67.3 = 4.99 watts/kg. Using this as the closest test you have to FT, this puts you in the "Excellent" range. Nothing to be ashamed of. Keep in mind by "world class" they really mean exactly that, as in Boonen, Bettini, Armstrong, etc. A domestic pro that I know only falls into the "exceptional" category and he can shred anyone on the regional scene even on his rest day.
If you add in the weight of your bike you are selling yourself short with the charts was all I was trying to say. I don't use a PM and try to keep the training clean, fun and not too scientific. However, the profiling does provide a great demo on how someone can be strong as an ox yet still not be able to sprint, for example, or the other way around too.
You're doing a lot and obviously on track for your goals. Take care of the low back too. If you don't already have a good massage therapist, find one and go once a month at least. When I was your age and trained (sort of) at your volume/intensity, my back became the weak link and ultimately a limiter. Strengthening and stretching go a long way, but massage is worth every penny. Good luck!
Good points all around! Thanks for the great comments!
FT is for an hour!
i not only rue the day i met you, i now have a strong disdain for your blog, and your readers like .n. -- except for solobreak 'cause he agrees with me.
where's the upside here in this sea of bad news?
;0)
I forsee another problem. The whole W / kg thing assumes that the only resistance that we work against is gravity. True for the steepest hills, but much of the time, we're fighting air resistance, which is largely unrelated to weight. (proportional to weight to the power of 2/3, but don't get me started...)
Imagine racing against a theoretical guy who weighs 1 / 3 what you do, with power at LT of 112 W. Your model predicts an even race, but you'd kick his ass. You'd just sprint before the last hill, drop him, and begin the climb much sooner.
Anyone out there who, like me, resembles Homer Simpson more than Lance, should take heart.
For what it's worth.
Right Sebastian, if you are on the flats, then power/aero resistance becomes the issue. This is one reason why bigger people tend to do well on the flats. Say they make 20 % more power than smaller people, but only have say 15% more total wind drag. Not real numbers, but you get the idea. JV has also noted that he is using his PM as a poor man's wind tunnel (not just a rich man's cyclometer :o) ). Find a road that is pretty flat with no wind. Ride the same speed in different postions. See which one takes less power to go the same speed. Makes sense. Obviously optimizing your efficiency is important. I am pretty aero when I sit on my top tube, but I can't pedal so well like that...
I would be interested in commentary on how efficient/powerful you guys feel on the aerobars versus the hoods. In a TT we have all hit that long grade where the speed starts to drop and we struggle with cadence. When do you get off the aerobars? 30kph? 25kph? Ditto for when to stand. Of course there are numerous factors.
Last, FT may be an hour, but if JV can pull 336w for 20 minutes on a trainer in his basement in February, my guess is that in a real TT on a real course with real riders ahead of and behind him at 30 second intervals he would have the motivation to put out very close to this for the 55 minutes or so it would take him to do a 40K TT. Maybe we'll find out at Auburn in June?
http://www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=2843
If you want to talk power, FT and such, email me. I am all over it. There are basically 2 different FT testing protocols, and while consistent 20' wattages give you an idea, or something to use as a benchmark, that's not a *real* test. My FTP test is 2x20' best effort, with 2' rest. Then you make 1 interval of 42' and look at your NP (normalized power) for the entire time, and THAT is your FTP. There's a different protocol in Allen/Coggan book that produces a similar result, basically you kill yourself before you do the 20' interval.
Check the cruciblefitness.com forum for LOTS of power talk; we get pretty geeked out and Mr. Coggan checks in regularly.
And then let's talk motivation on the trainer. I am VERY motivated. Now I take those watts outdoors and I am slightly MORE motivated, because it's harder to maintain an average wattage when you have wind, hills, stopping, etc. But I've learned how.
And you do easy days on the bike? Why? I do 3 rides, each of them is very focused, and average 85-91% of FTP for the entire ride. It's called getting mucho bang for your buck. Well, I don't really want to argue training methodologies, but my personal experience is that "recovery" rides are a waste of my time. They are GOOD for pure cyclists; not so much for a triathlete who also needs to get in a lot of running and swimming. In a 5-hour ride I might do 1 hour easy, there, I got in my easy time.
My power to weight ratio is 3.36, up from 2.9 less than a year ago. Power training is DA BOMB!
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