POWER

[amaferanga]

And at the end?

Pretty pointless doing it at the end when you have no idea when the last auto-zero occurred. Even without an auto-zero taking place, if there's a big difference between the pre and post-ride zero point you have no idea at what point in the ride the pre or post value was actually most appropriate.

It's about time that power meter and head unit manufacturers started storing the zero point as a data field that can be viewed post-ride along with the power data. Then you'd actually know if there was a dodgy zero point setting for power meters / head unit combinations that autozero.

 

[Rob3rt]

Pretty pointless doing it at the end when you have no idea when the last auto-zero occurred. Even without an auto-zero taking place, if there's a big difference between the pre and post-ride zero point you have no idea at what point in the ride the pre or post value was actually most appropriate.

It's about time that power meter and head unit manufacturers started storing the zero point as a data field that can be viewed post-ride along with the power data. Then you'd actually know if there was a dodgy zero point setting for power meters / head unit combinations that autozero.

But at least you know something went wrong, rather than assuming everything is fine.

 

[amaferanga]

But at least you know something went wrong, rather than assuming everything is fine.

Sure, but if this is happening regularly then you need to get your power meter repaired. You won't know when it went wrong unless it's a huge jump that leads to a sudden significant (say 10%) error in your power numbers.

But if your power meter is auto-zeroing though you have no idea if anything is up.

 

[Rob3rt]

Sure, but if this is happening regularly then you need to get your power meter repaired. You won't know when it went wrong unless it's a huge jump that leads to a sudden significant (say 10%) error in your power numbers.

But if your power meter is auto-zeroing though you have no idea if anything is up.

It is just nice to have an additional indicator of the health of your data and power meter IMO. It is not critical, but given the ease of checking the value and comparing it to the value before you started it is worthwhile I would say.

Some manufacturers (Quarq) publish values stating what ranges of drift are healthy etc.

 

[amaferanga]

I agree it's probably worth doing if your power meter isn't auto-zeroing. My P2M auto-zeros so the only way to get a handle on whether or not the zero point is right would be if the zero point were stored in the .tcx file.

 

[Rob3rt]

But you can still manually check if the start and end point are vastly different no?

 

[Rob3rt]

Power PB'd (and also PB'd in general) today in a Hill Climb, 371W for 21 mins. That's 4.84 W/kg, making some gains/riding myself into some form (and this was not done on fresh legs having raced a 25TT yesterday).

 

[VamP]

Cross season has now started, and what I should have done was build a big hole ahead of the season to draw upon, but due to a number of reasons, mainly related to my ineptitude in securing the final point needed for 3rd cat, I kept extending my road season up until the end of August, leaving no time for a big training block to build up TSS.

So I shunted my plans by a month, and spent first half of September winding down with a bit of unstructured riding, and the second half training through the racing, rather than getting fresh, and now have finally reached LTS of 95, that I plan to live the next three months off the back of.

The general consensus is that it's best to go into cross races with a positive STS (+15 apparently ) which might explain why I have found the last two races rather hard.

I am going to race once or twice per weekend, and have two hard sessions per week (Tuesday with CX sprints workout and Thursday with VO2 max intervals) plus some SST sprinkled here and there, and see what happens by the end of October. If I need another hard training block before the season culminates over Christmas, I will fit that in November.

Thoughts?

 

[Rob3rt]

I still think your LTS scores are pretty damn high, lol. I ran my highest LTS at about 75 and it wasn't that high for long. ATM it is about 68 after a push in prep for the National HC Champs at the end of Oct.

As for the +15 STS do you mean TSB? TBH, optimal TSB will vary between athletes and also it is worth noting down not only the value but the direction it is moving when you perform best.

 

[VamP]

I still think your LTS scores are pretty damn high, lol. I ran my highest LTS at about 75 and it wasn't that high for long. ATM it is about 68 after a push in prep for the National HC Champs at the end of Oct.

As for the +15 STS do you mean TSB? TBH, optimal TSB will vary between athletes and also it is worth noting down not only the value but the direction it is moving when you perform best.

I couldn't get competitive on the road until I got over 80, just kept running out of matches. Above 80 I had no problems. Might be anecdotal...

Yes I do mean TSB, and it's going to be an experiment for me, I have never gone into competition that fresh.

Good point regarding the direction.

Do you use PM to decide how much training volume/intensity to build into your week, or do you just use it to monitor how it relates to your performance? I keep seeing people saying that their best results are at LTS 120 or 130 - which I struggle to conceive of.

I do tend to sway between thinking I'm doing too much, and not enough

 

[Rob3rt]

I never let my TSB get that high for long, I raced most of the season on around +8, and that was not on purpose, I basically trained less, but more intensely once the season was well underway so my LTS and STS both dropped gradually. I did have one week off when away in which they both dropped and my TSB went up to +25 and I raced like a bag of spanners and completely wasted an opportunity for a fast 10 mile time. ATM I am riding on a negative TSB and doing pretty well in the hill climbs I have entered.

It has been said that TSB has a larger impact on short balls out efforts than on longer efforts, so for example, a negative TSB will go against you more in a 3 min hill climb vs 25 mile TT.

Ultimately it is a tool and you have to calibrate it against yourself really.

As for planning, I have a spreadsheet with the formulas in it, which I use to predict CTL, ATL and TSB up to a target event and I arrange my training sessions (using typical TSS scores for those sessions) to get something that looks like a good idea. But it is not set in stone. ATM, I am doing mostly 2 hour sessions around 4 times per week + a race, most of it is aerobic, then in the middle there are some very hard efforts, with however long it takes to recover before the next one. Basically weight management and working on my hulk rating! I am relying on the TT training throughout the year to carry me through any longer climbs.

 

[VamP]

My TSB went to +35 at one point this season, when I had a non-cycling 10 day holiday, and I raced very poorly off the back of that. But then had a series of some of the best training sessions all year, so it does all come around.

One of my best performances came from LTS 94 and TSB -20, when I felt absolutely shite before the race and going by perception would have expected to be completely out of it, but then in crits you never know how much it's you and how much it's the race.

In that context TTing is much easier to rationalise.

The difficulty in calibrating against yourself is in finding out how high a LTS is optimal. You could spend 6 weeks getting to 120 and then discover that you've blown yourself up for the rest of the season.

You are doing very well off a low LTS, but who's to say you wouldn't be doing much better off a high one?

 

[Rob3rt]

That is true, but you have to look to those with a much higher LTS, those with 30 hour training weeks etc, they are going about a minute and a half faster than me on my 8 hours (although I also know a few people going as fast on 4 hours as those on 30 hours), in which case you see that yes the extra load generates better performance, but the return for time invested is a lot lower.

One thing I have to note in my findings over the last couple of weeks, the return on effort for short higher power efforts is much quicker than for longer threshold efforts. As in I have made large gains in a short space of time in short events like 2-10 minute climbs. I have managed to shave up to 35 seconds off of a 4.5 minute (now sub-4 minute) climb with a considerable 20% gradient section (which I have been going up in 39:23), in just a matter of weeks.

 

[VamP]

The threshold stuff builds slowly. In my case glacially slowly. But it does stick around once you get it. Shorter durations are more easy come easy go, and you have to time it carefully as it's hard to maintain the peaks. Some of my best form last season coincided with a three week lull in the CX calendar. Doh!

I haven't tested for a long time, and am fatigued, but there are some interesting numbers falling out of training sessions all the same. Will be interesting to do a rested test, and I am thinking of dressing up my PT with a knobbly clincher and taking it racing this weekend, as I haven't any racing power data since early August.

I will do if it's dry!

30 hours training weeks - where do people find the time

 

[VamP]

Very bumpy course so opted to go with tubs. Still no power data from an actual CX race, but went in with almost neutral TSB (-3) and had a much easier time racing, and best result to date, coming in 5th in the Elite Vets.