All i know is last week chaingang i had 1 of my best cycling workouts thanks to u and bridgy now it seams i had an unfair advantage but hey still an awesome workout
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- Thread starter Peteaud
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All i know is last week chaingang i had 1 of my best cycling workouts thanks to u and bridgy now it seams i had an unfair advantage but hey still an awesome workout
Yup to this!
I've read all that has been said about this power on/off technique but still not sure how you guys do it. Do you let your power drop way down and then when Bkool eases off the resistance put the power back on again til Bkool catches up?
Exactly right Rick. I don't know exactly how much you have to ease off but give it a try and you'll see.
Had a good look at both graphs and they look very similar. I also don't know how to post them here or I would.
It is a pity that now riding like this may seem to have an advantage because actually it will give an excellent workout, probably much better than a steady ride. We all need to decide together how to go forward with this new information. Still got some testing to do though, next with a goat league ride. If I can beat AAAC then we'll know there is a massive advantage to riding like this.
Yup to this!
One point to note Rick is that last night I stopped my ride before the finish line and the box came up asking if I wanted to quit the ride, which I did. Then today I noticed in the league classification attempts that my ride was listed there as completed. Looks like I was too close to the finish line when I stopped it. Think it was about 8 or 10 seconds from finish.
Not to worry. Doesnt make any difference if you were that close to the finish - I'm pretty sure I didnt approve any attempts last night so it must have automatically went through. No harm done!
That would explain the fact that I won a velodrome sprint session against much stronger competition a while back. Cant remember who all was there - Lars was one of them, were you there too Bill? The resistance didnt ramp up very quickly after I put the power down, so on that occasion I must have exploited that technique by chance by coming from a slow speed to going flat out. only a few seconds but enough to allow me to get to the finish in front.
bobinski
Legendary Member
- Location
- Tulse Hill
Bill etc. do you think the speed with which you can apply maximum power, ala sprinting also works in tandem with the on/off technique? I ask because if there is one thing i can do its apply a lot of power very quickly to get away from the lights or any standing or rolling start. So I/you get the maximum benefit before the resistance kicks in more so than someone who cannot put down the same power as quickly. I just cannot carry that power for very long especially at the moment given i am only cycling every 2-3 days.
gbrown
Geoff on Bkool
- Location
- South Somerset
That may well explain why the "max it from the line" technique gives such a benefit, when in real life almost no-one would try that as they know they would suffer too much of a penalty!
Turns out that cycling is much more complicated than it at first appears ...
There's some knobs that can be adjusted. Presumably they're some kind of tolerances for things like weight, hr, cadence, drop-outs, etc. In theory as long as your weight is consistent across the league, weight shouldn't cause a ride to need manual approval.Thanks for pulling all this together, it looks like there will be a lot of pain ahead and some difficult challenges.
My league rides always need manual approving for both the Chain and Moose leagues - with a red cross against the weight row.
Is there anything that can be done to avoid the admins the extra work, or is it that my weight is too heavy for Bkool to accommodate
110 kgs.
When we get to league #3, I'll probably spend some time trying to figure out if/how any of those knobs ought to be turned, particularly for things like drop-outs and cadence/hr as folks don't always have a cadence or hr sensor set-up.
In the mean time, don't stress on manual approvals. They only take a couple seconds once I'm on the website.
Enjoy the rides. I certainly did up until last night when my legs gave out. One of the advantages of setting a slow pace is I can focus on how bkool rendered the ride and how it compares to real life, which was fun/interesting. I was particularly curious to see what it'd do with the desert landscape for Sand Flats Road. It's actually a pretty climb in real life, but bkool loses 99.9% of the texture of the various petrified sand dunes in that area and all the red-rock colors making it a bit boring. Given I'll never ride it again in real life a ride in the virtual world seemed appropriate (we take shuttles up to the start of Porcupine there these days, which saves the legs for the brutal downhill & a second ride later in the day)
Bob. Looks like that is the case. When you apply a lot of power from a standstill you will soon be doing 30 - 40 mph even uphill so the quicker you can do it the better. Then just let off and freewheel. Wait for the power to drop right off then repeat.
Indeed Geoff. Life on bkool just got a whole lot more complicated. Turns out it works even better on mountain goat rides with a few modifications to the technique.That may well explain why the "max it from the line" technique gives such a benefit, when in real life almost no-one would try that as they know they would suffer too much of a penalty!
Turns out that cycling is much more complicated than it at first appears ...
As you say, it's just like maxing it off the line where the resistance is reduced and you can coast for a good bit before it slows to a stop. I just had to disallow my own mtn goat ride tonight due to it being far too fast and me hardly even in a sweat
Quite enjoyed it, not too hard really ... honest 
