Performance Manager™

Though I've been using powermeters for a long time, I've been slow to embrace things like NP, TSS, etc. Because I felt so utterly terrible on my second day riding outside (Feb. 9), I decided to get Performance Manager Chart™ up and running. That entailed the tedious semi-automatic importing of several months of files.

My TSB around Feb. 9 was -40. I also discovered that the rides I'd been doing everyday were around 170 TSS rather than my estimate of ~145 TSS. Whoops.

Though I'm still reluctant to put that much stock into PMC, it seems to be a lot better than my ability to gauge my form.

Ergometer syndrome part II

It appears that, like Y2K worries, erg' syndrome was really nothing to get all excited about. After one week of higher intensity training, it appears to be vanquished. I'll probably stick with higher intensity training but skip L6 workouts until closer to racing time.



An L6 workout on a popular local hill that assuaged my fears. This was just my 2nd L6 workout and I was already rivaling my best times and powers from last season.

In addition, my L5 workouts confirmed that L5 power hadn't suffered and had actually improved a bit. Considering how rapidly I regained my short steep hill climbing ability, I'm fairly certain that erg' syndrome was mostly a neuromuscular problem.



QA of that day illustrating the high force pedaling.

Hurt me plenty

Early last fall, it was killing me to do 3x20 at 270 VT watts and I tapered before that workout/test. A few weeks later I was up to 275W, 280W, 285W, and then didn't do any 3x20s until late January. Since then, I've done 3x20s at 285W and 290W and wasn't really hurting. So today, with TSB at a reasonable -8 but otherwise not tapered, I incremented by 10W and did 3x20 at 300W. That did end up hurting but still not quite as much as the 3x20s last fall. It was sufficiently painful that I won't be doing anymore 5 or 10W increments. From now on, it'll be like 1-2W if at all.

Last fall, I set a lofty goal of being able to do 3x20 at 300W by May 2008. It would be with a taper and be 300 VT watts or 310 SRM watts. I never really thought I'd be able to do it as it was one of those "reach" goals.

Anonymous leafy green sues USADA

Pez recently posted an editorial riddled with grammar and spelling errors suggesting that professional cyclists strike. I suppose Georgia Gould and other female cyclocrossers could fill in as replacements during the strike.

http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=5670&status=True

I would rather ride in a team structured and run like Slipstream, but could it be possible that Michael Ball forcing the rules (including supporting the law suit from Kale Leogrande vs USADA) is doing more to change cycling than Jonathan Vaughters is in creating tougher rules within his team? In a way Slipstream is simply putting in a structure outside the system while Ball could ultimately be doing more to change the system it's self.

Kale Leogrande returning to racing after being sidelined by a bad case of root fungus.

Ergometer syndrome

If you ride indoors a lot, once you head outdoors you may feel like you can't turn over the pedals on climbs or that you have trouble generating power on rolling terrain. Outdoors, there are always subtle changes in wind and gradient that will result in spikes and dips in power if you're to hold speed and cadence reasonably constant. In a group ride, surges are greater in magnitude and not solely due to changes in gradient and wind but also the whims of the group. A powermeter file of almost any outdoor ride will reveal the stochastic nature of outdoor riding, no matter how determined one is to ride at a steady power output.

Training that has too much low force pedaling (quadrants III and IV) likely recruits fewer muscle fibers which may then result in loss of oxidative capacity in those fibers. In addition, there is almost certainly a decline in neuromuscular power. Either, or a combination of both, is responsible for "ergometer syndrome." Neuromuscular adaptations occur rapidly but retraining oxidative capacity may take awhile. Capillary density is probably not affected since it is an extracellular adaptation. Mitochondrial density, however, may be subject to the "use it or lose it" principle and fibers not recruited will "lose it." Thus, I hope erg' syndrome is more of the former and less of the latter.

The solution is fairly straightforward. Indoor riding and especially ergometer riding is generally very time efficient and allows for very focused training. With the increased training efficiency, one has the extra time to add L5 and perhaps even L6 workouts to provide the needed high force pedaling. L6 efforts are likely too short for any meaningful aerobic adaptations so if erg' syndrome is due to lost oxidative capacity in a population of muscle fibers recruited primarily during high force pedaling, L5 workouts or even efforts in the upper range of L4 would be more effective.

One idea was to insert occasional power spikes into SST ergometer rides. Like L6 training, that likely would not help oxidative capacity. Another problem was that it increased the perceived exertion of long SST rides, making them far less tolerable.



Four plots on the same chart.



QA plots of ergometer rides can be weird. This one looks almost like some sort of crop circle. Note how small the cloud is and how it's all relatively low force pedaling. This is representative of most of my training for the past few months.



Road race with some fairly big hills.



My first L6 workout in a long, long time. The uppermost cloud is the L6 workout on a short hill. The cloud below it is the tempo riding I did afterwards. Pedaling force is quite a bit more than on the erg.




Training ride with several long climbs. Some steep sections where I ran out of gears.



3x20 at 295W on the erg. Rest intervals were 5 min at 145W. Notice how the data points follow the 295W and 145W power curves so closely.

The great equalizer: Armadillo tires

The regular Armadillo tires, not the Elite model, are the only tires I've used that can reliably defeat goathead thorns. The goatheads stick into the tread, get spun around a few times, and either snap off or are thrown off the tire. One time, I dug about a dozen snapped off goathead thorns out of a pair of Armadillos. The tips had been embedded in the tread for awhile but still didn't puncture the armored casing.



Here, I've ridden the tire to the point that the tread is paperthin and separating from the casing. I forgot exactly how many miles I'd get out of an Armadillo tire. I think it was in the area of 6-8,000 for a rear tire.



For those of you who don't already know, Armadillo tires have incredible rolling resistance. Among clinchers, they are the only tires with more rolling resistance than Tufos. At 20 mph, their incredibly stiff tread and sidewalls require about an extra 35W to deform compared to my current training tires, Michelin Krylion Carbons. Armadillos have such a dead ride that the first time you ride them, you think you have a flat tire. In fact, you can deflate an Armadillo and the stiff sidewalls will hold the bike up as if the tire was still inflated.

What are the RR slaying implications? Well, once again, RRs forced me to make a terrible choice. I had to choose between risking punctures or being handicapped by slow tires. Of course, the RRs train on tires nicer than I race on and with their perpetually fresh legs, I needed to even the odds a bit so I switched to Michelin Carbons. I've had more flats but it hasn't been an epidemic.

The funny thing is that during the 2 years or so that I trained on Armadillos, I was still faster than the RRs. There they were, putting forth heroic efforts to race me and reveling in their success (success being defined as hanging on for a few minutes longer) , not knowing that with normal tires I would have stomped them even harder. Sorry RRs, that's one less "cheat" you'll be able to exploit.

Dumb Post of the Day

This posting just leaves me speechless. Because of the lack of paragraphs, I've parsed through this mess and highlighted the most amusing sections.

http://groups.google.com/group/wattage/msg/561b04090955b817?

I wanted to start a new discussion so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. First, a little background disclosure: What I am-totally committed avid cyclist who logs 10,000 miles/500,000'+ of climbing per year, non-racer except the occasional TT, but I do lead one of the hardest group rides in my area.. What I am not-pro cyclist, scientist, engineer. I've been reading the wattage forums much longer than I have been using my ibike, so maybe I'm not qualified enough, and deserving enough, to throw this post out there, but here are my observations: First let me say, I have really enjoyed the numerous great training tips and superb advice I have derived from this site. I only wish that was the major focus of the group. What I have been able to gather about devices, is that there is no perfect power meter, and the only consistent talk about power meters revolves around the inconsistency of the imperfections and limitations. Now back to the ibike. For me, it's real simple. If, at the end of a ride, I simply dropped my bike on the ground across the finish line, and said to my mechanic, "Have it ready for tomorrow's stage", I would have an SRM Pro, if for no other reason, that than it "seems" to be the best, and a lot of pros use it. Whether they get paid to is a good question, but my point is that I don't hand my bike to somebody, I either work on it, or pay somebody to, and I buy my equipment with my own money. Now, if you were to see my bicycles and my kit, you would probably gather that I could afford multiple SRM Pros, and if I felt I needed one, or even wanted one, I would certainly have one. I want a more simple solution. I've been waiting for the ibike people to get the product dialed in, and I decided that they were close enough, so I went ahead and got the wireless unit. I'm willing to accept thelimitations of the ibike because they are far outweighed by the advantages, and for me, in my world, 99% of the time it generates not only highly repeatable numbers, but accurate ones if I compare it to my power based trainer I've used for years now, mostly for fitness testing. Now, I'll try my hand at predicting the future. I have never experienced customer service at the level of the ibike, and certainly not from the top level of a company. Richard Wharton and John Hammand seem to be available 24 hours a day. I don't think anybody works that hard unless they know they have something very special, so here is how I think the story ends: ibike does really get it dialed in, so much so, that, guess what, it becomes good enough for people like me and most of you. There are a lot more of us than there are professional world class cyclists. A large sports equipment company buys ibike out, spends a lot of dough on marketing, and within 2 years, they have a majority market share, if not a near monopoly, of the power meter market. At this point, the ibike people laugh as they trot off to the bank. I'm guessing the thing most likely to drerail this track is the introduction of an even simpler and/or less expensive alternative to the ibike, not another product costing many multiples more, and offering yet another set of unique limitations and disadvantages. And I imagine at that point I'll be mad that I didn't wait for this new "better" product, and I'll join in with all of you, and bash a product I have not even tried! My point is, if you haven't ascertained it already, that most people want a simple, not complex solution for measuring their power. For me, the ibike is that solution.


Rebuttal

Yes, we're all very impressed by your 10,000 mi/yr and 500,000' of virtual climbing.

You bought an iBike because you thought an SRM would require too much effort to use? The same iBike that iBike users have described as having a calibration procedure equivalent to a space shuttle launch? The iBike that customers feel they are beta testing because it has so many problems?

You calibrated your iBike using the most inaccurate power measuring devices of all, indoor trainers? This would have been interesting since the iBike doesn't actually work indoors.

A near monopoly of the powermeter market? This is truly delusional.

A monopoly that can only be derailed by a cheaper and simpler powermeter? That would be the basic PowerTap. Much, much simpler. Less expensive and much more accurate.