Main Season Goal Ride

Power-Tap
Temp: 64 avg (54min)
Climbing: 5535' (rating .6)

This was my main goal for this year, completeing 132 (originally 137) mile ride across state and back in a single day. I reworked the route to avoid going through Essex Junction because of the built up nature of the town and the fact that they were having funerals for a school shooting. The new route was 5 miles shorter, so I adjusted my goal from 8 hours of rolling time to 7:42.

As far as planning goes, as I hadn't ridden this route before, although I had ridden parts of it, I couldn't have the detailed ride plan I did for my first goal ride back in May, when I had different sections of the ride planned out with appropriate power/effort levels. So I could only come up with some general guidelines. Mainly I knew I needed to conserve energy as much as possible, so I came up with a few rules:

1. Coast on the descents as much as possible.
2. Shoot for around 220W when on the flats.
3. Stay under LT (310W) as much as possible, even on climbs.

Left the house just before 8am and had my first 'excitement' 5 minutes later when I was chased by a big black dog. Was tough to sprint in the smallest chainring and luckily he gave up after 18 seconds or so. Did accelerate from 10.4mph to 24.5 in that time though, averaging 486W.

The next couple hours were pretty routine, keeping a steady pace. I had decided that given the length of the ride I would conserve as much energy as I could, so on the long descents I would tuck down and coast as much as possible. I spent neary half an hour not producing any power, which I think was pretty good.

Just before I reached Morrisville (around 1:50) it started to mist/rain which continued for pretty much the next hour. Sometimes the rain was heavier, sometimes it went back to just a mist, but it was consistently falling. My new rain jacket did a great job though.

Next excitement came at the 3:13 mark when I had the first of my two flat tires. It took me about 19 minutes to change out the tire and get it pumped up as much as my little mini pump would allow, which is only to around 80psi. Seventeen minutes later I had my second flat, which I think was directly caused by not being able to get the tire fully inflated. So another 30 minutes spent changing the tire, patching the tube and checking in with home. While inflating the new tire with the @#$^#$ mini pump, I managed to break of the tip of the valve stem, which needless to say made me nervous as I continued on with the ride. I decided at that point that when I got to Montpelier I would stop at the bike shop and get some new tubes and have them change the tire for me (easier for them in the shop than me on the side of the road). I also decided I would get one of those CO2 cartridge inflation things since they can get the tire to the full 120psi I like to use.

I stopped in a little town called Richmond for my refueling at around 4:39 and refilled my camelback and got some peanuts and a soda. Ended up not drink the soda right away and stuck it in my pack for later. Got turned around in Richmond and took awhile to find the right road out of town. I had just gotten going when I noticed one of my water bottles at an odd angle. Turned out I had broken the water bottle cage on the seat tube, so I had to stop and put one of the bottles into the webbing of my camelback. Yet another reason to stop at the bike shop.

Ride was uneventful over the next 1:30 minutes until I got to Montpelier and the bike shop. The guys in the shop were great, giving me information about the CO2 inflators, giving me a good deal on tubes and re-lubing my chain for me. I was feeling much more confident when I got back on the road.

Took my last rest stop, though the ride was full of unplanned ones, about 15 minutes later. By this time my legs were pretty well cooked and I needed to relieve my bladder, so I found a good spot where I could lean my bike up against the guard rail, do my business and then sit down and drink my soda and eat something. After a 10 minute stop, I was feeling a bit better about getting under way.

The next hour or so went pretty well actually, and I averaged power output just about where I wanted to be for the ride, around 215W, or the upper middle of my endurance range (170-235w). The last 45 minutes or so I definitely had hit the wall and was down to only averaging 180W, and this with some pretty significant climbs. Even though I had bonked, I was pleased that my power output was higher than earlier in the season when I experienced the same thing. In my first century ride back on 6/27, after I bonked I only averaged 170W(181Np). Today I averaged 182W (218Np), so a pretty significant increase I think. Granted, terrain was different an played a factor, but still.

During the ride I did not eat or drink enough. Well, maybe I ate enough but not enough fluids. I ate 4 powerbars, 1 package of clif energy gel square things, and a small bag of peanuts. I drank 3 bottles of sports drink, 2 quarts of gatorade and about half a bottle of water and 1 can of soda, or about 148 oz total of fluid, or 20 oz per hour of riding time. While this is normally what I drink, my weight was down nearly 7 lbs (4%) by the end of the ride. This undoubtedly contributed to the suffering towards the end of the ride. I even had the start of a cramp in my right leg, but I was able to shake it out before it got too bad.

Made it home in 7:22:41 of rolling time, beating my revised goal by 20 minutes. During the ride I didn't feel like I was going hard/fast enough to meet my goal, but I kept using a Silva technique and saying "cancel, cancel, I'll make my goal time" or words similar to those. In looking back over the previous couple weeks I think I made some mistakes in peaking and nutrition that impacted me to some extent. Nutrition being the worst offender. I think that if I had stuck to my regular eating plan and not basically chucked it, especially the last couple of days, my performance might have been even better. Still, I'm happy that I achieved my goal, and with how I was able to follow the general rules I had set for myself. In the graph, note how few spikes there are above the second horizontal yellow line indicating my FT power and how many there are down to the bottom, indicating no power being produced. Also notice how by and large, my power output is right around the lower horizontal yellow line, which is 204W, my average for the day.

A Hard Ride is a Good Ride

My training schedule for Thursday called for a race simulation. This is sort of problematic for me as I don't race, and my main goal event is a long distance (200+km) solo ride. However, my understanding of the peaking process is this is a time to work on speed and do hard efforts but lower volume. With that in mind, I decided to repeat a workout I had last done back in June. (The profile at the left was generated from a ride done in May, so ignore the speed data at the bottom.)

The ride is approximately 30 miles (PowerTap gave 30.8 and 30.04 as mileage for the two rides) and at one time was my 'long' ride. In fact, looking back at what data I have from last year, I see that the first time I did this ride was on August 25, 2005. This was about 2 months after I had started riding more or less seriously. On that day it took me 2:23:18 to complete the ride and my average heart rate was 133. The route covers 2100' of climbing, so is definitely not a flat ride.

The workout I was planning on doing is one where you climb strongly (around LT power) on the longer hills and sprint up the shorter ones (around CP1, or in my case 550W give or take). When I did this workout in June I set my best power levels for up to one hour and got a new LT power level. I also completed the ride in 1:38:23, or 45 minutes faster than it had taken me the first time I did this ride last year. It was that ride in June that gave me a new training goal, which is to make this ride in 1:30:00 or less, or average 20mph or faster. I thought it would be a pretty big stretch, but after seeing my finishing time I thought maybe I could achieve it by the end of this year.

As I got into the ride this time around I found I wasn't sprinting up the shorter hills like I had planned, but I was going at a CP6 pace (around 340W) up the longer hills. When not climbing I was trying to maintain around 270W, though I was generally around 280W I think. Looking at the graph, you can see not too many spots where I was up around 500W. The two bold yellow horizontal lines mark off my LT power (310W) and where I was trying to be for the non-climbing part of the ride (270W). I felt I was pretty consistent at staying near this level until the end of the ride when fatigue and the fact that the last 4 miles is mostly descents with a couple sharp climbs. This made it hard to keep power consistent at any particular level, especially as at times the descents were quite steep. The bold blue horizontal line indicates 20mph and the red one indicates my LTHR of 157 bpm. These are there to make it easier to get a sense of what the thinner lines of those colors represent.

The ride this time took me 1:34:13, or 0:04:10 faster than in June, or roughly 4.3% improvement in 2 months, which is not too bad. One interesting thing I found in comparing the two rides is that in June, my best 30 minutes came from roughly 0:52:00 to 1:22:00, or pretty late in the ride. Yesterday's ride had the best 30 minutes from roughly 0:10:00 to 0:40:00, or at the start of the ride. In comparing the best time period that was the best in June with my performance yesterday, the power output was almost exactly the same being 277W yesterday compared to 278W in June. So while I faded a little over the ride yesterday, my 'faded' power is still as good as my best was 2 months ago.

Finally, the ride yesterday gave me a new best 60 minute power level, which also means my PowerProfile is updated. CyclingPeaks uses average 60 minute power to calculate the FT w/kg measure on the power profile chart, which is a little odd considering they suggest taking the last 20 minutes of a 30 minute TT to calculate your FT, but at any rate, this effort yesterday pushed my FT profile up there so I'm definitely happy with the progress I've been making. The drop in most areas (all?) last month is because the PowerTap was gone for servicing so I had no way to estimate the shorter duration power.

Peaking

As luck would have it, CyclingPeaks came out with its new build of WKO+ which includes the Performance Manager at the same time I am attempting to peak for my main goal ride of this year, a 137 mile single day trip across Vermont and back.

While it is going to take some time to really figure out how to best use the Performance Manager, it is obviously a great tool for looking back at past data and getting a sense for how your training is working, or not as the case may be. So with that in mind, I've taken a look at my own Performance Manager Chart and made some observations.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that the blue line, which represents my Chronic Training Load (CTL), which can be viewed as 'fitness' has steadily increased over time. While there isn't the recommended 6 months of data to go by, I think my estimate for starting TSS/day is pretty accurate, if anything maybe a bit low. At anyrate, the graph clearly shows that my fitness has been improving steadily over the last several months. No big jumps, but nice stead progression.

The jagged pink line represents my Acute Training Load(ATL), which is a short term measure of how hard you are training. Not only has this trended higher in general over time, but the peaks are higher as well. If you put a trendline in for this data, it shows a rise in ATL from ~70 to nearly 120 over the time period covered by the graph., or about a 70% increase. ATL can be considered an inverse measure of 'freshness' or a direct measure of 'fatigue', meaning the higher your ATL the more fatigued, or less fresh, you are apt to be.

The green horizontal line across the graph highlights the 0 value for Training Stress Balance (TSB). TSB is used as an indicator of form and in general is the difference between the CTL and ATL. So the goal for peaking is to have a high (relatively speaking) CTL while having a low (relatively) ATL, indicating you have good fitness but you are fresh.

I've marked the graph with some circles that represent the few periods when I've had positive TSB. The first, marked 1 on the chart, took place just after I got my PowerTap so the data probably isn't terribly accurate, but it does correspond to my first goal ride of the year. I more than achieved the goals I had set for that ride, which indicates that I was probably in good form for that ride.

The red circle marked 2 took place in mid July, but I didn't have any goal rides during that period, so it is hard to tell if I was on 'form' then. It was just after a rest week and during a period in time when I was re-organizing my training schedule. You'll also note the light blue band covering the graph in this time period. That indicates the time when my PowerTap was sent in for servicing for a bad torque sensor. The TSS scores I entered for these workouts were based on my formulas for power based on average HR, so may not be entirely accurate, but are close.

The red circles marked '3' on the graph are the most recent time when I had a positive TSB. You may have noticed there are two thin lines on the graph. The upper one, red, indicates my 10 best 1 minute power efforts. The lower black one represents my 10 best 20 minute power. Note that during the period marked with the red circles labeled '3' have 3 of my top 10 twenty minute power efforts (including my best effort of 310W), and my 2 best 1 minute efforts of 516W and 545W. This definitely shows that I had decent form even though my TSB was barely positive, around 3 or so. Makes me wonder how I would do if I had a more strongly positive value.

So now that I have looked back and seen that this TSB stuff is a decent indicator of when I was on form the trick becomes to use it to project into the future with it. How do I take this information and use it to fine tune my training plan to make sure that I'm peaking when I need to be peaking? Striking the balance between lowering your ATL so you are fresher needs to be carefully balanced so that you don't lose too much CTL/fitness. It will be interesting to see how or if it helps me over the next couple weeks as I continue to peak for my long ride.

New Version of CyclingPeaks WKO+

CyclingPeaks just announced a new verison of its WKO+ software, now version 2.1. This update, which is free to those who have purchased version 2.0, contains the Performance Manager which is intended to help you in reaching that mysterious state of being 'in form' at the time of your goal events. For more information about the Performance Manager, click here.

Very Interesting Article

Came across this article on velonews.com this morning that I thought I'd share in case some folks hadn't seen it. The "Legally Speaking" column is a favorite of mine, so I was very pleased to see the author take a look at the anti-doping rules that are in place for cycling. To my unlearned mind, it seems to me the issues it points out are some pretty big problems that cycling has to face in the fight against doping. Not to mention providing Floyd Landis all sorts of opportunities for his defense.

You can find the article here.

Some More Signs of Progress

Today I was scheduled for a 2.5 hour endurance pace ride, which I have plenty of route options for. I picked one that gives me a fair bit of climbing and takes me over the biggest hill in the area, well the biggest I've ridden yet anyway, with the idea of maybe setting a new personal best for 5 and 6 minute efforts.

As has been my routine lately, I've tried to do all my climbs in my middle (42t) chainring and for the most part keeping cadence at 80rpm or higher. This gives me about a 10mph speed up most hills, though some of the steeper ones I go slower than that and with pretty high power numbers (400+W) which I can't sustain for very long, yet. I think this has resulted in a lot of the gains I've seen in the past month since I've been doing it, as I'm much more able to keep turning a bit bigger gear for quite awhile before getting too fatigued. This has helped me increase my overall average speed on my rides, even the long (4+ hour) ones. Or maybe especially the long ones.

So with that goal in mind and my route selected, I was very pleased with my results. I set new personal bests for 30 second, 1 minute, 5 minute and 6 minute critical or peak power. Combined with my TT results from Sunday, I've set a number of personal bests this week. Pretty much everything from 30 seconds to 30 minutes has a new high value. The only exception is 2 minute PP, which I missed a new high by 3 watts (2 watts short of tying it).

Duration	Best This Week	Previous Best	Previous Best set on
30 second	627	620	6/20/2006
1 minute	516	510	6/20/2006
2 minute	394	396	6/20/2006
5 minute	357	347	6/1/2006
6 minute	356	344	6/1/2006
10 minute	330	308*	7/10/2006
12 minute	326	308*	7/10/2006
20 minute	310	308*	7/10/2006
30 minute	308	308*	7/10/2006

* Indicates this was estimated power based on average HR, not entirely accurate.

One interesting thing about the value of 308W shown as previous best power for 10, 12, 20 and 30 minutes (set on 7/10). This was arrived at using the formula I came up with for estimating Np based on average HR. So aside from being an estimate, it as an estimate of normalized power where everything in the bests for this week is straight average power. The interesting part, at least for me is this: On 7/10 I did what I considered to be a very strong TT effort on the same course I did on Sunday. Breaking down the workout to separate out the TT effort, I saw that I had an average HR of 157 bpm for the 30 minute effort. As I've mentioned several times in previous entries, I've come up with several formulas for estimating power, and they seem to be pretty accurate, at least for rides less than 3 hours or so. Once you get beyond that cardiac drift really comes into play and power figures should be adjusted downward as much as 10-15% to correct for this. Up to rides of 2-3 hours though, the formulas are remarkably accurate. Of the 4 formulas I look at, one of the best r^2 value (i.e. fits the data best) is:

NPower = (2.4573 * Avg HR) - 76.987

So plugging in the average HR of 157 for my TT effort on 7/10, I get 308.8W, which is what I entered as a manual entry into CyclingPeaks to get my TSS score for the workout. I didn't update my FT with that value though since it was only an estimate and I wasn't sure what the power value would actually have been. So you can imagine my surprise when I did my TT on Sunday and got an average power reading of 308W (310Np). Now my HR average was a couple bpm less on Sunday than on the 10th, but this does seem to reinforce the value of my power estimate formulas for times when I don't have my PT working for whatever reason. Granted, these probably have to be adjusted from time to time as I get stronger as I'll be able to push more wattage for the same HR, but it is good to know I can at least get in the ballpark power wise this way.

Some Definite Progress, I Think

Yesterday, Sunday the 6th, was scheduled to be a field test day for me, something I don't really look forward to very much in general. This week though, I was actually sort of looking forward to doing this as I felt I could set a new personal best for FT Power. My last test was done on 7/10, but since the PowerTap at that time was in Wisconsin, I didn't get any power numbers, but I did increase my FTHR by a substantial (too much I think) amount from 151bpm to 160bpm. So since I had my PT back, I was interested in seeing if there was any sort of power improvement to go along with the HR increase.

The route I've found myself using for my TT tests is definitely not a flat out and back course. It is hilly, with a long descent, two 90 degree turns and a couple good climbs thrown in. Not to mention an intersection that can be a bit tricky. At some point I'm going to try this course in reverse which would get rid of the intersection but then I don't think it would be long enough from where I'd have to start to avoid a similar intersection but this time coming at it from a steep descent. I've included the profile of my TT route to the left.

I did about an hour warm up, including a 12 minute hard effort after which I cooled down for 20 minutes before starting my TT. To be honest, the 12 minute hard effort was an aborted TT that I was going much to hard on and couldn't maintain the pace. As it turned out, it did give a pretty decent CTS type Field Test though (see graph). I covered a 3 mile section in 7'14.7", averaging 339W, 156bpm HR, and 101 rpm cadence. Accorording to Chris Carmichael's "Ultimate Ride", this would give me a SteadyState power (equivalent to FT) of 305W.




So after this warm-up, when I wasn't sure I could do a good TT, I decided to try anyway. Once I got into a good rhythm it was hard, but doable, to keep a steady effort, at least most of the way. As you can see from the second graph here, towards the end of the TT the effort became a bit less steady, but still pretty strong. In fact, looking a bit deeper I found that my average power over 10 minute intervals increased as the TT went on. In the first 10 minutes I averaged 301W, the second 10 minutes I averaged 308W and in the final 10 minutes I averaged 313W. This actually corresponds pretty well with the changes in terrain. The first 10 minutes covers the initial climb and the steepest part of the descent. The second 10 minutes covers the more or less level terrain in the middle while the last 10 minutes covers the final 4% average grade climb to the finish. The part that gets me is that I was able to maintain the 301W average through the descent.

So overall I am very happy with my performance in this test. I increased my FT power from 294W (set back in June) to 310W (average power for the last 20 minutes of the test), which is pretty close to the 305W I would have had if I used my warm-up hard effort as a CTS Field Test. I also set new personal bests for my CP10 and CP12 power, not surprising since my aborted TT that served as my warm-up was 12 minutes. And I now have a pretty good routine for future tests.

FInal Long Training Ride

This summer, my main goal has been to get ready for a 137 mile ride across the state of Vermont and back in a single day. To that end, I've been trying to increase the time and distance of my long rides to get somewhere near the 8 hours I have set as a goal for the rolling time of this ride.

My long rides really got going back at the end of June when I completed a 93 miler and continued on throughout July when I completed rides of 101, 107 and 108 miles. The last two were in back to back weeks where my mileage hit new highs both times (275 miles in one week and 279 miles in the next).

This has given me a whole new level of respect for pro riders who recover from 100 mile rides overnight it seems. By the time I got to the end of the 108 mile ride (which was actually supposed to be about 10 miles longer but I just couldn't do it), I was pretty well cooked. I don't think I bonked really, just that the accumulated fatigue of the two weeks of hard training caught up with me. A good illustration of this is my TSB chart. At the right side of the graph you'll see an arrow pointing to the spot on the chart the corresponds to my latest (and longest) long ride. Note that the TSB is very negative leading up to this ride, having been -20 or less the previous 5 days. This indicates, at least to me, that I was putting in training rides that were generally quite a bit above my established base, hence leading to increasing fatigue.

Compare this to the previous long ride of 107 miles. For that ride, my TSB had been generally positive for the week leading up to it, except for a small negative blip two days prior. On that ride, while my speed was slightly slower than the most recent ride (probably due to terrain differences), I felt strong through the entire ride, no bonking or extreme feelings of soreness or fatigue. This gives me good hope for my goal ride, assuming I can manage to peak correctly and go into the ride with a bunch of green on my TSB chart.