Sunday Ride - 20th January
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by Grant Barnes » Sun Jan 20, 2008 11:13 pm
Andrew - thanks again for suggesting this pre Ashdown taster... despite the weather forecast it stayed dry all the way around and I like some others felt a tad overdressed.
Some storming performances today, which meant I was struggling to keep up particularly as we hit the long dragging climbs in the headwind.
Thanks to everyone who made it a very enjoyable morning. Felt knackered by the time I got home and sufficient to say the bike now rests in the cellar covered in c**p from todays ride. If I regain some energy I may clean it in time for next weeks CR !
Some storming performances today, which meant I was struggling to keep up particularly as we hit the long dragging climbs in the headwind.
Thanks to everyone who made it a very enjoyable morning. Felt knackered by the time I got home and sufficient to say the bike now rests in the cellar covered in c**p from todays ride. If I regain some energy I may clean it in time for next weeks CR !
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Re: Sunday Ride - 20th January
by huw williams » Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:51 am
[quote="Toks"][quote="huw williams"]
I've only been on it for a month though after 6 weeks off with zero riding and already seeing significant improvement. (I'll soon catch George
)
So - 200w av for over 3 hours is bang in the middle of 'Tempo' range for me
Good work Mr Williams, given what you've mentioned above your FT is fine. Starting from weeks and weeks of zero training a 40-60watt gain in a season, depending on training time etc is more than feasible. Rob and I will fill in your 300watt membership card and you can pick it up a few weeks before the TOBM. I've only been on it for a month though after 6 weeks off with zero riding and already seeing significant improvement. (I'll soon catch George
)So - 200w av for over 3 hours is bang in the middle of 'Tempo' range for me
Cheers Toks/Rob
Some interesting observations on my first 'group' ride with a powertap which I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts on.
I wanted a 'Tempo' paced ride and was resigning myself to dropping off and riding solo if the pace of the group wasn't conducive to that. But I quickly discovered you can achieve a training objective even given the stochastic nature of a mixed ability group.
If your training objective is a tempo ride of 200w for 3 hours you need to be as close to that 200w at all times for it to fit the purpose. It's no good thrashing it for the first 2 hours then riding at a snails pace for the third one because that's a 2 hour 'threshold' workout plus a 1 hour 'recovery' workout, not a 3 hour 'tempo' workout. (Let me explain - if I you took a one hour session where I did 20mins at 300w, another 20 mins at 300w then 20mins at 100 w given my CP30 there's no way I could do that session. Not storong enough. However, the average watts for that session is 233w and I can hold that for an hour no problem - In fact I've done it on the rollers - its right at the top end of my 'sweet spot' range. So you can see why average power is no good over the whole piece unless you stay somewhere near to it during your given targets during a workout)
On the road this translates like this:
We set off, went straight up Selsdon and Farley hills which even at a modest pace is cranking out 250+ w then I chased Keith up Slines Oak, went past him over the top, saw my max HR (186) with power in excess of 500w (not for long I might add
) Waiting for the re-group at the end I noticed that for the opening 40 minutes my av power was well in excess of 235w which was way in excess of my 'Tempo' pace. So to remedy this the next 90 minutes of the ride I sat in and brought the average down - every hill I did enough to stay in the group without rocketing the watts up past 250, but had to ride hard enough to stop the watts dropping too low as well. This feels like being overly conservative at times and it doesn’t come naturally to me to let guys ride ahead on the hills but needs must. What happens next though is interesting. Keeping average watts in the region of the targeted 200 even including going up Toys hill is easy enough, but staying close to that figure when spinning along the flats in a group is a different matter – and after 2.5 hours you notice your precious average starting to fall away. So by the time we got to the bottom of the long descent and were on Poll hill I had to adopt the unthinkable practice for me of ‘spending some time on the front’ in order to keep the watts high.Good for the rest of the pack as I gave everyone a free tow up to Kasper who’d attempted a fiendish attack and gotten away on the lower slopes. Fortunately the combination of high winds, some willing testers riding strongly on the flats and tearing up some long drags with Keith enabled me to stick to the targeted wattage through Shire Lane to Downe. Along the top to Biggin and Hill I was uncharacteristically nailed to the front in order to keep the watts up.
A further observation here underlines how good training with a power meter is. My heart rate drift was long into the period where in order to hold onto the watts it was creeping up and up. In the past I would have simply stayed in the same zone (putting out less and less power) but here there’s no escape with a Cycleops, the longer you go the more effort you have to make just to maintain the same power output. Now after close to 3 hours riding THIS is good training.
Observations on downloading the data over the past month:.
LT is reasonable given bodyweight.
Much stronger in the endurance department – my figures when rides go over 3 hours are comparatively much better – (not surprising given I spend a lot of emphasis on this area for sportive reasons) and I was finding it much easier to do longer efforts on the front the longer the ride went on yesterday – I wasn’t getting stronger but everyone else was tiring worse than I seemed to be
Peak power in shorter efforts is woefull and needs a lot of attention, due in no small part to not racing properly
for a couple of years – so its a couple of months in the shed for me with nothing but 2 x 20 LT intervals and some shorter super threshold stuff – god help us 
The wider picture – you CAN use scientific training methods, get results AND still enjoy group rides with the lads cos yesterday was excellent on all those levels
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Re: Sunday Ride - 20th January
by Toks » Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:22 pm
Good post Huw. It'll be interesting to see how your fitness levels develop now that you have an instant, accurate and downloadable fitness tracker (powermeter); indeed, whether it motivates, guides and ultimately determines how effectively you train. I don't have an on bike powermeter (Srm/Powertap) but I'm sure Rob, RichV, Adam and others PM users can give you feedback on average versus Normalised power during longer undulating rides.
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Re: Sunday Ride - 20th January
by Robh » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:50 pm
Huw, what was your normalized power for this ride?
When I first got a Powertap in 2002 I was advised by Ric Stern to train on my own with it if I was looking to get the maximum out of training. If you had been looking for an endurance ride you would not have got it yesterday as the pace was being dictated by others. This is no different if you were training by heart rate.
Here is a summary of my rides with ACC since November 2007 from CSS to cafe
3/11/2007, 201W AV, 246W NP, 20.5mph AV (lots of time on the front)
10/11/2007, 202W AV, 246W NP, 20.4mph AV (lots of time on the front, Huw was in this group)
17/11/2007, 201W AV, 237W NP, 18.8mph AV
24/11/2007, 170W AV, 213W NP, 19.0mph AV (very little time spent on the front)
8/12/2007, 208W AV, 245W NP, 19.1mph AV (suffering with stomach cramps, very cold and very wet too)
15/12/2007, 228W AV, 256W NP, 20.1mph AV (spent 25mins riding solo on the front)
22/12/2007, 194W AV, 237W NP, 19.4mph AV
5/1/2008, 200W AV, 237W NP, 20.2mph AV
12/1/2008, 210W AV, 253W NP, 20.5mph AV
Rob
When I first got a Powertap in 2002 I was advised by Ric Stern to train on my own with it if I was looking to get the maximum out of training. If you had been looking for an endurance ride you would not have got it yesterday as the pace was being dictated by others. This is no different if you were training by heart rate.
Here is a summary of my rides with ACC since November 2007 from CSS to cafe
3/11/2007, 201W AV, 246W NP, 20.5mph AV (lots of time on the front)
10/11/2007, 202W AV, 246W NP, 20.4mph AV (lots of time on the front, Huw was in this group)
17/11/2007, 201W AV, 237W NP, 18.8mph AV
24/11/2007, 170W AV, 213W NP, 19.0mph AV (very little time spent on the front)
8/12/2007, 208W AV, 245W NP, 19.1mph AV (suffering with stomach cramps, very cold and very wet too)
15/12/2007, 228W AV, 256W NP, 20.1mph AV (spent 25mins riding solo on the front)
22/12/2007, 194W AV, 237W NP, 19.4mph AV
5/1/2008, 200W AV, 237W NP, 20.2mph AV
12/1/2008, 210W AV, 253W NP, 20.5mph AV
Rob
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Re: Sunday Ride - 20th January
by huw williams » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:01 pm
[quote="Robh"]
When I first got a Powertap in 2002 I was advised by Ric Stern to train on my own with it if I was looking to get the maximum out of training. If you had been looking for an endurance ride you would not have got it yesterday as the pace was being dictated by others. This is no different if you were training by heart rate. Rob
When I first got a Powertap in 2002 I was advised by Ric Stern to train on my own with it if I was looking to get the maximum out of training. If you had been looking for an endurance ride you would not have got it yesterday as the pace was being dictated by others. This is no different if you were training by heart rate. Rob
235W NP
Absolutely right - all my training rides are usually solo - the point of this one though was to find out if you CAN still get some kind of controlled session if you go out with a mixed ability group.
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