Challenge session 1: 20km TT

G'day Dave,

Thanks for sharing this. For the life of me I can't work out where you got your extra 5kph from?????
I got the disc
I got the aero helmet
But would that really make 5kph difference?
Was the wind direction and speed identical in both TT's?

Just the YAW??? Can you explain YAW again, I have a very limited understanding of that term other than front area.

I'm not getting your CDA in relation to your YAW, completely lost there.

What software were you using to do this? Lot's of good stuff in there

Just noticed wind velocity. Moving from 10 down to 2.0, was it a one direction TT, out and back, or a circuit. The wind velocity could account for some speed depending on the course layout.

fluro

Several key factors to look at.
All my course models use an iterative algorithm in Excel. This is set up to take Roto 1 as the base case and then apply the changes specified in equipment/conditions for the same course in the Roto 2 column.
So the change of helmet, tyres and wheels causes my CdA (aero drag) to drop.
The change of Tyres and tubes drops the CRR (rolling resistance)
The higher temperature and lower pressure drop the air density (less resistance from air)
The lower wind just makes life easier.

The purpose of this was to show how much of a difference you can get between training in winter and racing in summer so I didn't hold the conditions constant. The change in wind and weather is worth 31s of the shown drop in time.

Yaw is purely a function of the wind speed and your speed (it's the effective angle the wind is hitting you at) - so because I dialled down the wind the yaw dropped. But also the faster you are the less concerned you are about high yaw performance. So it's actually slow people who benefit most from Discs and Trek Speed Concepts.

The shown equipment changes drop aero drag by 13.6% and Rolling Resistance by 43.7%

Do you have that calculator available for download etc?

Also, I am not entirely clear, did you ride both of those or is one theoretical?

Roto 1 is what I rode the other day. Roto 2 is mostly theoretical - in that I haven't ridden all that kit in those conditions on that course. But I have ridden in summer in better kit and observed the expected gains from each piece of equipment. When I then relate the setup data here through to a different course model it matches well there too.

I don't have it for download - have to keep some secrets! Plus it would take days to write the instruction manual to use it properly.

David B wrote:Several key factors to look at.


The shown equipment changes drop aero drag by 13.6% and Rolling Resistance by 43.7%

G'day Dave,

Can you possibly break down those %'s a little further to show us where you think those gains are coming from?

It could then serve as a good list of tips to help people save time.

Paul

finally got out to do two in one week.. although the first one was a training ride for the following ride as it has been a while since I have sat on a TT bike..

70% training ride.. on a flat course.. good road etc, no aero gear or jersey.. averaged exaclty 40.0kph.. bit of wind



98% effort. on shitty country roads, undulating with a climb before the turn around.. aero helmet and skin suit.. averaged 42.8kph. cross winds were light



my HR monitor was playing up in the early part of the ride as you can see some 'spikes' which i have rounded off using paint! (i was not sprinting)

G'Day Fluro,

did my first 20K TT on Saturday on my road bike, crappy time, 34:04, but plenty of room for improvement. Are you able to look at my results and tell me my LTHR and is the LTHR the rate at what I should ride at in the TT? I estimate it to be around 175 but you have more knowledge than on this than me. Hopefully I can get better

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/37357707

Cheers,
Mick Goldspink.

same course as me there Mick.

looks like you paced it quite well (you want to build the HR towards the end) and uour HR generally built the whole ride with no spikes or drops in it..

mycle1 wrote:G'Day Fluro,

did my first 20K TT on Saturday on my road bike, crappy time, 34:04, but plenty of room for improvement. Are you able to look at my results and tell me my LTHR and is the LTHR the rate at what I should ride at in the TT? I estimate it to be around 175 but you have more knowledge than on this than me. Hopefully I can get better

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/37357707

Cheers,
Mick Goldspink.

G'day Mick,

Good to hear from you.

Here's my observations

Your HR profile looks good like Mick C mentioned. You hit your overall average HR with the first 5min of the test. That seems to be the norm. Also from the 1/2 way mark onwards your consistently riding above your av hr. So this give a good indication of a well executed test.
Your av hr was 173bpm and you max hr was 182bpm. This is a difference of 9bpm, similar to me (8bpm). Going off my results because your execution in terms of HR is almost identical to mine, I felt my av hr was still about 2-3 bpm too low. In other words a max effort 20km TT should have you sitting at FTHR + 5-7bpm. My FTHR = 166bpm and my av hr for the 20km TT was 168bpm (max hr 176bpm). So a true 20km tt should have me sitting at 173-175bpm with a max of about 180bpm.

So looking at your results and taking in consideration your max hr my guess is that you rode at FTHR +2-3bpm. I think with a specific FT focus block of training you would be able to ride closer to 177-179bpm with a max hr around 186bpm.

The kick at the end to reach you max hr is a long kick 3-4min and a gradual rise to your max hr. I would think it would be much quicker in time, ie in the last km, but you have kicked for about 2-2.5km which tells me maybe too much left in the tank at the end.

Was the course a gradual uphill then downhill or a headwind out and tailwind back??

So in summary I think your LTHR would be around 170-173bpm.This is based on your maximum effort for a 1hr time trial. eg 40km TT
I think with more specific training the effort you held for this 20km TT can, with the right training, could be extended out to a 40km TT which would equal your LTHR. I'm not sure if you could hold 175bpm for a whole hour, that seems a tad high based on this 20km TT results, but with more of these tests and more data overtime you'll be able to narrow your LTHR right down to a single number. So keep the test coming in.

Cadence is good and that cadence profile shows you have selected a good course to improve the accuracy of the information we are looking for.

Your time is good considering you did this on the roadie, especially when you look at the time saving to be had by adding all the bling (ie David B's post)

Hope it helps

Paul

P.S do you still get my emails. I have you on my list?

Hey paul what do you think about my run? I did it on the exact same course as mick did.. there were light cross winds pretty much the whole run and a general climb out to the turn around (all big chain ring)

I averaged almost 43kph and the winners were just over 45kph and would like to get to their standard, was I to conserverative in the early section after the turn around? possibly riding the wrong gear on the decents?

I want to train up and have a good smack at the state ITT's this year

Fluro,
there was a couple of slight uphills on the way out with a bit of a tailwind in parts on the way back. Yep still on the list, always read with interest as there is good info in there. Thanks for the quick response. Sally says hi.

Matt C,
you must have done a very good time, around 28 and a bit, wow thats very good. Another league to me. I was a bit dejected after the TT but had a good Kermesse on the Sunday and finshed top 10 in Masters B, I like that course.

G'day Mick,

Impressive time. Can you send through the garmin connect file so I can look at the averages and max's. Also I find it easier the manipulate the garmin connect graphs, axis, and add in the average line which is starting to show up some patterns with all these TT's. I finding new things to look for, eg how long it takes to reach av hr at the start, the point at which an athlete starts spending consistent time above their av hr, which seems to occur at the 10km mark on well executed TT's, and when the athlete has their final dig to the finish line, how hard they go in relation to their av hr and how far out they start that final dig.

What was your setup for that 43kph result. it would be good to start build up a table of some sort to make comparison between road and TT results, so that guys like Mick G can make comparisons

fluro

I like the hurt on the guys face in your avatar. Priceless, especially when you look like your doing it easy.


fluro

I am off for a few 10km TTs this weekend. Not a 20 but I think I am doing 3x10s or maybe even 4. Waiting for coach to tell me. Will get the numbers up n that.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/37717597

this should work

Garmin Connect

(ignore the HR spikes early on)

am looking to take 1:30mins off that time 2-3kph over the next 11 weeks..

coming from zero time on the TT bike

Mick C,



Carmin connect is down at the moment. I had a quick look at your result this morning, before my Doc appointment. If I were your teacher and this 20km TT was your test, your score card would read 10/10

In a nutshell this result is the first one that I have seen that shows "muscular endurance" as your strength. I explain later

Your execution was perfect as a result of having superior muscular endurance (ME). ME is the number 1 limiter for all triathletes across all three disciplines and it is near impossible for a triathlete to have superior muscular endurance in all three disciplines, 2 at most.

Once garmin connect is back up I'll give you and everyone the full run down as to why I think your result seperates you from the rest of us and why we should all be striving to achieve superior muscular endurance

Well done, it's such a long slow process to develop yout ME but once you do expect great results.


More to come.......

Couple of questions
1. Are you a coach?
2. Are you being coached?
3. Are you a triathlete or just a cyclist?
4. Whats your background (athletic age in cycling)

The reason why I'm asking, like I said, it is soo difficult to develop muscular endurance, and I'm curious to know how you achieved it?




fluro

Paul.. (its Matt C not Mick C )

Garmin back online now

wow im amazed you scored it so high... infact im a little sad as I want that extra 1:30

1. Are you a coach? No (lol thats a funny thought)
2. Are you being coached? no... but I read alot and am smart/dedicated
3. Are you a triathlete or just a cyclist? tried triathlon but hated swimming and 'loved' cycling so much decied to stop swimming and running
4. Whats your background (athletic age in cycling).. Currently 2 years triathlon 8 months cycling dedication.

Interesting what you say about ME. I've felt that's my biggest problem. Both HM's I've done this has been my killer. The last one, GCHM last year I got to the 14 or 15k mark travelling well (looking at sub 1:50 time) and then crashed to finish in 1:55 with my hr recovering by the time I crossed the finish line, but I just couldn't get my legs to move any faster.

LOL,

There too many Mick C, Matt C, Mick G, I'm lost


Looking at it now

fluro

G’day Matt C,
The first thing that jumps out at me is your HR profile. You basically hit your av hr at the 5min mark but then you display the most horizontal HR profile right through the test. This indicates superior muscular endurance.

Here’s why.

If you look at my HR profile and also Mick G, we also hit our av hr at the 5min mark but consistently sit just under it until the 10km and then there is evidence of consistently sitting just above it. It’s still our good execution on our part but we lack muscular endurance to be right on that av hr line for the entire test. This is what you do.

What muscular endurance means is that you have the ability to sustain power for a very long period of time. I don’t, because I have rising HR profile which indicate I’m not holding my watts as well as you.
So what do you have that separates yourself from us. If I was to take a muscle biopsy of your muscles, they would be rich with capillaries. What that means is you able to fuel your muscles much better than me and the others because you’ll have a much higher number of capillaries fueling each muscle fibres and that is muscular endurance. So that means you can fuel you muscles more efficiency and clear lactic acid out more efficiently. Think about the colour and chicken wings compared to a chicken breast. Chicken wings are a much darker meat, because they are rich in capillaries and therefore contain more blood and more mitochondria.

Your av hr 178bpm and your max hr is 183, so that is a difference of 5bpm and like I have said in all of my previous post at most your max hr should only be about 5-7bpm more than your av hr. So this also confirms how well you have execute the TT. Based on that my guess would be that you have executed this TT at FTHR +5-7bpm. I wouldn't know if you are closer to +5bpm or +7bpm, you would make that call better than me. So I would have your FTHR sitting around 172-174bpm. That would be what I would expect you to hold for a 40km TT
A little more on Muscular endurance. It’s so hard to develop because it involves bring all your body systems together to be able to perform at their peak. Hence the need to develop your ME in your build and peak phases of training.


You firstly, need good a good adaptation to functional threshold training. This teaches your body to improve your heart (stroke volume), your lungs (respiratory system), your blood (cardiovascular system) in the form of capillary density, mitochondria, etc.

You also need good endurance as this will improve your economy and efficiency and fueling capacities at your target race distances.

You then need strength endurance. This one is a quicker adaptation and focusing on making the muscles stronger. For example, riding hills and pushing big gears. You’ll notice these adaptations almost on a weekly basis.

You need all of this in order to then develop your “muscular endurance” and that is basically using all of the well training systems above to then motor along pushing a big gear at a high intensity for a long time. For example, Matt C TT results. If one of those systems above is weak, they’ll impact directly on your muscular endurance and that is why people like me, need to change how I execute a TT, by working into more know I am not able to sustain the power and this results in a rising HR profile.


But there is more, if you have superior muscular endurance you’ll find your ability to absorb work greatly increases, and I mean a lot, AND you’ll recover really quick between sessions. So people with superior muscular endurance, train a lot and hard and can keep backing up a lot more than people with poor muscular endurance. They basically have very well condition systems (cardio, resp, muscular, immune, etc).


What would be my tip for Matt C. A good solid FT focus, you could handle 3 maybe even 4 key sessions PW, build really slow, but your block of training would be a lot longer than your typical 6 week block. I think you could handle a 9-10 week FT block of training, as it would need to be that long to get the desired overload happening. Weeks 7-9 would be critical in managing your overload, fatigue and recovery strategies.

If I was living in Brisbane I'd be hunting you down for a training partner. Lot to learn off this guy.

Hope it helps

fluro
P.S This is first draft, and I'll fix speelin and gramer later

thats deep.. and interesting... ill definatley re-read that about 1000 times... thanks for the effort in your reply..

I went back to compare the HR profiles (as i actually thought they were the same ie getting higher) but there is a much more horizontal trend in my profile that I never really noticed.

I also noticed how quickly my HR dropped at the turn around and on the decents unlike micks which stayed even, Even through we both would have been lightly peddling through a sweeping left hander

A good solid FT focus, you could handle 3 maybe even 4 key sessions PW, build really slow, but your block of training would be a lot longer than your typical 6 week block. I think you could handle a 9-10 week FT block of training, as it would need to be that long to get the desired overload happening. Weeks 7-9 would be critical in managing your overload, fatigue and recovery strategies.

whats interesting with this is you said 3-4 key sets a week.. currently I do try to hit 4 hard threshold sets a week... 2 races (crits) or road races... 2 training one on the computrainer and the other on the road where I do 4-6 x 5 min efforts at the 165 hr mark

the rest of my riding is 'EASY' around the 125 hr

Cheers Fluro ill think more and post later

G'day Matt,

This quick drops in HR carry over to having a better ability to recover, adapt and grow between key sessions. For someone like Mick G he could handle 2 possibly 3 key sessions PW max. Anymore, and he'll bury himself, hit a plateau, fall outside of the zones that induce the big adaptations, burnout, get injured etc. This is more common than we think and cycling groups generally do a Hard Tuesday ride, a hard Thursday ride and then a hard weekend ride. Three each week is alot and often I'm cutting back to two PW based on fatigue and I feel I;m quite fit on the bike at the moment, definitely not muscular endurance fit though.

That 165bpm puts you right in Coggans sweet spot, ie low to mid zone 4 (Friel speak). Lots and lots of good adaptation happen in that zone which induce the same adaptation as zone 5a (threshold) but with a reduce recovery cost. Your right on the money there.

I tend to focus on zone 4 efforts, but I'm still learning how to recover quickly in order to back it up ever 48hrs.

Your 4-6 x 5min is good starting point but I'd be thinking about getting the total work time up more to sit somewhere between 45-60min. This will depend of course on others sessions and monitoring your fatigue. Think about keeping where it is and when you start hitting the numbers your looking for then extend. Don't extend until those benchmarks are being executed, as this will give you good feedback in terms of having adapted to the new stress and then a readiness to add on more.

What I say to my guys is that they have to hit the benchmarks first, then give it another week of the same to consolidate the same session and if you do then add more. That's usually a 2-3 week process. Applying the, add 10% each week, doesn't apply here and I have never liked it. It's too much of an overload. You always overload ONLY when you have adapted. That may mean doing the same thing for a few weeks in a row. Bodies don't grow overnight.

fluro

Paul F wrote:
What muscular endurance means is that you have the ability to sustain power for a very long period of time. I don’t, because I have rising HR profile which indicate I’m not holding my watts as well as you.

Do you get slower as the HR is rising? If you're getting aerobic decoupling you are either inappropriately trained for that duration (ie you should be able to do 85% FTP for 90km but it still takes practice) or your pacing is poor.

But heat and hydration can lead to HR rising without a detriment on power. So a rising HR line doesn't necessarily mean anything without knowing what is happening to power. I'll see if any of my athlete files show this - but we don't tend to worry about HR so don't wear straps so I don't think I have much data.

The flaw with the concepts of muscular and strength endurance is that an all rounder could appear to have poor endurance but still beat someone with "better" endurance (under this system).

G’day David,

I agree with you to some extent. The patterns I’m starting to observe with the data I’m collecting, is that HR fluctuations decrease as athletes become fitter. What that tells me fit athletes are able to handle the environment conditions/extremes better than unfit athletes. You won’t see as many HR fluctuations.
I was getting to a point where I was think HR monitors were not a good measure of performance, but now I’m leaning back towards HR monitors being able to offer up valuable information for assessing performance and evaluating ones level of fitness. It’s all subjective of course.

So the case of these TT’s you’ll notice athletes that are not as fit as Matt will have a rising HR profile, which could be a result of just fitness, execution, poor pacing, temperature, fatigue and it’s how you assess those variable against other markers that help you analyze the info. They can be assess against, speed, av sp, elevation, wind, RPE, max speed, etc. I look for commonalities.

Quite often, once you put all the factors together you can then build a picture up in terms of how fit someone is, what their strengths and weaknesses might be, etc. And think a HR monitor, while not a great tool to train with is a god resource to use fort testing an analyzing.

I think a HR monitor means alot in relation to RPE, I think it HR/RPE combine reads the environment more accurately then power/watts combined. I still don’t understand how a powermeter understands if the conditions are really hot, or you are fatigued or stressed. HR monitors do pick up on those changes, we don’t need to know what the changes are, we just need to know when they ARE occurring. If we know when these changes are occurring then we can alter our training intensities using RPE to apply the correctly level of overload and consequently fatigue.

Here is another example of how FIT athletes are not subject to heat. Luke Mckenzie won Ironman China in 8:40, the rest of the field was a good 30-45 minutes slower. That to me is superior muscular endurance, ie the ability to sustainable power in all conditions. The Pro’s don’t race slower in extreme conditions. So Mckenzie has developed his ability to expire heat in hot conditions in order to maintain the same sustainable power as he would in an Ironman that is much cooler.

Just yesterday I rode with a HR on one of my recovery rides. I decided to do a 20min effort at IMeffort. I found the effort I know I can hold and sustain for 180km and that should be at 135-140bpm. When I did look down at my HR monitor it was on 150-155bpm. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know exactly what is causing this high HR, what does matter is that I have registered it and I’m now aware that something is wrong. Sure enough, this morning I discovered I have DOMS from last Saturday hammer fest. I didn’t feel it yesterday, my HR monitor was warning me yesterday, but man, I can feel it today.

The take home message for me in terms of a HR monitor is that it doesn’t fluctuate for no reason at all. It fluctuates because something is happening inside of our bodies, and it often amounts to nothing more than just general fatigue, but often it can pre-warn us on other things that are lurking.

What I basically do is train to RPE, use a HR monitor occasionally for testing purposes and to also re-calibrate my RPE ever few months of so. It’s always a secondary measure of effort and a powerful tool so long as you don’t over use it.

fluro