Challenge session 1: 20km TT

Hi David..

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.

generally.. no you dont get slower as the HR is rising, and the increasing effort to maintain (as best as possible) is causing the general up trend..

over a 30min test like this surely Heat and Hydration DONT play a role in the equation.. for the record it was about 20deg C

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.

for me this is such a tiresome power user argument
What if power is maintained and the affect of heat hydration exhaustion etc are causing the athlete to increase his perceived effort? is that sustainable? No way it is. Power alone is useless unless you can graph perceived effort as well.

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).

what do you mean by an 'all rounder'?

the increase in HR over the final 2k's of my run was soley from an increase in effort to finish strongly

I'm not arguing that HR is not useful as a tool in combination with RPE. Power is useless without RPE. In both cases it's using a formally evaluated metric to compare to what you think you are doing. This isn't a "power is the be all and end all" monologue.

By all rounder I mean someone who scores well at every duration - Taylor Phinney is nicknamed All-Twitch for example because he can sprint, ride a fast kilo, a fast pursuit and win road races. It's quite rare to be good across the full spectrum. Generally people are right weighted (short duration on a power profile) or left weighted.

Fitter people do better in varying conditions because they have more capacity to pace themselves. Luke Mackenzie is fast enough that he can back off the pace and still go 8.40 - that backing off would have greatly reduced the amount of heat he was producing (remember that the human body is ~25% efficient).

People who are not as fit as they have been in the past tend to pace poorly as they try to go at their old speed. As do inexperienced athletes - so the process of getting fitter adds experience that naturally improves their pacing.

I see a lot of very fit athletes pace horribly and I also see inexperienced athletes who are naturally good at pacing. When my wife started time trialling her HR would rise over the first 3-5mins then sit at 181-182 under 2mins to go when she would dig it in for the finish. That pattern never changed over the ensuing 3 years as we dropped her from 26mins for 15.8km to 22.22. But once we got her using power we saw there was more variability than shown by HR.

Similarly - Matt C is very good at pacing. That he goes fast shows that he has good power output for that duration. If he were to decide to try to go that 1.30 faster in one hit (rather than chipping off bits at a time) we would very likely see him fading thanks to burning all his matches too early. That would not mean that his endurance had weakened - just that he went out too hard.

A good example is an athlete I consulted to (wind tunnel and field testing). He did the 15.8km TT and sent me his power file - which started at 380 and fell all the way to end up averaging 320w. So I told him to always start his TTs at the average power from his last race - then lift it in the 2nd half if he was feeling good. He gained 20w the next week purely from better pacing. His physical characteristics hadn't changed but his performance certainly did. So his HR and power lines flattened out for no change in fitness.

The really good thing for Matt with his goals is that good pacing means you spend a lot longer training at an appropriate power for the target duration. As opposed to someone who spends the first few mins at 5min power, then 5-10mins at 20MP then the remainder gradually falling away until they're not getting any training benefit (I've done this on bad days). But Matt will get nearly all of his ride in at 30MP - which is the best way to lift performance (focussed duration training).

In summary - my argument is that:
1. There is no measurement tool for cycling that can be taken as standalone gospel
2. We need to avoid reading too much into the numbers. Pacing is the answer to a lot of ills in endurance sport (cramps, HR trends, nutrition failure, poor running).

A good example is an athlete I consulted to (wind tunnel and field testing). He did the 15.8km TT and sent me his power file - which started at 380 and fell all the way to end up averaging 320w. So I told him to always start his TTs at the average power from his last race - then lift it in the 2nd half if he was feeling good. He gained 20w the next week purely from better pacing. His physical characteristics hadn't changed but his performance certainly did. So his HR and power lines flattened out for no change in fitness.

I dont like that... i would disregard the result totally learn from it find out why and re test always looking for a flat profile..

The really good thing for Matt with his goals is that good pacing means you spend a lot longer training at an appropriate power for the target duration. As opposed to someone who spends the first few mins at 5min power, then 5-10mins at 20MP then the remainder gradually falling away until they're not getting any training benefit (I've done this on bad days). But Matt will get nearly all of his ride in at 30MP - which is the best way to lift performance (focussed duration training).

This is supre true and i always do atleast one structured ride on the computrainer per week.. ERG videos are an excellent tool for this.. Also I ride on excellent roads, where often without trying can pedal constantly for over 20k's a time without ever stopping or decending, (bayside brisbane) where there are no traffic lights or a million idiots to doge riding around the river..

In summary - my argument is that:
1. There is no measurement tool for cycling that can be taken as standalone gospel
2. We need to avoid reading too much into the numbers. Pacing is the answer to a lot of ills in endurance sport (cramps, HR trends, nutrition failure, poor running).

absolutely agree.. i sware by perceived effort for everything... on a side note im surprised you advise/ignore HR though as you said in one of your previous posts.. Just put it on a log it. simple

cheers for the intelligent replies

Further thoughts

Does my HR profile indicate that I didnt hit it hard enough, was I further from the red line? Should I have a rising HR profile like others?

G'day Matt,

Your probably in a better position to answer. But according your your max hr at then it seems like you hit it as hard as you could.

What sort of number do you reach and hold in other events like crits, or sustained climbs, etc, have you done a 40km TT before and what was your av hr for that.

Plus one on David B and your last post too. I think we are agreeing.

A good example is an athlete I consulted to (wind tunnel and field testing). He did the 15.8km TT and sent me his power file - which started at 380 and fell all the way to end up averaging 320w. So I told him to always start his TTs at the average power from his last race - then lift it in the 2nd half if he was feeling good. He gained 20w the next week purely from better pacing. His physical characteristics hadn't changed but his performance certainly did. So his HR and power lines flattened out for no change in fitness.

This also supports the point of this whole thread and importance of trying to produce a HR profile that is flat, because if they are not then the power profiles will more then like be 10 fold. So by focusing on execution with a HR you are then learning to execute and pace better. Over time the next step will be to then learn how to stabilise your RPE (ideally it should be slightly rising). By taking lap splits where you ride a 5km loop, av sp is quite a good marker to use, because on the day over 20km there won't be much variation in terms of wind, temp etc between each lap. So your average speed in that case can be used as a poor man's version of power.

I'll ask a mate of mine who is a crit racer and when he did his 20km TT (28:40) he had an av hr of 173bpm and max of 178bpm.

Your numbers seem to confirm the effort.

fluro

Here's a file from the last commonwealth games TT


Red is HR (few dropouts there), green is cadence and yellow is power.
Note that the HR steadily rises even as the power drops and becomes more erratic. Since then, this athlete has gained more experience in TT and developed a better sense of pacing, so now the power is a lot more of a flat line, even on a hilly course. But HR still creeps upwards.

I put this chart up to show a couple of things - one is that HR can be very consistent even though the effort is more variable. And secondly that even for a top level athlete there's a fine line between too hard at the beginning and just right. Probably only needed 5-10w lower in the first 5mins to be much stronger through the 3rd quarter.

Does it mean that yours should. Maybe. It's a pretty fine balance to strike and you are likely best to stick with what works as long as you keep improving. Once you plateau it might be time to try different pacing strategies.

And, to be honest, a lot of the reason I don't use HR more often is that I can never find the strap. I do use it in the last few weeks before an IM and it is a useful extra metric. But often for hard training I find it mentally limiting. RPE does much the same job as an HRM so I'm happy to let that modulate the info from the PM.

G'day David,

I'll give my couch potato anaylsis of this file. Purely because I don't train with power, so I'll look from other variables.

From zero to 1"36 things are quite even. HR is rising and power is rising not as much as HR but still not enough of a difference to call it decoupling.

Then from 1:36 to 1:44 you see his HR starting to level out. However, there are periods where power is sitting too high, resulting in troughs that follow.

At 1:44 thing turn to shit, but power is not the indicator HR is. Check out the drop at 1:44 and then what follows is a leveling of power. In other words less erractic power up to about 1:52, but HR also confrims this. The most horizontal part of this whole TT was from 1:46 to 1:56. HR and Power confirm this was the best part of this execution.

At 1:56 HR drops and power drops in a uniform manner. This tells me he has reached his muscular endurance limit. So decoupling starts to kick in, ie HR rises but power doesn't. Then like everyone else he performs his final kick in thwe last couple of minutes.

In summary, this guy, whoever his is hasn't execute this TT any better with a powermeter, why because the mistakes he has made are the same mistakes people make without a power meter.

Not sure why his cadences rise up so much at the end and his power drops, I can only assume he had a downhill run to the finish line?????

When you look at his HR profile and compare it with Matt C is it any diferent? yet this guy has a power meter but Matt doesn't so in this cases how has a powermeter been more beneficial? and this guy is a Commonwealth Games Time trialist.


Whoever this guy is, I don't think he executed very well. You just need to look at what happens from 0-1:46 and then 1:46-2:04 to see the differences.


The more I think about it the more I feel this guy has a muscular endurance limiter, or had a cold or injury leading up to this event resulting in a sub optimal prep . ie came into the event underdone.

You can clearly see where he reaches his ME limits 1:56, after that everythign turns south, ie no longer a steady rise in HR and clearly a drop in power until his final kick.

Who is he? please don't tell me he won, as that would be egg on my face




fluro
P.S Would love to hear your view on this Plaz, being the power guy

Paul F wrote:
Who is he? please don't tell me he won, as that would be egg on my face

At around 38 minutes for 2006 Comm games TT, it's possibly a female podium?

http://www.melbourne2006.com.au/Schedule%20and%20Results/By%20Sport/Cycling%20Road/Results/Result%20-%20CR1011XXXXXXXX?ScheduleItemID=30726


Or if it's a bloke who started at 1:25 it's part of this blokes ride http://www.melbourne2006.com.au/Participants/Participants?ID=108806

just off the podium unfortunately
NZ champ for last 3 years, this year smacked world pursuit champion and world no.3 TTer by 50s at nationals.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

It worked.

Now I just need to remember how I uploaded that imagine.

Using my very crude methods of manipulating a graph. Ive added in a yellow line (HR profile) and a blue line (power profile)

You can see there is very little decoupling between HR/power between 0-1:46. The lines are showing only the smallest of seperations. So up to that point she was holding it together.

Then from that point onwards I feel she has reached her limit in terms of fitness ie muscular endurance. The yellow line begins to level out, which in my opinion should have occured much sooner, as you clearly see decoupling occurring becuase her power profile is declining. This would indicate instead of leveling out her efforts earlier on in the TT she continued to push to hard for too long in the first 1/3 of the TT. If her HR profile had of leveled out earlier eg around 1:35 I feel she would of been able to hold her power acocrding to her fitness better 2/3's into the TT.

Then by the 1:58-2:00 mark things are becoming a real struggle, her HR is working overtime and heading north, but nothing is changing with her power, clearly she is cooked by now, muscles are saying no more and ar enot giving her anymore.

She almost hit a seond wind at the 1:54 mark, and I think this shows she has realised she is slowing and struggling and she is having a final "come on" mental battle so to speak (this is trend that occour often in TT, at around 2/4-3/4 produce the worst numbers on paper). You can see her HR rise and also her power jumps right up and quickly. Maybe she caught and was passing another athlete at this point????

At 1:48 it looks like she is climbing a hill, cadence drops right down HR goes up briefly, but power remains levels. I'd say she rode that hill quite well in terms of effort and execution. She has good skills in that department, does she live in a hilly area or do find hill work enjoyable?


So thats' how I see it. So in summary I think she executed poorly between 1:34 - 1:44 and is where I think she overcooked herself resulting in the decoupling and loss of power later on.

Do you view the execution of this TT any differently?

Thanks again David for sharing. It's fun looking at graphs like this.

Are you her coach?

fluro

P.S I can't workout the numbers along the bottom, is that time and how come it starts a 1:26 to 2:04?

How long was the TT?

Cool. Love to se that stuff. Thanks Dave B. I thought you were a different Dave B but your postings of late have proven that! Great to have your input.

I did 4x10km TTs today. First one was purely hard so that I could get an idea of my FTP for the following ones then ran them at 90% of threshold. I had estimated my FTP had reduced to somewhere around 300 and it looks like I was not far off and something like 315-320 is the current mark down from the 380s last year. Not so bad but certanly not great. Here is the graph of the first one untouched then ultra smoothed so as to show any fade etc.

Original file. 10.396km in 14:44 41.8km/HR



Average watts 349. 15ish minutes work so would be happy to use 90% of this as FTP. Cadence is too low I reckon I obviously get the better power towards and above 400 watts above 85 RPM.


Here is the smoothed data to see drop off etc..




Power is yellow, HR is red. HR and power roe throughout which is a good thing I believe. Perhaps my FTP is higher than I think at the moment. Where the raw power of power (lol) comes in is that I rode the first one and got figures that right then and there showed me where I was under those conditions (33 degres and humid as) and I also have fatigue figures and training load from the same program. I went out for the rest of the session and could ride EXACTLY as per plan as it was there in black and white.

This reminds me of a question furo asked about come race week, how do you know where your FTP is at to set watts for the day. I am thinking that a 10km TT the Wednesday before would be a good start. It is something I will explore and get some info on over the next few months.

Alex
thanks
there is Dave B (dinosaur totally untech...)
and David B ( young hip happening fast guy with lots of pretty graphs )

** I did get a gold star from fluoro for my 20km TT !!

Hip and happening are not generally words used to describe someone who has never been drunk/stoned or got the hang of parties. OTOH - I really am good with numbers and graphs

Here's the file from a 2-up TT yesterday. Just me and my little brother putting the hurt into each other for 40km. 20s smoothing applied to make the trends clearer.

I'm quite a bit stronger than him at the moment so were were 2:1 on turn length.
over 1 min quicker than last year, 35w more for me.
Really happy with the execution there - plan was to do 20MP on the front and then tuck in (given that I taught him to ride a bike and we've been riding together for a long time it's not hard to stay 10-20cm apart). Accelerated then got straight into planned power, was 10w higher on the way out into the wind on 1st and 3rd quarter but still kept the pressure on in the tailwinds.
Best ever power for that duration on a TT bike and the same as my road FTP currently which is a really positive sign (shows my position is not losing power).

You'll see that the last leg home the turns were shorter but the power stayed up - it was hurting but the doable. So I'd like to submit this as an example of good pacing - started at a power I could still do at the finish but it took a big effort to do so.

And the reason the power drops before the end of the race is that I lost my team mate down the finishing straight, some rubbish about 50kph being too fast.

G’day Plaz,
Well done on the 10km TT. Here are my observations and what jumps out at me.

<a target='_blank' href='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/i/plaztt10km.jpg/'><img src='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img198/8627/plaztt10km.th.jpg' border='0'/></a>

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https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img198/8627/plaztt10km.jpg

<a target='_blank' title='ImageShack - Image And Video Hosting' href='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/i/plaztt10km.jpg/'><img src='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img198/8627/plaztt10km.jpg' border='0'/></a>

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That first km is brutal. You hit 181bpm which was your average HR for the entire 10km within the first minute. To get there so quickly resulted in you really hammering the pace I think way too hard. It seems like you may have been trying to reach a HR number as quickly as possible and then settle. I’m sure what sort of metric (speed/RPE/watts/HR) you were aiming for in that first minute?

The reason I ask is in the first minute I can 440-450 watts, 48-50kph in speed which all far exceed your averages, except for your HR. Even your cadence gets up over 110rpm. The data in that first minute almost reminds me of someone trying to do a early break away in a road race, or is the domestique leading out his sprinter in the last km, it’s doesn’t show me that your setting up a TT to follow.

Things level out between 1-6min after you have blasted out of the gates faster than Flash Gordon. Things get interesting between 5-7min mark. Speed once again shoots up rapidly, I firstly think tailwind or downhill, but then there are also some spikes in power, so that discounts a tailwind. Your HR is probably at it’s highest above your average line. I honestly don’t know what happened at the 5min mark. Were you alone during this TT?? The reason why I ask is getting excited about something, so I’m thinking you have been influenced by an environmentally factor. If that is the case then mental arousal might be a limiter???

At the 6.30 your speed is well below the average and your cadence is up power is down. I’m thinking this could be a corner, U turn or you have had to slow down for some reason, traffic light, car etc. You can see everything is really erratic, which indicates you’re not TTing?

At the 8min mark, you fail you hit your average speeds after that. Your hovering in waves around 39-42kph. It’s interesting looking at yout speed profile and your cadence profile. As your speed drops your cadence drops, as your speed goes up your cadence goes up. BUT, your watts show almost and opposite effect. Look at the 9minute mark. Speed and cadence and dropping but your watts are rising. I think your pushing a too big a gear here. Your fighting the bike not riding the bike and I feel your ignoring your RPE. You chasing an unsustainable metric, which is resulting in this wave of up and down between your speed, cadence, and watts. Between 1-6min your on RPE, and the data is smooth as, at the 9-14min you flicked over to something else. This is resulting in poor execution and pacing.

From the 13min mark right on cue, you can see the final kick starting, and everything is heading north, how far it heads north confirms you have hit this TT as hard as you can go.

In summary, too hard at the start, chasing the wrong metric. Rode well between 1-6min. I would love to know what happened between 5-8min, something you didn’t expect, a corner, U turn, etc. From 8min onwards, your probably at your worst in terms of execution and pacing. Pushing a too bigger gear, can’t hold that gear, power goes up, losing the battle, speed drops, cadence drops, not sustainable. If you had of selected 1 gear easier at the 9min mark, I believe your profiles would result in higher averages and those lines would have been much smoother like 1-6min.

Was this an out and back course, tailwind for the first 5km and headwind for the second 5km?

Hope it helps

What are your thoughts???

fluro

P.S I'd be careful using that smoothing features, as I found it hides alot of what you have done in terms of execution. I couldn't analayse it. https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img198/8627/plaztt10km.jpg[url=<a target='_blank' href='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/i/plaztt10km.jpg/'><img src='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img198/8627/plaztt10km.th.jpg' border='0'/></a>]<a target='_blank' href='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/i/plaztt10km.jpg/'><img src='https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img198/8627/plaztt10km.th.jpg' border='0'/></a>[/url]

plaz i tend to agree with fluro.. start is to hard, which leads to the 7-12min period where everything trends lower...

can you post your other 3 90% laps up? with a short description of how your percived was effort throught them am interested in watching the hr's and powers as you get fatigued towards the end

cheers

SHoulda described the course. Out and back, tail wind out, U turn at 5km then head wind back. Many false flats that creep up and you realise you have dropped cadence/speed or power quite easily. WEnt out at 30 sec intervals with a group of maybe 20 others. Rode the thing purely riding not looking at anything so I guess you could say that graph is the result of RPE.

Oh and for the record, Crowie has done the same TT course in 13:50.

if you load that course up on mapmyride and post the link (make it public obviously) with a description of the road surface (ranging from smooth tarmac to heavy chip ala IMNZ) then I'll quickly model it and we can inform the discussion around pacing better.