Challenge session 1: 20km TT

Yeah, it's a particular circuit that is ridden by most cyclist up here. I've used it a couple of times for 40k tt's, though those ones I've been trying to keep my hr down under 140 or 150bpm. Might go a bit harder for 20k. Was gonna have a go this arvo before the rain and fog hit.

goughy wrote:Yeah, it's a particular circuit that is ridden by most cyclist up here. I've used it a couple of times for 40k tt's, though those ones I've been trying to keep my hr down under 140 or 150bpm. Might go a bit harder for 20k. Was gonna have a go this arvo before the rain and fog hit.

G'day Goughy,

When you do these tests decided beforehand what it is that you a looking to identify in order to set up your next block of training.

So for me I'm racing the ATTA winter 20km TT series, so I'm doing a max effort 20km TT and what I'm looking for is

1. Pacing. Did I take it out too hard or too easy?
2. HR profile. Is my HR graph consistent, smooth, declining, inclining, has spikes, etc
3. Speed. Because I do it on a 5km circuit I can compare each lap. Are the laps consistent, if not what the difference in splits, where is my fastest lap and my slowest lap, etc
4. Decoupling. Does my HR profile go and up and my speed profile go down?
5. Cadence. What is it? what happens to it? Am I over gearing or under gearing?
6. Goals. Were my goals acheived?

All of this information then helps me to decide what sort of training I do next, what I need to target in order to try and beat that time in 6 weeks time.


Is your going to do a sub threshold test then what event is it that your aiming for and how are you determining your benchmark/caps in order to identify your results at a sub threshold effort? When I was doing IM's, in the off season I would do my tests to HR until I had my RPE calibrated, then the tests would be to RPE and that would be measure against HR afterwards. What that means is if my IMHR is 140bpm then a well claibrated RPE test will result in an av hr of 140bpm. We used to put tape over our HR monitors so that we couldn't cheat, it was fun seeing how close you could execute a test as close as possible to your pre-determine HR number.


Hope it helps

fluro

Paul F wrote:
G'day Dave,

Can you post your graph?, then I can give you some tips on what to look for. Graphs let me the most when it comes to analysing data.

fluro

Sure mate. Just gotta get hold of a microphone and see what the Polar thing tells me.
Seriously, who has a microphone as their program interface?
Might see what Shuffla's PT is up to on ebay...........

I managed to do mine this morning and am more then happy with my result.
34:43 avg 34.6 km/h, avg cadence 95, avg HR 155 (MHR 185)

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/34801186

I only have clip on bars so my plan was to find a comfortable gear and dont change, my first lap was 1 gear to high so I changed down and then just concentrated on cadence. As a bike nooby this was by far my longest and hardest hit out so i'm wrapped with where I am at the moment and can't wait for GC 1/2IM.

Cheers

mgilla

Mick's record looks similar to how mine felt. But he was quicker.
You can see the drop in cadence/speed around the corner after the start finish line.
Checking out the map on the Garmin record it doesn't even have the clubhouse building

Dave Tyno wrote:
You can see the drop in cadence/speed around the corner after the start finish line.

Dave I i'm not sure if I should have found another gear on those 2 little rises, but I decided to stay on the bars and just work a little harder. I guess thats the sort of things I would like to get feedback on before I do the next one.

Cheers

mgilla

Mick G wrote:
Dave I i'm not sure if I should have found another gear on those 2 little rises

I don't know either. I usually went 1 or 2 gears easier, but I'm not sure I did it the best either. I felt like I was underpowered once it levels off a few times.

Plaz or Koko should be able to offer good advice on that, having been round there a few times.............

I got the microphone and uploaded my data - it's exactly the same. So no graph.
I found the lap setting for the cs200 though, so maybe once I turn that on I'll get more.......

Mick G wrote:I managed to do mine this morning and am more then happy with my result.
34:43 avg 34.6 km/h, avg cadence 95, avg HR 155 (MHR 185)

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/34801186

I only have clip on bars so my plan was to find a comfortable gear and dont change, my first lap was 1 gear to high so I changed down and then just concentrated on cadence. As a bike nooby this was by far my longest and hardest hit out so i'm wrapped with where I am at the moment and can't wait for GC 1/2IM.

Cheers

mgilla

G'day Mick,

First off well done on knocking out a 20km TT. These test really give you some good direction in terms of setting up your next training block.

Here are some observations that I hope help

I think it is great that you have an elevating HR profile, however, that elevation is too steep. This would indicate that you have probably started a little too easy or you haven't spent much time training in and around that intensity resulting in you not being able to find the right level of effort (RPE) early enough in this TT.

At about the 22min mark you can see your HR levelling out and that would be getting close to your FTHR (ie 160bpm ish). It would be good to see you hitting 160bpm much earlier in the TT and then learning how to hold that level of effort for the rest of the TT. This would result in a less of a kick at the end. In your result, you start really upping the effort from about the 31min mark all the way to the end. Riding at or above FTHR wouldn't let you do that for so long, maybe 1 to 2km max but not any longer (lactic acird buildup would prevent that kick) and not that much of an increase eg 155bpm av hr and you finished at 170bpm indicates you finished strong but you shouldn't finish that strong. At most I can drive my HR up about another 5-7bpm, but not 15bpm.

If you have a look at your HR profile and compare it to your speed profile you can see decoupling happening, which is a consistent rise in HR with a consistent drop in speed. The speed profile is only very minor though, need to mill more over this.


You have lots of good info from this test and I'd be focusing on that 160bpm mark as a benchmark for your FTHR efforts. Learn to get there early in your intervals and hold that HR for the entire interval. This will put you around high zone 4 maybe even zone 5a and that will directly address improving your ability to handle a 20km TT.

I’m going to encourage everyone to do another 20km TT in about 3-4 weeks time, you should pencil it in and then we can start comparing results over the same course to start tracking progress. That is where the benefits of testing really start to show through.
The more people that jump on board the better it will be for all of us to compare how we execute these TT and we’ll hopefully be able to learn something from these experiences. Already just between yourself, Cameron and I we have 3 results that have been executed completely different.

I’ll look over your cadence and cornering tomorrow.

Hope it helps


Hope it helps.

fluro

Nice Work Mick

Fluro good assessment of his performance.

I'm excited about this. There are some really good data being presented here and over the weekend I'll put it together into a document and post it. The more we can get people on board to do this the easiest it will become to back up the analysis with the results.

Where things will really hit home is when we start comparing results from test to test and then look at how the improvements stack up against out training.

Over on triahtlog I was doing similar things with the 8km run test and this bike test is opening up the doors and providing really useful feedback for us to consider when we look at the graphs.

More than anything else, my goal is to just keep gettng people to look at what they are doing so then can then setup some training targets to aim for.


fluro

Great read there fluro. I did mine this morning in far from stellar conditions. What I can say is that props to my jaggad invest jacket! 13* and raining and when I got home I was dry, bar the sweat. Legs were another story

I don't know if we're spose to go into this without a warm up, but I have a 7k ride there with about 4k uphill I took very easy. Was drizzling when I started out and was light rain by the time I got there. I'm not good at cornering at the best of times and today was just horrid, breaking (attempting to at least) long before the corners and going around them almost upright I was so slow. In saying that I actually think these were some of my fastest efforts around this track. It's a popular circuit with local cyclists as it's pretty quiet traffic wise. My fastest single lap efforts around here have been in the low 6min30secs and I sustained sub 7min/lap in horrid conditions. I also use this track for 40k TT's though with those I'm working on keeping my hr under a certain bpm, usually 150. Unfortunately garmin still haven't sent me a replacement hrm so I have no hr data. Based on experience I think it would have been in the 155 to 160 range. I seem to be able to sustain near 180bpm on a run up to 60mins but just don't have the physical strength to get there and stay there on the bike unless going up some serious hills. While not steep, it's far from a flat track and my speed will reflect that. Since others mentioned it, my gearing stayed in the 53, but varied from 25 down to about 13 on the back. Standing start.

Here's the link to GC
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/34867688

I'm going to be ramping up my cycling a bit now as it's my weakest link, and should be out on this track doing various efforts at least weekly. I'll be really keen to see how it improves over the coming months. I also haven't done any strength work for a long long time, and am looking at doing some multi movement exercises to work on that; if I can pull my finger out that is!

G'day Goughy,

Good stuff, you also now have a clear benchmark and something to build on. Because you did a 7km lap is it possible to insert lap splits for each lap, so that we can work at your av sp for each lap?

Without HR data I can't compare your HR profile with your speed profile. In saying that if you had lap split you could compare your lap times and see how well you executed the TT. In saying that your peak speed are spread out and not confined to the first 5km where it is common for people to take it out a little too hard at the start. Your peak speed is right in the middle of the test (44.3kph).From about 33min it, and your last peak 36.1kph it looks like your starting to struggle, not 100% on that though as it would depend on where you were on the course.

One thing I do notice is your cadence, when you click on the 'average' button you can see that you spent the majority of the first 10km above your av cadence (82bpm) and then the next 10km your were below 82bpm. On a short 20km like this I think you have pushed a gear that was too big, as you have a declining cadence profile. This probably would have effected you coming out of corners and trying to get back up to speed quicker. Had to do with a big gear and low cadence. If you have a look your speed graph when you come into a corner you speed drops quickly, but when you look at the line that move back up it’s much more gradual. That suggests your pushing too big a gear and it’s taking too long to get back up to speed. Check out my speed graph and how quickly my speed comes back up out of the corners. In particular look at 13.28 on my graph, that is my slowest speed of 32kph but look at how quickly my speed rises again. I put that down to gearing. I good example of your graph would be at 6:49, you can see the slop back up to speed is much more gradual and your cadence is only 73rpm. Does that make sense??
In summary, I think you’re over gearing your TT and over gearing going into your corners, which results in slower returns to TT speed.
When you ride TT’s that are in and around FT efforts you would normal see higher cadences. Your cadence is typical for IM athletes riding at sub threshold efforts in zone 1 and 2.
Hope helps.
HR data next time will help in analysing your efforts and remember to hit lap split after each lap.

Well done Goughy, thanks again for sharing the data and putting it out there.

fluro

Hey fluro,

I agree with your observations. I started pushing a bigger gear later as I just tend to feel comfortable in the mid to lower 80's for my cadence. I just seem to find that my speed is higher pushing too big a gear, but it certainly does affect my acceleration and I noticed that today. In the weather I slowed quite a bit more dramatically coming into the corners, and was often standing to get back up to pace afterwards. Also dropped to easier gears through every corner. And I'll have to look at setting up auto laps on position for the next one. I set a workout of 20k on my 310 for this so I didn't have to keep an eye on it myself, especially since it's like 5.6 laps or something for the 20k.

I went into ST and set some custom splits based on lap distances. I reached the start point at 3.62km's so I used it. Based on that my split times/speeds are
1. 7:00 31km
2. 7:02 30.8km
3. 6:49 31.8km
4. 6:54 31.4km
5. 6:51 31.7km
6. 3:55 30.4km (1.99km - ST has my distance for this ride as 20.09km!)
Lap 6 has the worst of the climbs in it and misses a couple of faster sections. Would have loved to have had my hrm on as I tend to be able to push myself harder when I see it's not up high enough.

This is something I want to work on as I struggle on our group rides if I've fallen back. I don't lose them further, but I can't catch back up.

G'day Goughy,

Good even splits on each lap. Very tight with the slowest beinng 7.02min and the fastest being 6.49min. Nice job. Your fastest split is right in the middle of the test which is good too. This shows you didn't take it out too hard or too easy. Your RPE in this test has shown through as a strength considering you also didn't have a HR monitor.

If I were you I'd think about doing to interval with different gearing for about 4-6 weeks and see what comes out of that.

for example.

6min @ >100rpm
6min @ BG
6min @ normal cadence.
(All in zone 4 - 5a)

Mix it up. Do some fixed gear, no freewheeling rides, pick a gear at the start of the ride and stay in it the whole way and don't stop pedalling even on the downhills. These will teach you to ride a range of cadences and you may find yourself developing your efficiency at different cadences and levels of effort.


Also do some seated max cadence efforts. I can usually get to around 125-130rpm before I start bouncing, 30sec efforts with a 2min RI. The roadies typically can hold around 140rpm.

For the course you're doing, I think I higher cadence might just give you some free time with the extra effort. You just need an adaptation period.

People will say your should just self select your cadence, but I think the course you ride and the intensity you ride at should also be a factor in selecting the best cadence for you.

Your comfortable self selected cadence will change according to how you train. When I'm right in the middle of my IM preps my cadence will be similar to yours, low 80's, but when I'm with the roadies on my road bike doing lot of rolling pacelines, sprints etc, I'm much more comfortable around 100rpm. The higher cadence is really good for the quick accelerations, comming out of corners, bridging gaps after the guy in front of you gets dropped, pulling that quick rolling turn off the front, sprints.


fluro

G'day Mick,

Been thinking about your TT Mick. The course you have selected is really technical, which means when you do your next test it might be harder to distinguish between improved fitness or improved bike handling skills and confidence. Looking at your graphs and the YO-YO effect you can see the course requires you to slow down and speed up a lot. However, as you gain experience on this course you'll find it easier to attack those corners from a technical point of view and this could overshadow improvements in fitness.

Maybe next time consider riding a less technical course so that bike handling skills don't come into play (ie it's about trying to reduce the variables) that way your improvements can be tracked against your fitness and not fitness and bike handling skills.

Ideally I try to do most of my tests on the same course and I usually try to aim for out and back courses if that is possible. eg 20km TT = 10km and 10km back taking splits every 5km. We can't always set it up that way, but it should still be the aim. Secondly, it makes it easier to them compare your results with people from other areas. Look at Cameron's course and them mine they are almost identical and consequently, not only can we track our own progress we can compare results and bounce training ideas off each other. If I improve by 30sec in my next test and Cameron improves by a minute, you can be assured I'll be asking him how he did it.


Hope it helps



fluro

Most importantly

ALL YOU GUYS SUCK HAVING YOUR GARMIN 310XT


Very jealous

fluro

If we can't ride we bling!!

Some great advice there Fluro! Really gives me some stuff to think of. That sort of work you are talking about - higher cadence, big gear etc; I'm assuming you could also do that work on a trainer?? I'm looking at adding a session a week at least on it; was thinking of doing some different spinervals etc.

Paul F wrote:Most importantly

ALL YOU GUYS SUCK HAVING YOUR GARMIN 310XT


Very jealous

fluro

fluro i'd give it up for some of your bike speed.

Cheers

mgilla

[quote="Paul F"]

Mick G wrote:

Hey fluro,

Thanks so much for the feedback, being new to the bike it is certainly appreciated.


I think it is great that you have an elevating HR profile, however, that elevation is too steep. This would indicate that you have probably started a little too easy or you haven't spent much time training in and around that intensity resulting in you not being able to find the right level of effort (RPE) early enough in this TT.
I would say lack of training at that HR level would be the reason for the sudden rise in HR.

At about the 22min mark you can see your HR levelling out and that would be getting close to your FTHR (ie 160bpm ish). This was the time I started having some doubts about weather I could maintain the effort till the end and probably backed off a bit It would be good to see you hitting 160bpm much earlier in the TT and then learning how to hold that level of effort for the rest of the TT. This would result in a less of a kick at the end. In your result, you start really upping the effort from about the 31min mark all the way to the end. Riding at or above FTHR wouldn't let you do that for so long, maybe 1 to 2km max but not any longer (lactic acird buildup would prevent that kick) and not that much of an increase eg 155bpm av hr and you finished at 170bpm indicates you finished strong but you shouldn't finish that strong. At most I can drive my HR up about another 5-7bpm, but not 15bpm.
So would it be advisable to push a bigger gear earlier to get my HR up sooner? If I start on the bigger gear and get my HR up how would you advise I maintain it when getting fatigued? Should I keep the same gear and reduce the intensity as my HR climbs or drop a gear or 2 as required and keep the same cadence?

If you have a look at your HR profile and compare it to your speed profile you can see decoupling happening, which is a consistent rise in HR with a consistent drop in speed. The speed profile is only very minor though, need to mill more over this.


You have lots of good info from this test and I'd be focusing on that 160bpm mark as a benchmark for your FTHR efforts. Learn to get there early in your intervals and hold that HR for the entire interval. This will put you around high zone 4 maybe even zone 5a and that will directly address improving your ability to handle a 20km TT.

I’m going to encourage everyone to do another 20km TT in about 3-4 weeks time, you should pencil it in and then we can start comparing results over the same course to start tracking progress. That is where the benefits of testing really start to show through.
The more people that jump on board the better it will be for all of us to compare how we execute these TT and we’ll hopefully be able to learn something from these experiences. Already just between yourself, Cameron and I we have 3 results that have been executed completely different.

I’ll look over your cadence and cornering tomorrow.

Hope it helps


Hope it helps.

fluro

goughy wrote: If we can't ride we bling!!

Some great advice there Fluro! Really gives me some stuff to think of. That sort of work you are talking about - higher cadence, big gear etc; I'm assuming you could also do that work on a trainer?? I'm looking at adding a session a week at least on it; was thinking of doing some different spinervals etc.

The wind trainer will be fine, in fact probably better to be in a controlled environment like that and not having to worry about traffic. Another good option is to do the muixed cadence sessions on you long climbs.

fluro

So would it be advisable to push a bigger gear earlier to get my HR up sooner? If I start on the bigger gear and get my HR up how would you advise I maintain it when getting fatigued? Should I keep the same gear and reduce the intensity as my HR climbs or drop a gear or 2 as required and keep the same cadence?

G’day Mick,
Great questions
You’re going to test me now.

There are lots of different way to execute a TT well, but this is what I am for.

When you do these TT's you want to get to the level of effort you feel you could hold for the distance as early as possible. The more experienced and fitter you become the early you can achieve that point in a TT and this may mean spending a little bit of time over your target watts, ie within the first km only just to get up to speed.
I would not aim for a bigger gear as you'll probably push too many watts too early and then you'll struggle to hold that pace. In the first couple of km’s I find that I’m flicking between 1-2 gears until I feel my RPE settling in on my target effort. For me it was going to be FTHR +5bpm. I never looked at my garmin as guide as the HR number on my Garmin 301 is really small and hard to see, however, the times I did do a spot check I was smack right on 166-170bpm. So that confirms the level of effort I know I can hold for 20km. If my HR monitor had of showed 175bpm then I would have been in trouble of blowing up.

What you should aim to do is some interval work in training that is going to target the effort you want to hold for your next 20km TT. So if your FTHR is 160bpm you might do this
Week 1: 6 x 4min at FTHR with a 2min RI.

Get to 160bpm based on RPE and confirm it by doing spot checks with your HR and adjust RPE accordingly. Don’t keep looking at your HR and saying, it’s too low I need to push harder, etc.

Now each 4minute effort should feel quite similar in terms of gearing, av sp (if you repeat them over the same course), HR etc. Download your file and check the numbers.

Over time you’ll be able to execute the whole session on RPE and not even look at your HR monitor, but when you download the file your HR numbers will confirm your RPE.

This teaches you how to find the correct level of effort early in a TT and it also teaches your body to handle that level of effort. Each week keep adding more to that set, for example,
6 x 4min
3 x 8min
3 x 10min
2 x 15min
2 x 20min
The goal each week is to keep calibrating your RPE at FTHR and to apply the progressive overload principle and keep improving. If you don’t improve one week then keep repeating the same interval until you do and then progress to the next harder set. This will give your body time to adapt, consolidate and grow.

Studies have shown you can do the 6 x 4min intervals for up to 10 weeks in a row before the adaptations stop, so it doesn’t need to be rushed.

I did this progression above in the lead up to the 20km TT. It took us 10 weeks to complete the cycle, ie we repeated some weeks as I wasn't fully satisfied I had improved enough to move on.

Hope it helps

fluro

I got mine done yesterday but dont think I went as hard as I should. I ramped it up after 12km but then had 'issues' with bike fit..

TT

was going to go today...bike in car and it starts pouring !!

Friday is the plan - 1st time at murarrie

Beware of little mutts running off their leads with owners nowhere in sight... I almost scored a trifecta of collecting a Bijon frise (running down middle of track in pitch darkness), mini jack russell and spoodle all within 2 laps..

G’day Ryan,

Good job on the TT.
The first thing I look at is your av hr (152bpm) and you max hr(168bpm). When you do a max effort 20km you can basically hold FTHR +5% (approximately). The FTHR is generally around 88-92% of your MAXHR. Know that and seeing that your max HR is 16bpm higher than your av hr, my guess would be that you rode this TT at FTeffort. The FTeffort is your best 1hr time trial effort (eg 40km TT).

Your HR profile looks good and is well matched your speed profile. There is very little evidence of decoupling occurring, which means you didn’t start out to hard and you were able to hold your effort for the entire test. Pacing correctly is what lets most people down in races, this test indicates you have paced it correctly. Consider that a strength. On the downside looks like you may have picked things up a little too much between the 20-25min mark. HR goes up and your speed goes up, but then you start to fade at about the 30min mark before you then once again throw in a final kick in the last 2-3min. In summary if you look at your speed graph and your peaks they get fast and faster up until the 25min mark and then the next two peaks are slower. I think you overcooked yourself at the 22 and 25min mark. Major lactic acid accumulation there going into the red zone perhaps??

What happened at the 15min mark, as you HR really drops to 136bpm?

Overall I think this is well executed TT and you have something to build on. I’d be looking at doing some interval work at FTHR +5% to get a feel for the effort. That will put you around the 160bpm. But start the intervals when you reach that HR, not beforehand. What that means is if your going to do 6 x 4min @ FTHR +5% the 4min interval start when your HR hits 160bpm. This may take 2-3min to reach. This will teach you to find the right level of effort but also improve you ability to sustain that level of effort. So basically your goal would be just to raise the level of effort you can hold for a 20km TT.

Hope it helps

fluro