hack

excellent...first time I've really ever looked at my training in any detail. Time to make heads or tails of it and develop a plan.

Ygduf

yes. On CA you can also check your time in zones/week and look back at times you were feeling good/doing well to see what your mix was preceding those races.

no sweat

Okay... so I'm new to training with power, and relatively new to training in general.

What I've got is a Kurt Kinetic trainer with inRide (steady state power) and a long Winter with which to amuse myself.

My question is: suppose you find yourself with low anaerobic power relative to ftp (per Coggan's famous chart) and decide to do something about this. How quickly do you find can you bring up your 1 min. power? Is this typically a matter of adding a short interval set once a week and this "takes care of itself" in a month or two, or should I expect a real battle?

ewang numbers fwiw: ftp 250, 1 minute 478 (so roughly 25% under Coggan's chart, based on a not very extravagant ftp in my case). I'm 79 kg. If I were race fit, I'd be 75 kg. I'm 53, just finished my first season back on a bike in a couple decades. A lot of jra, but generally with as much intensity as I can muster (Z3 syndrome ftw!). Hope for next year or so is build performance across the board, but no plans to race at this time.

furiousferret

Its pretty hard for me to raise my anaerobic power, and many I talk to largely claim its very dependent on genetics. Of course we have no control over that but because of it, the shorter stuff varies from person to person. Like you, 1 minute power is an issue and I have to work at it. I like to do intervals twice a week, sometimes working on a fast spin, or consistent power.

For me, 1m power is the hardest to test because if you mess up the jump or gas too early the numbers are way off.

shovelhd

I have very good one minute power. It's what keeps me in the P/1/2/3 fields at 57 and winning Masters races. I believe that the base of this power is genetic, however it is the first thing to decline after the season is over and has to be built back up every year. The key workouts I use are over under based, because multiple one minute efforts are often required when racing and without recovery you are off the back. The key with any of these types of workouts is avoiding rest. Drop right into the lower power. This is what builds recovery both physically and mentally. I don't test one minute power often because it can be inferred from workouts or longer tests. How much and how often depends on your schedule and target events.

hack

What would one of these workouts look like and at what frequency are you doing them (and how early into the season)?

Hermes

For you power junkies below is the power profile for one of the interval sets from last nights track session. The power meter is Garmin Vector and the L/R was 42/58. I am usually 49/51 L/R so who knows why it was different tonight. The dots are the Left % of the power contribution. The speeds are approximately 23 mph, 25 mph and 27 mph for the three intervals. You can see the change in speed by the cadence changes. I had two juniors (~14 years old) in front of me. The racer immediately in front of me was a girl with a CdA of about .9. However, she could really jump and just crushed the jump at the beep plus she just killed the black line and never gapped the junior in front. Great wheel to follow.

furiousferret

@Hermes; I've had to deal with a lot of left right balance discrepancies due to my sciatica. Try doing some basic stretches and see if there is any tightness in your left leg. For me, if my sciatic nerve is tight it affects my power balance. It also may just be from being in a velodrome and pushing harder on the outer leg.

Hermes

IMO, the L/R thing for me is about accelerations. I am right leg dominant but under more steady state conditions, the balance is very close to 50/50. If I do a lot of standing starts, where I start with my left leg, then then I have seen L/R track sessions at 60/40 L/R. Last night during the interval sets there were 48 accelerations. I probably used my right leg more.

Some of the stuff I have read on right / left leg balance is that most athletes have a dominant leg it is probably a bad idea to try to make them the same.

Hermes

Below is an interval set from Tuesday Track Session. L/R was 49/50. Go figure.

shovelhd

They come in different shapes and sizes. One might be an hour at tempo with a 30 second all out sprint every 3 minutes. All out on the trainer is more of a form sprint to maintain stability. Another one could be an hour going at 95% of FTP for five minutes followed by five minute at 110% of FTP. Another could be an hour at SST with a minute at 110% every three minutes, followed by five all out sprints at the end. I do these kinds of workouts throughout the season. I start the season with base and strength work, so not much of this stuff until build and beyond.

Ygduf

CA is great, right? Have you looked at the time-in-zones or other flexicharts?

tetonrider

that stuff is so blended (even for a workout much less a week) that i personally have not found much predictive use in that measure. it's definitely descriptive, though. (i don't use CA but have gotten to that type of info in other ways, e.g. the free SRM desktop software does this.)

hack

Right on. Thx much!

Hermes

I like CA a lot. Yes, I have used the flexicharts and time in the zones. I have not been able to figure out how to increase TSS. For example, if I do gym work worth 50 TSS how do I input it into CA?

furiousferret

I've manually tacked them on to my ride, adjusting my TSS and noting the weight session in the title. However, that really isn't a solution. For what its worth, the creator of CA is pretty receptive to ideas and you can send him an email for a feature and he'll usually get back to you.

beatlebee 

Should I be checking/changing something if my Relative Intensity Factor is never above .8 on my rides? I rode really hard yesterday for a long time and my IF is .76 and looking back over the past at hard group rides or short threshold+ intervals, my IF never gets above .8.

I use golden cheetah and I even recently lowered my critical power by 3% but frankly it is probably back up at this point. None the less, this small change shouldn't effect the numbers that much.

Help?

shovelhd

Test.

beatlebee 

Alright, I have some time off soon that I can get out to test.

shovelhd

Your comments just point to a classic case of training by RPE to an old, inflated FTP. You can guess your way there, or you can suffer for 20 minutes and get a decent idea.

beatlebee 

Well, a few weeks ago I did a 20 min interval and taking 95% of that would put put me a few watts above where I have it now. But I will test again.

TheKillerPenguin

How long are your rides relative to the actual hard sections of them, and how hard are you actually going? When you say really hard do you just mean you're hammering, or is it structured? If it's unstructured, I doubt you're doing much more than tempo for most of it, so your IF makes sense to me. I think the only rides I'm ever above .8 on involve a lot of intervals over the course of rides 1.5hrs or less in duration.

shovelhd

That very well could be the case. It's hard to determine RPE for someone, especially over the interwebs.

The 20 minute interval, for it to approximate a test, you would have to be rested, warmed up, paced for 20 minutes as hard as you can, and the first interval in your set. If it's close to that, then maybe you are in the ballpark, and it's more a function of what TKP is getting at. I admit that I do not train as hard as I race in terms of IF. My biggest numbers are race numbers, unless it's build season and my FTP needs to be adjusted up. That doesn't count.

beatlebee 

I was thinking along the lines of what Penguin wrote. These hammer fests are certainly unstructured but I feel wasted afterwards.

My concern is that my overall training stress might be off because of this. I seem to be hovering around a TSB of 0 even though I am still riding 12+ hour weeks with at least one interval day thrown in and one hard day on a group ride or in the mtns. Last year, my TSB fluctuated much more.

Shovel: that's just it. I wasn't well rested or even planning a "test." So if anything that number was low, I would guess. *edit* Doh, I just thought about this for a minute. So my FTP could be close, if not good enough, and that is what is making my IF low always because I simply am not going hard enough long enough right now.

TheKillerPenguin

I think people have a tendency to underestimate how hard sub threshold workouts can feel if the duration is suitably long. Though Iadmit I'm fairly new to power I believe tsb is simply the difference between atl and ctl, so if your ctl has been stagnent and your atl is basically what your ctl is, then the tsb makes sense as well. Fwiw my atl ranges from 120 to 75ish depending on the time of week, and tsb fluctuates accordingly. It sounds like in your case your intensity is fairly balanced across the whole week, and that your typical training week load has been pretty consistent for the past few months.