valygrl

If you don't do the 5 minute, you have to multiply by 90% instead of 95% to calculate FTP. You do need to be consistent, you get a higher number without the 5. Testing takes some practice.

It sounds like you're going out too hard. Start the 20 just a little easier than you think, for like two minutes, then find what you think you can hold. If you start too hard you blow up. By about 12-13 minutes you should feel like you can't hold it, but hold it anyway, then the last two, ramp up even more. If you can't ramp up that's probably good. You should want to die the last few minutes and want to barf or black out at the end.

Fun times.

carpediemracing 

Thanks, the 90% makes sense. 220w is really 208w then. Well it can't get much worse than that, and it makes sense that I struggle if I'm over 200w avg in an hour crit. Also it gives me a reasonable target for the 5 min pre-effort, 250w, which is a bit higher than the 240w I managed today.

I'm definitely going out too hard. I have this expectation that I should be stronger, like 270-280w, whereas in reality I'm struggling to break 230w for 20 min.

Yep

I usually just do 3 or 4 minutes at the same wattage I plan to try for in the test, rest a bit after that, then do the 20m. I would argue that doing a REAL 5 minute effort, like the kind you give a **** testing for, should somewhat preclude you being able to do a good 20m test at all.

tetonrider

i've ridden oval rings myself and have helped set up tests for a bunch of other people. some people like them and some people don't. i found they don't make much of a difference for me, but it is just personal preference.

not saying this is you, but the ring manufacturers promote the belief that they generate free power. those claims get repeated--and the fact that crank-based meters read high when they are installed reinforces that belief.

unfortunately, there is no free lunch. doesn't mean that someone won't feel better, be faster, or actually be fresher on them than round rings, but they're not magic. i wish they were!

as for your comparisons, unless you have lots and lots of runs on the same course with and without them, i'd say that 2 runs on 2 separate days doesn't mean much. even if ambient conditions were identical, things like tucking one's head, shrugging the shoulders, sitting ever so slightly more upright....even fidgeting can make a difference. a single passing car disrupts air flow for a minute.

i feel like if one likes them they should probably only use them as race-day only. we are so adaptable that if used all the time any advantage gained from feeling faster through a dead spot would just become the norm. that's what a number of the pros who use them do.

depending on the bike, dropped chains can be more common due to how high the FD must sit and how low the low point of the rings is. not major, but a bad shift could be slightly more likely to result in a drop.

pros and cons. biggest thing is if YOU believe in them and feel faster, then that is all that matters.

the manufacturers have never been able to prove their claims. the test you describe would be pretty simply to set up and would go a long way--but they can't prove the impossible.

tetonrider

i think a clarification is worthy here:
the 5' max effort is designed to partially deplete the rider before the 20' test, so if one just takes on the 20' test then the 20' likely overstates threshold power even more than normal.

that said--95% of a 5'/20' test is just a guess. some people can't sustain 90% of their 20' result, while for others they can do 98%. the best thing for a rider to do (IMO) is to always use the same protocol, then figure out (by something like a 40k TT) what their threshold power REALLY is. then one can figure out if they're the 90% or 98% type.

taking 90% of a straight-up 20' max effort may be seriously overstating power for some people.

everyone is looking for a way to make max efforts and testing go faster and hurt less. the further away from something like a true, all-out 40k, the less reliable the data, so i'd view something like "90% of 20'" as even a bit more suspect than "95% of a 20' coming after a 5' max."

once a rider knows where s/he falls by having a recent test of any protocol (e.g. a MAP which is short but painful) and a true threshold effort, the shorter protocol can be used with more authority.

no, it should be a real 5' max effort. you get time to recover from it. if you don't deplete a portion of your energy, then vo2/anaerobic can represent too high a portion of the 20' power.

for some riders with flat power-duration curves, this doesn't matter very much. for a fast-twitcher this could be terrible.

think of it this way: if one is doing a true threshold hour, then at some point they are going to absolutely empty the tank -- say it is 4k to go in a 40k TT. (yeah, i know one is 45-55' deep at that point so it's not the same as a rested 5' interval, but that isn't a huge issue IMO.)

if one is worried about a 20' max paced effort after a 5' max with rest taking a huge hit #s -wise , then that 20' power probably had less to do with what one could do for 50, 60 minutes than they would like.

to a degree we all want to hit high #s in a test. more often than not these shorter tests overstate long-term power. they're an OK starting point but become less relevant the more data one collects (crits, TTs, other race efforts).

just my $0.02.

furiousferret

I suspect a twenty minute test (or less) in any form to figure out someone's FTP will be off by quite a bit for many racers. Too many people rely on training in 20 minute spurts, so rarely train for an hour at or near threshold. I certainly don't.

Twenty minutes is good for finding FTP to set training zones, but if I were doing a 40k tt (or any hour long solo effort), I wouldn't rely on those numbers.

Wesley36

Rotor Rings work! say Rotor Rings | road.cc

Please find the peer reviewed journal article attached, they used Computrainers (ie downstream PM)

beatlebee 

My FTP tests are a full hour. If I do a 20 min test without a 5 min depletion and take 95%, that will be lower than my hour test. I'm guessing that this means my shorter duration power could use more attention or it is just a genetic thing.

carpediemracing 

Definitely a fast twitcher and I knew that doing my 20 min tests. It would take me a minute or two to get into the aerobic threshold groove - I could use big gears to delay the fatigue. My sustained power, in races, is really pitiful (or "real"). I attacked once at the ***, did something like 30 mph the first half mile lap, 26? mph the second, and 22 the third. The last lap was what I could sustain, it was barely over 200w.

I'm doing all this for someone else, not for me, so I'm following their protocol for their reasons. Has nothing to do with what I want to do.

Grumpy McTrumpy

no true scotsman would test their ftp in this manner

echappist

Where is the control group?

going off the program on the fifth week does not introduce a control experiment.

And this does not explain the artifacts that someone (can't remember who) measured

lastly, even if this conclusively show an advantage, the scope is quite limited. 85 seconds of all out exercise is not aerobic in nature. Q rings may indeed be helpful for anaerobic efforts, but this says nothing about aerobic efforts.

Wesley36

The irony being that Q Rings seem to have found more of a niche with the tri/TT crowd, who emphasize steady state power output much more.

Yep

@Ygduf just turned me on to cyclicanalytics.com today, and it looks worth a shot. Is there a way to bulk sync activities from WKO or Trainingpeaks?

Ygduf

I dunno. I keep my gps files in a folder outside of the upload locations. If/when I switch services I just have all the files to bulk upload.

Yep

Yeah, after 5 years of data I'm realizing that's a best practice. For a lot of days I only have a WKO file. Maybe now that I've uploaded everything to GC I could export something more like a device from there...

UPDATE Yes! GC does let you batch export as a variety of file types.

tetonrider

thanks for posting that. i've seen that study come up before but no longer had the link to it.

i didn't have time to re-read the whole thing but i remember some thoughts from the first time it went around. before i get into that, i will say that i'm a big fan of people testing Q-rings to see if they feel faster -- and they can even determine if they are faster in ways that the study did not address.

1-the tests were pretty short. we'd hope that a 90" effort would scale to longer durations, but i've seen enough power-duration curves to know that there's quite a bit of variance when you project out to 20', 60' or longer. i don't know if different energy systems and pedaling economy come into play. this part of the test suggests there IS something there.

2-while they did rule out the issue of crank-based PMs reading high due to the way they report power with non-round rings, in my experience CTs vary a fair bit. i've got a few years of LT testing (blood lactate) on computrainers where i also used a crank-based meter. the coast-down method of calibration can be off 3-5% pretty easily in my tests from the CT to another device. this variance from session-to-session means for me that i'm a little wary of concluding too much when the gains and differences are within that margin of error. not saying their test is wrong, but i wonder why they didn't use the lab version of the CT (appears they used the regular ones) and i also wonder why they didn't stick a crank-based meter on the test rigs just to have another point of validation.

3-they tested on a trainer, which is cool because it controls for things like aerodynamics, but trainers have different loads vs any other type of riding. would be cool to see if someone actually rode 1km faster (say on an indoor track)--i.e., time not just power, given that power can be suspect in this test. the effect of the dead spot might be more of a thing on a trainer than in the world in which most of us ride/compete.

great thing is that anyone interested can do some controlled outdoor testing and figure out if they are faster in the real-world. i suspect most people will go with "they feel faster" or "my PM reads higher" and call it good.

4-finally...one premise of the non-round ring advocates is that there is no adaptation required. in fact, because the rings are more ideal (as they would have you believe), it would have been interesting to have someone test circular, then immediately test non-round, then immediately go back to circular. my own feeling (based on my limited testing and others that i've helped) is that there IS some adaptation that goes on, and then some additional adaptation is required if one switches back after a long period on non-round rings.

again, i didn't spend a ton of time re-reading the article but they seemed to have people essentially train for 4, 5, 6 weeks (no rest?) and test along the way. even if we put the shape of rings aside, i think we'd expect to see improvement when riders are training and then perhaps a point where they stagnate (which may have coincided with them switching back to the non-round rings). not saying the test is invalid, but the protocol does make me wonder.

summary: i feel like people should definitely give them a try and see if they prefer them. they should also test to see if they're faster on known courses where they minimize all other variables. regardless, if someone simply likes the feel of them and believes they are faster, that counts for a whole bunch.

i never found them (for me) to actually BE faster covering a known distance, and the feel did not make a huge difference at the time. the article does make me curious to give them another go.

tetonrider

a full hour is a great test but it is just not feasible for many people (either they don't have a stretch of road where they can ride for 60' uninterrupted, or they lose focus (vs a shorter test) if it is not in a race or there is not someone yelling at them, or it is simply too taxing to fit into a training plan).

i think if someone has at least one or two of those efforts and they are done around the time when you've done another, shorter test, one can then be more efficient in the future.

for example, let's say you've figured out (either based on your genetics or training) that a straight-up 20' effort is 99% of what you can do for an hour. great! in the future you can simply ride hard for 20' and take 99% of that. OTOH, if rider B finds that they are an ultra-fast-twitcher and at best they can sustain 88% of their 20' effort, then they go with 88%.

there's no single answer, of course, and the more experienced the rider/racer, the more data points available to be used. e.g., i've done maximal, paced efforts (TT/hill climb, with a # pinned on) for durations from 8' on up to about an hour, as well as lots of tests. others can/will build that library of their own performance, too.

unless it's something specific going on, i don't really need to "test" to figure out where my threshold is--i can simply look at training efforts and pull data from races.

(an example of where i needed/wanted to do a formal test is figuring out where i stood after a significant surgery when prior data suddenly did not apply and a paced effort of any duration would have been shot in the dark + likely wrong. for that, i like a ramp effort, and history with ramps done over the years along with knowing what i can do in the real world meant that i could do a ramp post-injury and project from there. ramps are cool because you really can't get them wrong, whereas with any other duration i'll hear lots of excuses like "i could have gone harder" or "i went too hard at the start and faded", etc. i like eliminating excuses.)

Yep

I realized yesterday that a lot of my data is in the form of WKO files, and who knows what the future of WKO is. I'm trying out cyclinganalytics.com but there doesn't seem to be a good way to transfer all of my journal notes. For those of you concerned with keeping data that's program agnostic, where do you store your notes/journaling?

WxGuesser

Haven't ridden since last summer. Got a new bike, so got a new PM too (Vector S). I figure I should get the PM now to see the gains...
Here are my last 3 rides. Activity | TrainingPeaks Activity | TrainingPeaks Activity | TrainingPeaks Strava profile... to see non PM rides from last summer.. https://app.strava.com/athletes/5685?utm_source=top-nav
Any current books/programs I should be looking at to learn about PMs?

WxGuesser

Is Ryanf still around? Saw your quote... and was like.. that dude was awesome...

Yep

Wow, that was a long time ago. Pretty sure he's long gone, unless he was just a character played by another BF member...

beatlebee 

So in GC, I see that my Saturday effort awarded me with a W' expended of 170%. Does this mean I should do a real 2 min. test and enter it into GC, or simply ignore?

Voodoo76

Didn't he go into the Army or something like that?

beatlebee 

From that other forum:

[quote Andrew Coggan][quote robabeatle]On a recent hard ride (288 TSS), Golden Cheetah has my W' expended at 170%.

1. What effect does this have in calculating TSB and CTL? (major or minor effect)[/quote]

None whatsoever.

[quote robabeatle]2. Do I need to run a two minute test and update?[/quote]

It certainly wouldn't hurt (well, actually, it would!).

[quote robabeatle]3. Will GC automatically update my W'? [/quote]

No idea.[/quote]

Wesley36

Try here maybe?
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!...-cheetah-users