Last week has been rather quiet on my blog. I just did not have the chance to publish anything. This evening I wanted to put some graphs on, but for some reason my Garmin did not work. I mean I did see the rides on the Garmin, but when I connect it to my laptop it does not see the rides. Whereas the rides before the last 3 I can see.......strange.....
Anyway, since TR Ericsson I did do something. Wednesday I had a 1,5hour ride outside. At a endurance pace and I just wanted to get 'my head empty'. I estimated my TSS on 64. It were 46kms, 31.6km/h/ and average HR of 146.
On Saturday I had a 2.10h ride. Also endurance pace but since there was a lot of wind I did some low cadence, high gear sets. It really puts the stain on the muscles. I was riding without powermeter, so I just made sure my heart rate kept rather constant at an endurance range. Wind in the back I increased cadence at a lower gear. Av speed was 31km/h, 68km. I estimated my TSS at 114. When I came back the legs just felt really good. The other day (Sunday) it appeared that my back tire was flat (and that explains the feeling I had on the last part of the ride ;)
Saturday I did in mind with Sunday, because on Sunday I wanted to do another HOP. I had no problems with the HOP, and I feel I should be going to an other FTP level. But, not without testing of course, so that's for next week. The HOP TSS was 95, AP 247, NP 256, AV HR 142 (for HOP 147).
We'll see what next weeks FTP will give. For sure the trainingschedule 2014 (70% version, 0.1).
I find it difficult to write about my workouts / ideas. I have lot in my head / ideas to write about, but too little time!!!!
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
TR Ericsson
Yesterday I just did a one hour Kurt session from Trainerroad. I was kind of tired so I was not into a hard effort (especially not after last weekend....) I did Ericsson which had 4 intervals of 8 minutes at 90% FTP. The whole session was:
1h,AP 210, NP 231,IF 0.8,TSS 64, AV HR 128
Tomorrow I am hoping to go outside to do a good HOP.
1h,AP 210, NP 231,IF 0.8,TSS 64, AV HR 128
Tomorrow I am hoping to go outside to do a good HOP.
Ramp under and overs
Last week was not much of a training week. I had a weekend with my friends in Gent, Belgium which was not really good for the legs, nor for the liver ;)
Anyway, I did manage to do an other training last week which was kind of a ramp training. The idea is to mimic a climb which usually gets tougher at the end. You usually start at (if you pace well) a bit slower than you can actually ride. During the climb you will be able to ride a bit harder / its starts to become a bit harder. Its what you often experience with people who ride by at the start of the climb, but who pay the price halfway or towards the end of the climb and which you pass and leave behind ;)
The ramp training basically is a step based training in which every 4 minutes the watts are increased. At the end of the ramp (in my case at approx. 115% FTP) you go under your FTP. After that over, then under, then over and then under again. It is designed for sweetspot, but I have made it a bit harder :high end sweetspot / lower FTP training, which is quite hard. You can adjust the steps so you are doing a bit less on the whole, but try to keep it in the sweetspot range. The ranges (expressed as % FTP were):
There seems to be no warmup, but basically the 50% of FTP until approximately 70% is a good warmup, so don't worry. In the build up to the 116% it starts to get 'nasty' around step with 102%. The last 12 minutes in the buildup are quite hard. Its basically 12 minutes at approx. 110% of FTP. After dropping it to approx 100% of FTP is remains hard. First recovery you feel at the 88% of FTP (under) again......this is how it looks like in a graph:
W.r.t my heart rate (red line) there seem to be some erranous points. The dotted line remarks my 'Kurt' FTP.
The whole effort in my case was:
1h, IF 0.93,AP 256, NP 270, TSS 87,AV HR 145
Just for fun I wanted to see the relation between heart rate and wattage of the ramp part (which is basically a steady state ramp up). I deleted the erranous heart rate points and it looks like this (wattage on X, HR on Y axis).
As you can see HR trends upward (first red line until dotted line) with wattage, and at around 250 watts (dotted line) there seems to be some sort of acceleration in the trend with wattage. So from that point on my HR trends faster than before. Now, I once did a lactate test and the point of 4 mmol /l was around 250 watts. But my heart rate at that time was 150. Now it is approx 133 around that point. Maybe that marks the point of HR / wattage gets a different trend. But it cannot represent my lactate treshold since my heart rate is almost 20 lower than then (I am doing more watts at lower HR now). Maybe it is my aerobic treshold (which is usually 20-40 strokes lower than Anaerobic Treshold), but I suspect it has more to do with dehydration.
Within a few weeks I will be doing a ramp test as an alternative FTP estimate. Stay tuned for that one.
Anyway, I did manage to do an other training last week which was kind of a ramp training. The idea is to mimic a climb which usually gets tougher at the end. You usually start at (if you pace well) a bit slower than you can actually ride. During the climb you will be able to ride a bit harder / its starts to become a bit harder. Its what you often experience with people who ride by at the start of the climb, but who pay the price halfway or towards the end of the climb and which you pass and leave behind ;)
The ramp training basically is a step based training in which every 4 minutes the watts are increased. At the end of the ramp (in my case at approx. 115% FTP) you go under your FTP. After that over, then under, then over and then under again. It is designed for sweetspot, but I have made it a bit harder :high end sweetspot / lower FTP training, which is quite hard. You can adjust the steps so you are doing a bit less on the whole, but try to keep it in the sweetspot range. The ranges (expressed as % FTP were):
There seems to be no warmup, but basically the 50% of FTP until approximately 70% is a good warmup, so don't worry. In the build up to the 116% it starts to get 'nasty' around step with 102%. The last 12 minutes in the buildup are quite hard. Its basically 12 minutes at approx. 110% of FTP. After dropping it to approx 100% of FTP is remains hard. First recovery you feel at the 88% of FTP (under) again......this is how it looks like in a graph:
W.r.t my heart rate (red line) there seem to be some erranous points. The dotted line remarks my 'Kurt' FTP.
The whole effort in my case was:
1h, IF 0.93,AP 256, NP 270, TSS 87,AV HR 145
Just for fun I wanted to see the relation between heart rate and wattage of the ramp part (which is basically a steady state ramp up). I deleted the erranous heart rate points and it looks like this (wattage on X, HR on Y axis).
As you can see HR trends upward (first red line until dotted line) with wattage, and at around 250 watts (dotted line) there seems to be some sort of acceleration in the trend with wattage. So from that point on my HR trends faster than before. Now, I once did a lactate test and the point of 4 mmol /l was around 250 watts. But my heart rate at that time was 150. Now it is approx 133 around that point. Maybe that marks the point of HR / wattage gets a different trend. But it cannot represent my lactate treshold since my heart rate is almost 20 lower than then (I am doing more watts at lower HR now). Maybe it is my aerobic treshold (which is usually 20-40 strokes lower than Anaerobic Treshold), but I suspect it has more to do with dehydration.
Within a few weeks I will be doing a ramp test as an alternative FTP estimate. Stay tuned for that one.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
My heart does (not) beat for (t)rain(ing)
Well. Just long enough for me to hop on my X-bike to
go for a quick ride of two hours. Since I have no powermeter on the X-bike I
just rode on heart rate which I wanted to have around 155-160 at a fairly
steady pace. I ended up with average heart rate of 157. What does that imply?
142-165 Interval training long (for resistance)
2h03m, 67km, AS 33.2km/h, AH 157, IF 0.8, NP (est) 235, TSS 135
Although I try to write about power I make an unusual
side step now to heart rate. Many of us who train to improve (and want to
measure improvement) probably use heart rate as a measure, because
unfortunately power meters are just not cheap (although the market is becoming
quite booming with a lot of new entrants which is of course good for price
decreases).
If you look on the internet there are a lot of
different ways to set your heart rate zones. Based on Karvonen, Zoladz, Dr. Coggan, Friel, Edwards, British Cycling Federation guidelines, and so on. I will
show my zones based on two methods: Karvonen and Coggan.
Based on the Karvonen method you take your maximal
heart rate and your heart rate at rest. Based on that your heart rate zones are
calculated as follows:
HR reserve = HR rest + (HR max - HR rest) * X%
X represents the percentage bounds of the heart rate
zones. Based on my powerfiles I have seen that my maximal achieved heart rate
is 189. My rest heart rate (lying down or sitting and not doing anything) is 40
(I have had lower, but 40 is a reasonable average).
Dr. Coggan which is a leading author on training with
a powermeter and the analytics which defines the heart rate zones based on the
lactate treshold heart rate. This heart rate comes with an FTP test. Based on
on hour tests I have done my FTP heart rate comes around 168 on average.
Interesting isn't it? To make things more complicated
a few years ago I did a lactate test and I turned out my lactate treshold (LT)
heart rate was in this area. Knowing what I know now about training I should
have asked him: what was the testing protocol (in relation to wattage) and what
level of mmol/l he used to get the number for my heart rate at LT. My lactate
heart rate came out at 150...how nice that it is exactly 150......;) Based on
that I got 3 zones:
115-128 Extensive Endurance (for building period and
recovery rides)
128-142 Intensive Endurance (for increasing aerobic
level)142-165 Interval training long (for resistance)
How can I place my rather steady state effort today
with an average heart rate of 157? Seeing it black and white I have done Lactate
Treshold effort based on Karvonen, a ferm Tempo ride based on Coggan and a
resistance training based on the lactate test zones.
In perspective I do not see it too black and white. These
zones are just some guidelines, nothing more nothing less. Basically zones do
not exist. It's rather gray.
But then, which zones do I prefer? To be honest if I
have to use heart rate a training guide I prefer to use the Coggan scale,
because I think it is better to relate it to treshold heart rate than to
maximal heart rate. This is same argument as defining power training based on
treshold power instead of power at for example VO2max.
I keep it at: I have done a nice Temporide with parts
at Lactate Treshold. And that quite matches my feeling ;)
2h03m, 67km, AS 33.2km/h, AH 157, IF 0.8, NP (est) 235, TSS 135
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Wrong feeling and HOP
Because the weather was bad I jumped on the Kurt for a workout called Needham. What is Needham? Needham is an hour of power, aka HOP. This workout was introduced by Bill Black, a US coach and someone who contributes very much to the wattage forum.
Now, what is the HOP. The HOP is a workout which -as stated- is an hour long on an intensity of 90% of FTP (so around sweetspot). Now, as if that sounds hard, it becomes harder due to the short bursts you after -say 4 minutes of about 20 - 25 seconds long. I have only done these workouts on the trainer and I always find them to be very exhaustive. You know you're gonna suffer and you know you're 'cooked' very slowly. The last intervals are always hard to maintain, at least that is my experience with this workout. Nonetheless, it is a very good workout if you can sustain. If you have not done this before try to build it up from say first 20 minutes up to an hour, because as I said it's quite stressful. Below you can see the profile:
The workout starts with 8 minutes warmup. After that the hour begins with a short burst. Now, as you can see the first 26 minutes of the HOP data is missing (straight line upward). That was because Trainerroad got stuck (my laptop is getting slow, some processes were running on the back). I then decided to ride 'on my feeling'. This meant a cadence of 88 at the gear I selected. I decided to just try to ride 1 hour flat since I did not have any hope that Trainerroad would start again. I 'hoped' to ride at approx 90% of FTP.
Now. Suddenly you see my data appearing again at around minute 32. You see that with the cadence/gear combi I selected I was constantly doing watts at FTP. So the first 24 minutes my feeling was wrong and I rode 'too hard'. After I could see my datastream again I decided to switch to the HOP profile again. As you might see from the red line (Heart rate) is trending upwards. This is the decoupling effect I was talking about. Every step further away in the hour my heart rate has more 'trouble' getting back to a stable level. After every burst it 'steps' up. The last 6 intervals average heart rate equaled. 153, 156, 158, 159, 161, 165 (OK the last one I pushed it more). Dehydration is one of the factors in place. The other is just fatigue I guess. Again, heart rate as a monitor for performance...maybe not.
End of the HOP I averaged 272 watt instead of 256 watt (which was the 90% FTP target). Intensity was 0.9. Total ride TSS was 98.
Now, what is the HOP. The HOP is a workout which -as stated- is an hour long on an intensity of 90% of FTP (so around sweetspot). Now, as if that sounds hard, it becomes harder due to the short bursts you after -say 4 minutes of about 20 - 25 seconds long. I have only done these workouts on the trainer and I always find them to be very exhaustive. You know you're gonna suffer and you know you're 'cooked' very slowly. The last intervals are always hard to maintain, at least that is my experience with this workout. Nonetheless, it is a very good workout if you can sustain. If you have not done this before try to build it up from say first 20 minutes up to an hour, because as I said it's quite stressful. Below you can see the profile:
The workout starts with 8 minutes warmup. After that the hour begins with a short burst. Now, as you can see the first 26 minutes of the HOP data is missing (straight line upward). That was because Trainerroad got stuck (my laptop is getting slow, some processes were running on the back). I then decided to ride 'on my feeling'. This meant a cadence of 88 at the gear I selected. I decided to just try to ride 1 hour flat since I did not have any hope that Trainerroad would start again. I 'hoped' to ride at approx 90% of FTP.
Now. Suddenly you see my data appearing again at around minute 32. You see that with the cadence/gear combi I selected I was constantly doing watts at FTP. So the first 24 minutes my feeling was wrong and I rode 'too hard'. After I could see my datastream again I decided to switch to the HOP profile again. As you might see from the red line (Heart rate) is trending upwards. This is the decoupling effect I was talking about. Every step further away in the hour my heart rate has more 'trouble' getting back to a stable level. After every burst it 'steps' up. The last 6 intervals average heart rate equaled. 153, 156, 158, 159, 161, 165 (OK the last one I pushed it more). Dehydration is one of the factors in place. The other is just fatigue I guess. Again, heart rate as a monitor for performance...maybe not.
End of the HOP I averaged 272 watt instead of 256 watt (which was the 90% FTP target). Intensity was 0.9. Total ride TSS was 98.
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