Please help?!

Paul Stone

 New to power and just had a ride outdoors finally.  Numbers are below.  The ride seemed about an 80-85% RPE do these numbers seem right.  My zones are:

Zone	HR	Power
Z1 / < 70%:	< 149	< 136
Z2 / 70-75%:	150-158	136-147
Z3 / 80-85%:	159-167	157-167
Z4 / 95-100%:	168-174	186-196
Z5 / > 110%:	> 175	> 216

data:

 

NP 182 W

IF 0.931

TSS 179.9

CdA: 0.312 m^2

Crr: 0.0055

Any other numbers you guys need to look at?  I am hoping that the time I spend learning how to use this will take my mind off the rest of my body.  Also NP for first test was 204.

 

Al Truscott

Paul -

As a general rule of thumb, outdoor FTPs are about 10-15% higher than indoor. On the face of it, that seems to be the case for you. If your indoor is 196, and this ride felt 80-85%, then an outdoor FTP of 215-220 would seem to be right for your analysis purposes untill you do an actual test. This would give you an IF of about 80-85%, which should equate to your RPE. (IF = NP/FTP).

The IF of 93%  for a ride of this length (? 2 hours - time and distance are two useful data points to include in the reports as well) would have felt a lot harder to you - like doing something between an Olympic distance and and half ironman at race effort.

If this ride included specific intervals (say, 2 x 20' @ 95-100% 0f FTP), then the NP for each interval is also a very useful piece of information - it will tell you whether you actually did the work you were planning to.

Have you purchased and listened to the Power Webinar? It was the single best set of information for me to learn about the actual use of power for training and racing. I'm glad I took the time to "go to school" with the coaches and their guest lecturers, who did an excellent job of teaching.

Keith Wick

what was the VI for the ride? looking at the IF, you were at 93% of your FTP for the total ride, but those numbers alone don't really mean anything unless the ride was very steady and consistent. This is where VI comes in. This number will tell you if it was consistent over the time period or whether you were spiking your watts. When your riding outside, you can get a .93 IF in many different ways. for instance, you can ride consistently between 90-95% and end up atan IF .93----or you can ride VO2 max intervals, where your hitting 120% of your FTP, then taking a break at 70% and get an IF of .93.

Paul Stone

 It was a ride with no intervals.  Just riding for 2 hours.  

I spiked about 6 times on hills but that was it, the rest of the ride was just windy and pretty constant.  I have not downloaded into WKO yet.  That waits until tomorrow at work.  Then I need to learn that as well.  

 

I have ordered the power seminar and am starting it this past week.  Just getting started.

Thanks

Nemo Brauch

What do you have your FTP set to? .93IF for 2 hours is really high (esp if RPE was 85%) and I'd say you've got the FTP set too low.

I ditto the recommendation to work through that power seminar.

Paul Stone

VI is 1.35.
Havent had time to dig into the power seminar yet. We move into a new house in two weeks so studying is about 5 minutes at a time especially with this beautiful weather. Me and the kids have been outside A LOT.

Nemo Brauch

VI=1.35 means there were some huge swings in your watt output, I'm guessing a pretty hilly route with lots of VO2 type of work followed by rest.

Paul Stone

 Some hills where I spiked, Wind was really rough but overall it seemed like an easier ride then the IF indicates.  I guess the recovery was good.  After analyzing in WKO I am seeing my speed was pretty constant even over the hills (spiking watts). I guess we will see in a couple weeks when I retest if my FTP is off.  I hope it is. 

This power stuff is pretty cool. Can't wait to dig into the seminar.

mancona

Typcially on a good FTP test (and after some time riding with power) most people see a VI or 1.01 to 1.05. Indoors, many even see an VI 1.00.

In my opinion is it not worth comparing a ride with a VI of 1.35 to a FTP test as they are fundementally different types of rides.

Chris G

Cda and Crr? are the numbers from an ibike and you are comparing trainer to outdoors? what did you do to calibrate?

Paul Stone

 Outdoors to outdoors. my NP for my last test was 204.  which as I understand puts me at an FTP 196.  I was just asking since this is my second ride now outdoors with the PM (ibike) how off I may be since it only felt like an RPE of 8-8.5/10.  I wasn't trying to do anything other than just ride.  But when the IF was.93 I thought I would ask you guys.  

Maybe I am fooling myself by thinking it was an 8/10 since the sun was shining and I was just happy to be OUTDOORS.  Tuesdays ride will be give me a better idea with the intervals.  I will post the intervals when I am done.

To calibrate I did the calibration ride and 5 or six coastdowns.

Nemo Brauch

Paul- what did you do for your test and how are you establishing your FTP? Your statement in the last post has me scratching my head.

Al Truscott

OHHH, you're using an iBike. I'm still using the iBike for my outdoor rides. I had all sorts of crazy numbers come out of it until I learned to leave it outside in the shade for several HOURS prior to riding. The system seems to be VERY temperature sensitive, and would often show very high watts for the first 30-45 minutes unless I let the sensors (maybe it's the tiltometer which is temp sensitive, I don't know) equilibrate to the outdoor environment.

Also, I stopped fooling around with Coast-Downs and 4 mile rides, and other subtle adjustments. I don't care as much about what my ACTUAL power might be. I'm more interested in having a consistent set of data from one ride to the next. So I just use the pre-set "TT" mode for consistency (assuming I'm riding on the aerobars - use "Drops" or "Hoods" if not). And, I noticed that, depending on how I'm dressed, and my current body comp, my total weight can vary as much as 5%, so I check that on the scale (fully dressed me plus fully loaded bike) before I head out. And, even though they suggest you can just hop on the bike and go, I always run through ALL of the set up screens before I ride, just to make sure I'm not missing something.

Since I started doing the above, I've had much more consistent outputs from my iBike, and now feel confident enough in using it that I've held off buying a PowerTap, feeling I can wait and see it the MetriGear folks make it out of vapor ware this year.

All this is meant to offer one possible reason why your IF might have seemed higher than it should be compared to a previous ride.

Paul Stone

@nemo 2x20' (2) for the test. Take NP from 42'. RIGHT????? I think after a couple more rides I will get a better understanding of what I am looking at and feeling. I've been looking at HR for so long. My HR was never too high except when expected. 18 minutes of a z4+ HR out of 2 hours. I guess like Al says....

@Al Thanks for the input. I will give start that as soon as I am all moved into the new house. Also, I need to see a couple more rides to have some data to compare.

Thanks everyone for all your help. As soon as I get more data I will ask again. Time to hit the power seminar.

Nemo Brauch

@nemo 2x20' (2) for the test. Take NP from 42'. RIGHT?????

Yeah, that's right, but then in your prior post you said:

my NP for my last test was 204. which as I understand puts me at an FTP 196

Which is not correct. If your NP for the 42 minutes was 204, then your FTP is 204. And looking at your first post I got further confused because you said:

NP for first test was 217.

So which was it? And what do you have the FTP set to on your computer? 'Cause that's gonna impact how TSS and IF are calculated

Paul Stone

Okay. You caught all my typos. First half (20') of the test was a 217 the overall was a 204. I got slower
So... Somewhere I have my FTP set at 196 and it is on the cpu and on the ibike.

Thank you for taking the time to look at this. I am going to adjust the settings and see what happens. Then I will post up after my ride tomorrow.
I am staying up late to hit the power seminar so I don't ask too many questions.

Thanks again.
i will edit my first post since I figured out I was only looking at one interval.

cwhyte

Posted By Paul Stone on 13 Mar 2010 03:41 PM

 It was a ride with no intervals.  Just riding for 2 hours.  

I spiked about 6 times on hills but that was it, the rest of the ride was just windy and pretty constant.  I have not downloaded into WKO yet.  That waits until tomorrow at work.  Then I need to learn that as well.  

I have ordered the power seminar and am starting it this past week.  Just getting started.

Thanks

I'm suspicious of your data or your PM. To give you an example, I live in the foothills of the Cascades so I ride hills constantly and I have never seen a VI even close to 1.35 in my life. If you rode alone and most of your ride was relatively constant then I find it almost impossible to have a VI of 1.35. Something doesn't add up.

Thanks, Chris

 

cwhyte

Posted By Nemo Brauch on 15 Mar 2010 09:50 AM

VI=1.35 means there were some huge swings in your watt output, I'm guessing a pretty hilly route with lots of VO2 type of work followed by rest.

Btw, just wanted to add clarity since a lot of people fail to understand what truly influences VI... It's not so much the size of the power swings as it is the frequency of them. VI "measures" the amount of variability in small chunks of time. So, you can have large swings in power but if they occur over long(er) periods of time then your VI won't be that high (eg, >1.15). Even when I do VO2Max workouts (on the trainer) my VI is typically only between 1.09 - 1.11.

Note: I used quotes around measure for a reason. As some of you know, VI doesn't truly measure variability. However, I consider it to be an extremely accurate indicator of variability.

Thanks, Chris

 

Paul Stone

@Chris
Using an ibike. Maybe that doesnt say it all. Not too hilly but it was extremely windy and it was a group ride. I rode at the front most of the ride taking my turns as they came about. Some pulls (not bragging) as it became my turn people were falling of the back. i was not speeding up just holding steady on hills and into headwinds. When I looked back or went to pull off there was no one there so I would ease WAY up. could this account for it? (Again, not bragging because I am not fast) That would mean my recovery would be <100 on watts. <br />
I guess what I meant by "pretty constant" was that I was feeling comfortable the whole day. When you say 1.35 is way to variable, could this type of letting up cause that? I probably sat up about 5-6 times throughout the day for about 10-20 seconds.

Thanks

cwhyte

Posted By Paul Stone on 20 Mar 2010 01:33 PM

@Chris

Using an ibike. Maybe that doesnt say it all. Not too hilly but it was extremely windy and it was a group ride. I rode at the front most of the ride taking my turns as they came about. Some pulls (not bragging) as it became my turn people were falling of the back. i was not speeding up just holding steady on hills and into headwinds. When I looked back or went to pull off there was no one there so I would ease WAY up. could this account for it? (Again, not bragging because I am not fast) That would mean my recovery would be <100 on watts. <br />


I guess what I meant by "pretty constant" was that I was feeling comfortable the whole day. When you say 1.35 is way to variable, could this type of letting up cause that? I probably sat up about 5-6 times throughout the day for about 10-20 seconds.



Thanks

It was a group ride so that changes things signfiicantly. Group rides certainly make a VI as high as 1.35 much more realistic. Either way, that's a highly variable ride making it somewhat useless to use as a data point in determining the accuracy of your FTP.

I think the only purpose for using a PM during group rides is simply to track overall (eg, weekly) training stress.

Thanks, Chris

Paul Stone

I will look at my last ride where the intervals were not interrupted. I usually don't ride on my own but I was getting some riders to meet for the first time for our Bike MS team. Thanks for taking the time to help me learn the in and outs of using the PM. It is truly appreciated.