Putting some "science" behind 5-hour power?
Team, "back in the day" and well before my time in
EN RnP created some of the most comprehensive support ever to ensure OUTSTANDING
EXECUTION on race day. It was all part of the EN philosophy that you don't want
to be one of the "really fit dudes walking on the run course talking about
what an awesome bike split you had".
Part of this support was the now-famous "TSS
tables" that prescribed a specific IF based on your predicted bike split.
My understanding is that these tables were created based on empirical data – i.e.
by leveraging the collective experience of the team. I don't know how this data
was collected or analyzed and if some of the old-timers here want to give some
detail it would be great. But the point is, I think it was somewhat "scientific"
– grounded in experience.
Over time people have experimented and found other things
that sometime work better. I know Rich is writing a new wiki article on this. I
have scanned the draft based on a link he included from another thread. So the
state of the art is evolving. That is good.
One of the concepts that is most interesting to me is that
of "5-hour power"…discussed extensively by John Withrow in his
successful campaign to get a Kona slot last year. Without going into the detailed
reasons, this concept is VERY INTERESTING for me. I wrote about it in the
following post which generated quite a bit of discussion: http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/17648/Default.aspx
I am interested in putting some empirical data
behind the "5-hour power" concept. So I propose
to solicit collection of a set of the team's data via a link to a Google Docs
spreadsheet. Names would be optional. I need to think about the hypotheses in
some more detail to inform the data collection but in general I want to
understand the following relationships:
1. "5-hour power" on mean-maximal power curve vs. power
on race day
2. "5-hour power" vs. estimated (hopefully tested)
FTP on race day
3. % of "5-hour power" on race day that yielded a
strong run
To allow for proper filtering I think the data list would
be:
- Name (optional)
- Race name and date
- Pre-race "5-hour power" (defined as NP on 5-hour
mean/max power curve for the 8-weeks pre-race)
- Pre-race "4-hour power" (defined as NP on 4-hour
mean/max power curve for the 8-weeks pre-race)
- Estimated FTP on race day
- NP and AP during the race
- Bike split for the race
- Qualitative assessment of bike split ('had issues' and underperformed,
performed more or less as you expected, outperformed)
- Pre-race VDOT (will be used to calculate a
"target" run split)
- Pre-race run target
- Run split for the race
- Qualitative assessment of run split ('had issues' and underperformed,
performed more or less as you expected, outperformed)
- Qualitative assessment of the race ('had issues' and underperformed,
underperformed, performed more or less as you expected, outperformed)
Now the one issue that could undermine the whole analysis is
"how people train". Withrow (like me, and I think Rich and some
others do this too) go out hard for almost every training session. In other
words, if I can hold z3 watts for a 4.5 hour ride, I do that (after an upfront
hour of FTP intervals of course). I don't intentionally hold back. So my
mean-max power curve is reflective of an aggressive approach to my training. On
the other hand, if people go out and say "this is a 5 hour ride so I'm
going to ride 0.7 and no more" and then finish the ride with plenty of gas
in the tank then their mean-max curve would be lower relative to if their
training was more aggressive. Thoughts the degree to which this will impact the
analysis are really very welcome. I guess you could ask a qualitative question to
gauge this and then filter out people who believe their curve reflects really
under-clubbed training rides.
The purpose of this thread is to get input
on (a) if people believe this analysis is a worthwhile endeavor and (b) considerations
for design of the data collection based on hypotheses to test and how to test
them. Any input at this point is greatly appreciated and if
it looks like this may be effective in putting some "science" behind
the '5-hour power' concept then I will move to designing and executing the data
collection.
Cheers,
Matt
Comments
Now would be a great time, too.
I do NOT have an IM this year. I do have a HIM about 14 weeks from now. It's not a flashy HIM so I can risk a little deviation with overbiking once per week. I'll focus on recovery so I don't sabotage.
I'll probably do 4 hr rides for the next 4 weekends, skip a weekend (work), then do 5 hr rides for 5 weekends, then evaluate where I stand with fatigue.
You are looking for a correlation with 5 hr power and IM race day goal watts with resulting run performance.
I won't have a full IM to offer up. My HIM will have to do for this year.
A question/worry I have about the 5 hr approach in training is how do you figure out if you are overbiking before a potential crash and burn on race day? We only run 6 miles after the bike ever, and overbiking might take longer than that to show up. Just concerned that if I find I can hold xx watts for my 5 hr rides, and even run 6 miles after, does that translate to race day and running a marathon after?
Since I've got nothing else to do, having begun my IM LP taper, I started giving this some thought. First thing I did was to survey my IM + RR bike data since I switched to PowerTap. I was just throwing stuff into a table, and looking to see if some analytic hypotheses might appear. Below is a table, based on the IMs in the month indicated, with their preceding RRs. To get five hour power, I simply pulled out a segment of about 5 hours in length which seemed to have the highest average power, by eyeballing the graph in either PowerAgent or WKO+.
TT=Total time, TNP=NP from the entire ride, 5 hr = NP from the "best" continuous 5 hour segment i could find; VI is, of course, NP divided by AP for the whole ride.
=the only successful race of this bunch; 
=a total bust
Date
RR #1 TT/TNP/5hr/VI
RR #2 TT/TNP/5hr/VI
IM TT/TNP/VI
June 2011
5:04/134/1.38
6:00/137/139/1.09
6:31/137/1.087
Nov 2011
6:00/146/146/1.043
5:45/156/157/1.054
5:40/145/1.035
Aug 2012
7:52/134/1.23
4:07/149/1.1
6:10/143/1.1
Oct 2012
6:10/143/1.1
5:52/138/139/1.04
6:42/129/1.05
Sept 2013
5:44/127//128/1.09
5:57/132/133/1.08
7:??/134/1.12
Nov 2013
5:56/132/132/1.06
5:40/136/1.03
June 2014
4:37/120/1.15
6:02/127/128/1.05
6:45/136/1.06
Oct 2014
5:54/127/128/1.11
7:21/117/1.06
Nov 2014
7:21/117/1.06
5:59/143/144/1.06
6:13/125/1.03
July 2015
5:58/137/140/1.08
6:12/143/145/1.06
???/???/?.??
The first thing that jumped out at me was: there is little to no difference between that 5 hour power and the power from the full time of the RR. [The second thing which jumped out was: Unlike the previous 3 years, I have no training-based excuses for slouching my way through this upcoming bike leg.]
So, what are the considerations which popped into my head?
Good question. And yet EN has had thousands of athletes do a runs off the bike of no longer than 6 miles and have successful races. Regarding "how do you know if your 5hr power is correct?"
Again, if you doubt your number, your 5hr power...turn it down a tick and bank it for the run.
2012 IMMT last RR 5:33 , AP170/NP173 , IF.75 , TSS 308
2012 IMMT Race 5:26 , AP164/NP169 , IF.73 , TSS 280
2013 IMTX last RR 5:11 , AP177/NP177 , IF .75 , TSS 293
2013 IMTX Race 5:01 , AP169/NP172 , IF.73 , TSS 266
2013 KONA/IMFL double 3 weeks apart
Last RR 5:01 , AP179/NP180 , IF .76 , TSS 292
KONA 5:24 , AP162/NP166 , IF .72 , TSS 280
IMFL 4:55 , AP172/NP174 , IF.75 , TSS 281
2014 IMTX last RR , 5:02 , AP177/NP179 , IF.77 , TSS 303
2014 IMTX Race , 5:06 , AP175/NP176 , IF.76 , TSS 298
2014 IMCHOO last RR , 5:30 , AP176/NP177 , IF.77 , TSS 326
2014 IMCHOO Race , 5:10 , AP171/NP175 , IF.76 , TSS 297
2015 IMLP last RR , 5:16 , AP172/NP176 , IF .79 , TSS 331
2015 IMLP Race , 5:32 , AP164/NP172 , IF .77 , TSS 329
Every single IM Race was done at 2-6 watts less than the last RR , the one exception was KONA which I purposely rode lower to save it for IMFL... I also did not include KONA last year as it was 13 days after CHOO... All my long rides are done with a swim only day prior, I get off the bike feeling like I biked way too hard , follow it up with a 5-7 mile brick which still goes OK.... I never do another ride the next day but do my long run instead... I come away feeling like I over-biked on a long ride... Then I play a game to come up with race day target watts , adding watts for positive impact things like the taper, and subtracting watts for negative impact things like having to swim first , longer run after, heat , humidity , etc... Bottomline 2-6 watts below my best RR's is good for me.... Try not to look at or care about IF/TSS numbers , all that is important is what number I can hold for the timeframe/distance!
Hope this helps ... any other particular data ?
Cool stuff and good food for thought.
I've worked very hard on my 2x 20s for the last 10 weeks. And, now, I'm about to start building some volume on the weekends to be ready for a big ride (Mt. Mitchell) in May. Then, in the fall, I have another big/aggressive century. I plan on riding both of these rides pretty quickly (for me) but there's a ton of climbing in them (12k and 11k) so I need to pace them well.
I'm planning on hacking my EN plans to incorporate volume weekends and use the work week to get the higher intensity intervals in.
I'd like to really focus on improving my 5hr power, calling it an experiment year.
Do you guys recommend holding X watts for intervals or just trying to maintain that X watts for the duration of the ride? I was thinking I'd pick X watts for the duration of the ride as a target this week then X + 5 watts next week, continuing up until I know I'm in over my head.
I know I have to deal with stops/descents/traffic. I won't try to 'make that back up'. But, I do feel confident that if I target 75-80%, I can get about 90% of the ride completed in that target window even with the stops/descents/traffic.
I'll prob ride 4hrs Saturday and 2hrs Sunday.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated!
The things I would add are that when I was focusing on 5hr Power, I put avg "NP" for the whole ride as a cell on my Garmin. This was my carrot and this was the number I tried to push up in the last hour of every long ride and the number I was chasing to improve from one ride to the next. What % of FTP that is has less and less importance the more "5 hr" data points you get. I rode as many hills as I could find and I never really tried to ride steady... Simply went out and tried to take some Strava KOM's and put as much work in my legs as I could and training my mind to know that I "could" go harder even in the last hour or two.
So to point at one of your specific comments, this will mean that you absorb stop signs/descents/traffic/intersections/etc in your avg NP number... But provided you're riding similar courses, you're really just comparing everything to your previous long rides so it should all come out in the wash.
@Chris - what you are describing is essentially how I ran my (bike) season last year (and likely this year). I had a high intensity day Wednesday, a long hard ride Saturday and a tempo day Sunday. Going into my first IM, I think I had 13 rides at 95+ miles (my Saturdays) and I typically followed this up with a 2.5-3.0 hour ride at HIM pace on Sunday. I used the long Saturday rides as a chance to try all kind of things... some I went out way to hard then just tried to get home on trashed legs, I rode some at race pace, I put FTP intervals starting about 50 miles in, ... but every ride I tried to end up with a number that improved some portion of my maximals chart (even trying to crush a long hill to set 5-sec max powers at the end of the ride).
From my perspective (sample size 1) - I believe that the combination of the volume and the experimenting (getting way out of my box) on these Saturday rides, then following it with a tempo ride on trashed legs within 24 hours, helped me get stronger and understand my bike split better than any other exercise I have done.
One huge lesson learned (for me) is that I needed to stop the insanity about 4-5 weeks before the race. It took me more time than I expected to be able to lock in VI on the long rides. But - I am not a very experienced cyclist. On the positive side - my FTP and my 5-hour continued to grow through the entire IM training plan, whereas in the past I started hitting plateaus after moving onto an IM plan.
I don't want to make this my personal log but I think I'll drop some notes in after a couple rides to pick your brains.
First ride in 2 weeks today. Bikes have been getting some work/upgrades.
Lollipop shaped route with 2 laps around loop, just under 75 miles and 3k climbing, constant rollers, 3:50.
FTP newly adjusted from an indoor/quarq/road position of 255-260 to
today's outdoor/tri/stages(known for a -10w difference between Stages v Quarq) was swagged to 250.
Lap1: NP 205
Lap1: NP 197
VI: all over the place, very high
So, yeah, I got a little tired. Steady efforts trying to stay right @ 80% (200ish watts) on the flats but allowing >FTP (250->325) on the climbs.
Combining Lap1 and Lap2, NP comes out right at 80% effort for the 75mi.
All in all, this was a good starting point for what I'm going to try work on.
So, feel free to offer feedback now or wait until I've bored you with a few more posts and you see a trend.
@ Chris, I am glad you revived this thread as some of us are starting to have longer rides in preparation for the early IMs. I read through this a bit a few days before my long ride on Saturday.
I like to let my gamin auto lab every 5 miles just to see where things fall off. I had a 3.5 hour ride yesterday with a NP 189. The winds were like 25 miles per hour, so it was a good lesson in trying to maintain consistent power against and with the wind. I was basically doing 13 mile loops at a state park near my house. So it was 6.5 miles against the wind, then 6.5 miles with the wind.
I never really paid attention to this before, but it was a really poorly paced ride from a power standpoint. My first 5 mile interval was 212 and then it went down from there 206; 201; 190; 182; 188; 191; 186;180; 178; 182; 178;152.
One other thing to note... I have been training with power a power meter for 2 years with all of my data in Training Peaks. Yesterdays, ride had my best 3 hr power ever, so I am super excited with the results of the EN Outseason program!
So now that 189 is my target to build from. I'm going to take my first 30 minutes a bit easier next weekend and go from there.
@Brian- my thought process for the next few big rides, and my challenge to you, how motivated are you to flip that trend? As you mentioned, let's see if we can build our NP each lap instead of watching it fatigue. Yes, we'll have to go much easier (smarter) on the early laps. But, the prize is in finishing strong. What do you think?
2 ways I like to structure my longrides.... one way I purposely overide the front half and underide the second half .... the second way is pacing to save for a very strong finish on a long day
Anything under 4 hrs- wu, 20-30min intervals at .80-.90 , 5 min recover, repeat until I crack..... limp home ....following week try to make it 15 min longer before I crack....I dont worry about cracking that is the whole point ...
4hrs + ride the first 75-80% of the ride just below your IM number... so I like .75 (I'd ride .70-73)...this is ridiculously easy for a couple hrs... then it gets hard... the last 20-25% is done .80-.85...you'd be amazed what your capable of if you do not overdo it the first 3/4 of ride... its a mental and discipline game getting to the point in that last hour where the magic happens...
I like the technic of riding "smooth" for majority of the ride instead of overriding.. we still got a marathon to run. At MT I rode RPE and never went in "hurt" zone since its was my first, I started cracking down on the marathon at KM38.. what I got from this ? I probably could push more on the bike and I really needed to invest in a PM.
@Derrek- I use 5 mile auto lap, with 3sec power and lap NP displayed , I know the numbers/high and low targets by heart on race day so like to just look at the watts...Every 5 miles is a new window and new numbers nothing else matters.... Some do like to use IF as a percentage but that can be placed on your display and use auto lap as well... Its all a personal preference.
Regarding my slight fade from Saturday's ride..... I haven't been riding long so it doesn't surprise me that it might take a couple of rides to get the descending splits (or, more accurately, ascending NPs) nailed down. After about 2-3 of these long rides, I bet I'm a lot closer to pulling that off.
Hopeful that I can get that adjusted today.Also, yesterday (Sunday), I recognized that my new TriRig Omega didn't bounce back when I sqeezed the trigger. So, have no clue how long I had been riding with a front brake scrubbing my speed/wasting watts/burning ATP!