Experience using BBS with rising temp on the bike
I've noticed BBS allows you to put in weather data to plan a bike strategy. My question revolves around our "Kool-Aid" approach of starting the bike conservatively and building over the ride. But, lets say the temps are 70 at the start and 90 towards the end. Can you use BBS to determine if it would be better to flip our "Kool-Aid" approach and target higher watts early in the cooler part and back off as the temps rise? Not sure how BBS would take into account that 200watts at 70 degrees is a higher stress than 200 watts at 90. Of course, Hr would probably tell you that, but if we are racing with power, then should be able to put together a watts plan accordingly? Thoughts, experiences? Thanks
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I don't know Dave, but I can put you in contact with the Brain Trust behind BBS, via FB, if you want to ask the question!
Thanks Scott, yes please introduce me.
Here is a screenshot of a PD Curve by Temp Range I did in WKO4. Some of it is Chicken and Egg in that I simply do not go out and try to kill it when it is >90 degrees. But I think the overall shape of the curves shows the impact temps have on me. That's why I wonder if there might be an effective strategy to go harder early in a bike when its cooler then back off as the heat increases, vs our standard model of easy early then build through the end??
Will do, Dave.
We used to have the TIRP (Temperature Impact race predictions??) (if I remember the acronym correctly), but that was for running.
This is an interesting question, one I've encountered several times, in Coeur d'Alene and Madison. (@ Kona, it does not apply, as it is close to 85 by the time I start the bike anyway). My observation is that when the temp gets over about 86F on the bike, I start to back off. I have no doubt that easing off - to allow cardiovascular system to safely both keep the core cooled and fuel absorbed by the gut, then headed to the muscles - is a good idea in extreme temps.
The real question here is: is there value in working a bit harder early on in the bike on such a day, knowing you will go easier later on. Again, all I have is personal experience with that. The two times I tried that - once when I got a penalty @ mile 20-ish, with the penalty tent coming up @ mile 35, and once when it was COLD (Tahoe) so I went harder then normal just to be warm - I ended up with a DNF. My suspicion is that, unless you are Patrick McCrann or some other upper 0.1 %-er trying to, say, get ahead of the wind in Kona, you won't be able to get away with it.
Thanks Al, the kind of discussion I'm wanting to stir up. We swim, then we ramp up the bike effort, then we start the run easy then ramp up the run effort. Understanding this is all within a range of say (.65-.75 IF or so for a full and .75-.85 for 70.3) I went ahead and bought the premium BBS for a year and will play around with it, but so far, I don't see anywhere to specify various IF's or understand how they take into account temp increases over the ride. One of my local buddies just won his AG-M65-69 at Wisconsin and last year at Louisville. He refuses to embrace power pacing and goes by Hr alone(and PE). My guess is this allows him to work harder earlier when its cooler and pull it back when it warms up. To me just begs the question, why not apply your harder effort early when its cooler than later when its hotter. I'm sure there is a lot of individuality involved as some are more heat tolerant than others.
I messaged with the mathematician behind BBS yesterday, he's a former member of one of my local tri clubs.
They don't have any model currently that takes into account temperatures. His exact response: "for heat we just take physics not physiological impact currently".
I did ask him if it was okay to connect you to him, and he's okay with that. I'll do that hopefully this evening.
Thanks Scott, I suspected as much. Maybe time for some experimenting.
Dave -- my 2 cents.
I'm not an expert BBS user but what you're after seems beyond the capabilities of BBS. BBS uses physics: power, force, friction, resistance, etc., in their models to determine the fastest way to complete the course using certain parameters. I don't think BBS has evolved to where you can change certain parameters (e.g. IF or NP) throughout the course. I think the affects of heat/humidity are too individualized to model and as you mentioned are tied to HR. This is why Training Peaks gives you the option to change how TSS is calculated from using power to HR data.
I'm also not an expert Training Peaks user, but have you tried building a workout in TP using intervals to change the distance, P, NP, or IF over the race distance? You might even be able to base TSS on HR vice power. I'm thinking you should be able to do that for various power plans to compare overall TSS, total time, NP, etc. Not the same as BBS but...
Finally, that strategy might look good on paper but will be just the opposite in execution; however, I've never tired it. I suggest trying it in a race rehearsal or a 5 hr ride. My thinking is when you start to decrease power due to increased heat and or HR, you'll go even slower than if you used the "Cool Aid" approach because you would have used much more energy in the earlier hours. That's similar to what marathoners call "banking time". That (flawed) thought process goes like, since I'll slow down in the last 6-8 miles, I'll make up that time by running the first 10-16 miles X:XX faster than my goal pace. And what usually happens is they're walking the last 6 miles or running so slowly they lose all the "banked time".
Add to (all) this complexity that different bodies are going to dissipate or accumulate heat very differently. If you're a Tim Cronk, this "reverse Kool-Aid' approach might be suitable, and maybe represent a 20% risk over a Kool-Aid baseline. If you're a big unit racer (large body surface, unable to shed the heat, once you are cooked, you're cooked for the day), this approach over baseline maybe represents a 90% risk to your day.
I have adopted a bell curve approach with success in Kona, 70.3 races, and most recently in Lake Placid. I start out a bit easier (200 wattsish) for the first 30 minutes to get the legs warmed up. From there I target above average NP in the 225-230 range, then back it down a bit in the last 30 minutes to have my HR and nutrition in check for the run.
I have used that approach on purpose @IMTX with success, riding the 1st half harder in cooler temps and backing down a bit as it gets warm.
BBS is "best bike split" not "best triathlon split" they will always prescribe higher watts uphill and into the wind, even if they do weather calcs, I gotta believe all of these are best practiced by experienced racers willing to take the risk. These approaches have some overlap to the Coach P thread about racing on Zwift and developing that quick recovery after efforts while continuing to race.
The only place I have ever really felt the Heat effect to my small body on a bike is KONA, the return trip on QK into the wind, slows you down just enough , the sun exposure and heat from the road go to work. All other HOT races (COZ , IMTX, IMLOU) have been fine thanks to the cooling effect while moving.
@Jeremy Behler Love your bell curve technique...really makes sense in KONA since your racing heat, wind, and everyone else who rides the first half much stronger than the second half, and really love the sig line Kona 2016 Swim 1:02:01 < Coach Rich 1:02:18 somehow missed that
@Dave Campbell if you do talk to the folks at BBS, one idea to accomplish what you're looking for is simply to allow users to break the overall race up into segments and each segment could have a different target IF. I could see this having value outside of the rising temperature scenario. Say, for example, that you want to ride the first 30 min easy to get your bearings on the bike and get some nutrition in your system before ramping up the effort. BBS currently doesn't allow this. If a particular course is hilly straight out of T1, the BBS model will have you going at a pretty hard effort straight away.
This wouldn't necessarily allow you to automate the 'temp vs IF' equation but if you know that the last hour of the bike is going to be hot, you could dial in a lower IF for the last hour of the BBS model. Just an idea...
Love the discussion on this. As a Continuous Improvement guy with a lot of statistical background, its is pure curiosity to me about improving things using data. Here is the best article I've found on the topic, but only in a general way https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/adjusting-your-race-plan-based-on-weather-and-elevation/
@ Scott Alexander, this is probably your buddy.
So here are my thoughts so far .
Still interested in thoughts and discussion on this topic. @tim cronk I understand BBS doesn't specifically say best run split off the bike, but with the ability to set target IF, TSS, % Max FTP, etc, you can influence the model to generate a good run condition, right? @ John K, great idea. Other factors might influence the way you would want to break up the plan. Everybody makes good points based on individual experiences and strengths, that's what I love about this team. Thanks for the input.
Yes, Dave, that's my boy, Coop!
So, are you interested in testing out a hypothesis big data style, with weather contributors (incl temp, humidity and dew point), in addition to the usual power metrics? We can present that to Ryan, to see if they've already thought about it and/or are working on it. The article seems to say they've explored it, but haven't really done much with it as of yet.
Here are two possible scenarios, I see:
-introducing another variable ("TempTSS") completely.
-having weather contributors (like those mentioned above) included in the overall TSS formula, for those that use TSS more than IF/wattage goals.
Perhaps with all the data crunchers around here, like yourself, we can come up with some in-house, TIRP for bike?
@Scott Alexander, yes that's what I'm driving at. Back in the day, EN pioneered racing with power and how to use it as a strategic tool. Now this knowledge is commonplace and unless there are splinter groups with secret sauce, I'm not seeing how we are pioneering the next evolution of using data to "Engineer" smarter race tactics. At some point, we loose our advantage unless we evolve. I see it every day in business. You either evolve, or shrink.
I think the real question is how much do the environmental factors affect the impact an athlete performance and how best to optimize the potential. You are a big guy in a hot climate, so I'm sure we are similar in how it hits us.
Would seem like there has to be huge amounts of data from all the teams races that could be used to build models of this. Much like Matt S did back in the day.
@Dave Campbell @Jeremy Behler
1- You make an excellent point about the correlation between power and temperature. Knowing what "your numbers" are under those conditions is really helpful in setting expectations during a race or training. You could make the same chart for altitude for Al Camp :)
If you chased the cold weather power numbers on a warm day (or at altitude) you certainly would see the impact in higher heart rate. Just knowing what those "numbers" should be may be your most effective tool.
2- I agree that the TSS for a 85+ degree training day is not the same as a 68 degree training day in terms of TSS. But in the warmer cases - what do you think of using hrTSS vs TSS computed by power as a method to accurately capture the TSS "cost" of a particularly hot training day or at altitude?
3- For any approach (EN guidance, Dave's proposed faster when its cooler or Jeremy's Bell curve) don't you get the about same NP for the ride?
4- And based Tim's @tim cronk comment - "best triathlon split" wouldn't you evaluate the "effectiveness of the bike" based on the follow-on run.
You could consider using Pa:Hr decoupling metric of < 5% for the run - as the measure for the "fastest bike." That would give you a metric to evaluate the effectiveness of the bike, based on the ability to pace the run. (Pa:Hr or Pwr:Hr under 5%, indicates that the second half was only 5% slower than the first, a negative Pa:Hr or Pwr:Hr would show a negative split - with the second half being faster than the first half). A lower (or negative) Pa:Hr / Pwr:Hr would indicate you "left something on the bike" while anything higher than 5% would say that the second half of the run was much slower than the first half and you "overcooked the bike."
@ Matt Limbert
I've tracked decoupling for a few years, but have just used it to attempt to measure my cardio fitness. When I'm <5% on a solid effort, I figure I'm fairly fit and can race harder without as much risk. I've not thought of using it as a tool to assess bike pacing. But it makes good sense. Let me think more about your suggestion. Actually, on full distance races, the opposite heat index thing may be going on where running "conditions" are getting better towards the end of the run when a small % of the pack are trying to pick up the pace. Lots of variables there.
Would be cool to create a project where many EN racers over a variety of abilities dump their race data into a big data base and use some "Watson" type analysis to determine if this all makes real sense. I could see where someone like BBS could have interest. We (EN) probably represent a valuable resource of data for AG'ers, given our World Domination and high % of racers using power meters.
Incidental to this discussion, I've finally been getting around to reading Alex Hutchinson's book "Endure". In the chapter on the The Central Governor there's a section that talks about the concept of 'anticipatory regulation', i.e., the brain acting as a limiter to performance not when a certain critical threshold is approached but rather when the brain anticipates that conditions exist for a certain threshold (e.g. core temperature) to be reached. One example given was an experiment where cyclists were riding in hot conditions. On a conscious level they felt they were going at a hard level (based on RPE) but within a few minutes muscle recruitment was already lower than normal, well before their core temperature got to some critical level.
I'm hypothesizing here, but if you buy in to the central governor theory I'm not sure TSS is the correct measure of the impact of heat (or if there even is a good measure). From a purely physiological standpoint, I don't think there's any increased training stress at higher heat. The exact same amount of work is being performed as when you're riding in cooler conditions. It just feels harder, and your brain starts to limit performance sooner. If there were a benefit with regard to increased training stress at high heat, we'd all be cranking the heater to 100 deg. year-round in the pain cave. It may help short-term with heat acclimatization but there's no objective evidence that I'm aware of to support the idea that training in high temperature has an long-term performance benefit.