Of pedaling, power, hills, and Mr. Friel
Many of you probably already saw this, but Joe Friel published another blog post, imparting his wisdom this time on when to coast or pedal, in particular reference to hills and coasting.
He specifically recommends that IM athletes pedal "hard" at slow speeds (>10 km/h, not sure why he uses a > sign, rather than define slow as less-than something) I think everyone agrees that at some terminal velocity there is little point in pedaling; he recommends coasting at a pretty similar point as EN, i.e., 50 kph (about 31 mph).
I have read all or most of JF's stuff over the years, and it is interesting to read between the lines here and there that he does not really consider himself an expert in IM, though he does write about it considerably. Even in Going Long, he talks about how much he learned from Gordo during the writing experience. In retrospect, I felt like that book was him trying to figure out what he thought about it and get it all down on paper, more than him writing a definitive method from a place of detailed, experienced knowledge. However, here, I am totally speculating.
I don't mean to be a JF basher or apologist, but I have also noted over the last couple of years that he has begun to "clarify his position" on the build phase, where he now is a lot more explicit about it meaning "race-like" rather than the "build your fast" that most of associate with his method. I will note, however, that if we were to take that literally, for IM training, he would have NO "build your fast" phase, since he still sticks to the LSD pre-season.
Comments
William, I know you are putting this up just as an FYI laced with a strong dose of scepticism, but I wanted to make sure none of our newer members were tempted to try and learn anything from Friel's suggestions.
We've been through this several times before. Friel references Alan Couzens' blog entry on how to manage various courses based on the steepness of the climb. One problem is, none of these courses exist in real life. For example, his steady climb of 2% for 56 miles, then back down would be a total climb of 5600' (100' per mile for 56 miles), more elevation gain than IM CDA or Kona. The 5% climb would translate to me going from my house at sea level to the top of Mt. Rainier, which I think may be just about 56 miles away as the eagle soars, at an even 5% grade - if such a road existed, which of course it doesn't.
Bottom line, Couzens' suggested effort levels for given grades is based not on analysis of real life race attempts by actual athletes, using normalized power, IF, VI, and TSS, followed by a real marathon, but rather on an extremely simplistic modeling which does not translate to IM courses as they are actually designed. We can safely ignore this advice as whimsical at best, and dangerous if you use it and try to run a marathon afterwards.
Here's a much better blog entry to read, if you want to know how to pace hills within the context of an Ironman, based on actual data and applied strategy. The author, as we now know, successfully followed his own extensively researched advice on Sunday to a superb 7th place finish and Kona slot in M 45-49 in Penticton.
Sorry - I'm writing this from the Denver airport, and the free WiFi messed up my URLs, as it routes everything through my google searches.
Here is the correct pointer to Chris' blog entry on pacing an Ironman
Interestingly, the logic of the simple equations of motion of a bicycle are extended even further by some people. There are guys out there on the wattage mailing list (I believe that's where I've seen this...) who take this "harder uphill, easier downhill" bit very literally and do iterative simulations showing how to minimize time on a TT course, given a fixed number of kJ (= energy, ~Calories) to spend. That has the appeal of being very scientific-sounding, but also has basic flaws, like the variable physiological cost of wattage (i.e., energy/time), as the whole NP and TSS calculation is supposed to simulate. And of course, it's not in an IM context with that little run to do after...just as you point out.
I think the article is relatively innocuous and dangerous at the same time. You know that if you tell someone to work "a little harder" on the uphill and "a little less" on the downhill, if they don't have power or specific power guidance, they are going to take it as crushing the ups and shutting it down at the crest and on the downhill. We all know how easy it is to ride at 120% of FTP for 30-90" up a short hill...but that stuff REALLY adds up.
The beef I have with Friel, or rather not so much with him but with the...inertia...of the training culture that is founded on his book, is that it's blindly adhered to by about 80% of the athletes and coaches out there but it's just flat our wrong.
Kinda off topic here, but doing a consult with a guy who his using a Don Fink plan for his first Ironman, wants someone to tweak it for him. He shared the plan with me and it was straight out of the TTB. The volume, nothing really above Z2, if there was Z4 stuff it was ludicrous short, etc.
This method/structure of training, which we are all familiar with, is the default method for pretty much anyone, coaches and athletes, in the sport, especially long course. I see most coaches as primarily being tutors or regurgitators of the TTB, with people paying them to basically read the book for them and give them the cliff notes.
In my experience, if you consider that the coaching career lifespan of a coach is maybe 2-3yrs (?) and under the predominate coaching model (more below) that coach is only exposed to a very small number of athletes, it's expected that only a very, very small percentage of coaches who start out by photocopying the TTB experience enough professional growth where they learn a different, better way.
The Limiting Model
Right now, google "Triathlon Coaching" and browse through the coaching websites in the first couple pages of the seach results. You're going to see websites with some variation of tabs at the top such as Coaching, About, Tips, Camps, Sponsors, etc.
Under Tips you may find a small handful of articles written years ago, which are basically paraphrased versions of typical TTB topics.
Under coaching you're going to find some flavor of table with coaching levels, from Lump of Coal to Unobtanium, on one axis, and $185 to $1500 on the other axis.
Professional Limiters of this Model
Limited opportunities for critical self-examination.
If I'm working with 15 people, and they all pretty much agree with me, have a similar knowledge base or, more commonly, are paying me to do the thinking for them, then I not presented with many opportunities to really, really think through how I do things, how can I do it better, what have I learned through my own training and racing? A watershed for me was when I wrote the base Crucible Fitness training plans on a flight from LA to Hong Kong. It forced me to write an entire 20wks schedule for 3 flavors of athletes, consider how all the workouts fit together day to day, week to week, month to month, etc. It was a very valuable, big picture exercise and PnI rewriting all of our plans every year is a critical example of this self-examination process.
The One vs the Many
I know I'm preaching to the choir here but the value of the stuff that happens in here, daily is just off. the. charts. better than what any one coach could ever create for his athletes, no matter how much he was being paid. Matt's heat/run pacing analysis post is a perfect example. That is world, world class stuff, seriously. And I can tell you as a coach and a business person that the economics just aren't there for any 1:1 coach, or team of coaches, to do that kind of work for their roster of 15-20 athletes paying them $300/mo.
Anyway, just burning some wifi before beers with some friends
My question is when you live in an area that is hilly and you are presented with hills that have the challenge and ability to do your hard work on the up and your easy on the down, how do you work your interval training around them? If i think of the flatter places around here, even they have long up or down grades that will vastly change your power output. Clearly the hill itself is an "interval" but not a planned one or regular one as prescribed in the training programs.
The issue i find is that even if i could pedal on the downhill, there is a point where i can be pedaling hard and still adding to the speed and a point where i am clearly adding nothing (seems to be around 31/32 MPH) and of course between those two points is a continuum of diminishing returns.
Hopefully i am making sense.
You're obviously right about there being a place (for most of us in the 30s mph with ordinary gearing) where you obviously can't put anything more into pedaling. But, with proper gearing, you CAN choose to "flatten out" hills/climbs up to some certain grade without spking the watts. Obviously, that's not so for a 10-12% section (with a lot of people's normal gearing), but you CAN surely flatten out a 1-5% grade if you want to.
One of my issues last year (2010) was that I got so into the "racing mode" of having flat power output for various intervals that I probably did not take advantage of the "hill opportunities" that presented themselves as much as I should have. (I live in a rolling-hill area) I "practiced like I wanted to play". While I had a really good A-race, I do kind of wonder that I should really get out and attack the hills more during my generic training rides.
Anyway, the point is that within certain limits, you DO have a choice about whether you go steady power or knock yourself out going up, as you imply. I wish I had better wisdom about what is appropriate when.
The original article I posted though, is more about racing. It's a mathematical fact that the "fastest way around a course", given a fixed number of kJ, is to apply more of them going up hill than going downhill and apply more of them with the wind at your back than with the wind in your face. This is because gravity and rolling resistance are linear functions, while wind resistance is exponential (squared or cubed, depending on what you are quoting). However, this isn't "real world" and doesn't take into account the physiological cost of increased watts (J/s). The whole NP/TSS thing is supposed to be an approximation that includes that cost.
I hear what you are saying about the hills. We live in generally the same area of the country, I'm in northern NJ, and we probably have much of the same terrain. When I first started riding outside with power and the workouts I had trouble hitting all of my numbers. I tried to keep the hill climbing watts down and tried to increase the descending watts. Well that doesn't really work. I posted a question about it and Rich responded something to the effect of climb hard, climb often. Basically attack the hills, kind of like William says above. Sure we want to follow the plans but in the real world we just can't follow them 100%.
So how to proceed? What I do is ride hard when I can. On a climb or steep hill I may be a good 10-25% over FTP if not higher. I know I need to make up for that long 2 minute downhill where I won't pedal at all. I think it really is just an experience thing. You do get a hang for things. On the tech side, I suppose this is an area where the Joule would help as it shows you an IF. Sorry, not sure where you are on power terminology yet, but IF = Intensity Factor. I don't have a Joule, yet.
Thanks Tucker, this is very insightful and helfpul. Still gearing up and in process of figuring out how i am putting power meters on two bikes. not planning on a Joule, just planning on using my Garmin 310 XT.