WKO - Quadrant Analysis Question
A quick question on the quadrant analysis inside of WKO. I was reviewing the wiki and looking through the power 411 info and was reading about the quadrant analysis section because I have wondered what those 3 lines on the graphs signify ? The lines look like some exponential function but I could not find an explanation in the Coogan book and also didn't see it in the 411 section. I understand what the different quadrants signify but cannot figure out what those 3 lines signify.
Anyone use those for anything ? or are they just there to look pretty ? Kidding of course, but I have always been curious and thought someone might know.
0
Comments
So the lines are just a handy way of seeing how much time you spend in various quadrants while at a given POWER, as opposed to a certain force/torque in just a general sense. You can look to see, for example, how much of the time you spend in certain quadrants (high force or high cadence) at certain power regions... like if you're an uphill stand-up-low-gear-masher, you'd see high force and low cadence to the upper right of your FTP curve.
If I recall from my HS analytic geometry, the curves are "hyperbolic". (Not 100% sure of that) But they definitely aren't exponential. :-)
If you look at some of Patrick's Crucible analysis videos, he will comment on how tight your power distribution is for a given RR. He does that by looking at the power bin histogram, and he comments on how he wants that to be narrow, which is to say low VI.
I am starting to look at that same distribution in combination with quadrant analysis, and partly to see how I deal with my gearing.
Let's imagine that you want to ride for 1 hour and "flatten" the road out as much as possible with your gearing. If you're on a trainer (ok - on a trainier, maybe less than an hour!) instead of outside and riding at constant power you'd see your points in a tight bundle. You would have a low VI (as reflected by the fact that the points were all near one of those curves), but you would almost certainly also see them near each other in a little clump as long as you were staying in the same gear for the whole interval. If you had decided to change your cadence/gearing "for variety" thoughout the interval, the clump of points would spread out.
But on a rolling hills course (or with shifting winds), if you never shifted, you could still ride with constant power, but your cadence & force would probably vary because XX watts might mean 25 mph at some stages (high cadence, low force) and 8 mp at other stages (low cadence, higher force). But if you shifted "properly", you could hold your cadence and force almost constant, as well as holding your power constant. Going uphill, you'd downshift, which of course lets you pedal faster and at lower force, given constant power. By and large, I am trying to keep my force relatively constant as well as my power relatively constant.
Undoubtedly Hunter Allen also talked about high power spurts, too...as in how are you handling your sprints (i.e., high power episodes).
Anyway, I'm no expert, but I'm trying to learn the value, which I agree is pretty vague from their text.
I like the comments about the hyperbolic vs. exponential comment. I need to go dust off my old math books I think.....
The part that you're looking at in Q3 is probably your recovery intervals and maybe warmup/cooldown. In WKO (and Golden Cheetah), it lets you highlight various intervals. What you want to do for these workouts is highlight your work intervals only and see what you get. Your 8-10 min (or whatever) at FTP will be near the FTP curve, and of course the recovery part will be off the curve in Q3. You'll probably find a pretty tight cluster for each work interval. The interesting one might be the 85% stuff...seeing whether you drop cadence or force or both, relative to the FTP part. Of course, you could also take a look at that question just by looking at your cadence averages during the relevant intervals.
Wm
Thanks