Training advice to reduce VI

TRIAJH

On Sunday, to celebrate completing the VO2 phase of my OS, I took my bike for a spin in the country. First time this year. This confirmed my worst fears!!

Here are my PowerTap data for the ride.

• time  3:04:01
• distance 52.1 miles
• average  speed 17.0 mph
• average cadence  78.6 rpm
• average power 148 W
• normalised power 182 W
• TSS 286
• IF 0.977
• VI 1.22

Since I joined EN, I have been working hard to educate myself about power. I probably now know enough to be dangerous! Certainly I know  enough to realise this is not a great profile.

1. The VI of 1.22 confirms what I already suspected: my long rides are generally too variable powerwise. (With hindsight, this was almost certainly a contributing factor for my DNF at CDA last year). Notice, for this ride, if I were to maintain the same ratio of average power to FTP and reduced the VI to something a bit more reasonable, say 1.05, the TSS  would drop to 212, a reduction of 26%. 
2. My high IF (I was not riding hard)  seems to indicate that my FTP (186W, measured last week on a CT, recorded on my PowerTap) may be too low. This would help explain the high TSS but it does not explain the high  VI.
3. I have always suffered from a low average cadence. Actually, 78 rpm is good for me. But on the computrainer I have been managing an average of 95 rpm this winter. So this is also a bit disappointing.

My question is simple. How do you recommend I train on long rides to reduce my variability (VI) significantly?

Adrian

David Ambrose

@Adrian - Tough question. WSM can chime in. You have a CT according to your comments. At least for myself, the use of the CT (via use of the coaching software module at established wattage levels --- erg files) has assisted me in getting very comfortable and enhancing muscle memory of spinning at XXrpm and YYYwatts for said durations. When I ride outside on relatively flat courses, I tend to fall into those same comforable steady cadence and effort that I practice on the CT, and generally have low VI on such outdoor rides.

If you are not currently using the coaching software with pre-set erg files, I suggest you give that a try for a while and see how it influences your future outdoor rides.

HayesSanborn

1. Your FTP set in WKO isn't even in the ballpark. Coggan has you can ride 97% for two hrs. I have a hard time believing that number....3hrs forgetabout.

2. How you ride the hills (even rollers) generally determines the VI. I'm assuming this ride was solo and not a surging roadie ride with attackes and sitting in a group. Some tips:

-Stare at the power meter on the hills. Try and get up the hills with as little watts as possible. Turn that into a game.

-Push watts going down the hills. Don't start your coast until your 33mph ish.

-Learn what X watts feels like on lflatter sections of road. Spend some time watching the power meter and make it less jumpie. Smoth pedaling and learn what your target watts feel like. After hours/weeks of riding, at any given point you should be able to look down at the power meter and be able to guess the real time watts within 10-20.

Once you learn this skill though you can turn it on / off. Early Spring, I don't care about VI.....I crush the hills until I pop. Once I'm in lock down mode, I turn on my pacing brain and lower the VI. The good news once you have the skill, you can turn it on and off with ease.

 

 

Norton

Hayes has all the good answers.

Even pacing is a learned skill; riding in the hills with a powermeter for the first time can be shocking. It takes discipline, but if you're doing the OS, you've got that.

gilliatt

Use easier gears as well, an avg cadence of 78 suggests you are a bit of a masher. 85-92 is probably more optimal. There is also a gearing/equipment component to riding w/ a low VI. Several years ago, while training for IMOO some friends pointed out I was a bit of masher, it turns out it is hard not be be because I was riding an 11-21 on really hilly terrain.
Riding with a low VI is something that onces you learn you can turn on and off pretty easily. It takes time, practice, and patience, but once you get it you get it.

Chris G

why do you want to reduce your VI on long training rides? If you had a 1.2 on race rehearsal ride that would be one thing but no reason to care much about a training ride. Spend more time riding with power and more time doing FTP intervals. In a few months when you do your first race rehearsal and are trying to hold steady watts report back. Until then the goal for your long rides is to do as much work as possible. Even a .85 target ABP ride is going to have some variability.

Oh and I agree that your FTP is way out of whack.

chris malone

Ditto all 5 above.

I further recommend the duct tape method.
First, adjust your ft number. Then, turn your pm on, place duct tape over the read out over everything but cadence. Warm up, then ride hard for however long, making sure cadence starts with an 8 or better as much as possible. Remove duct tape, open your present. Repeat. Don't get crazy about the technology.

As Floyd Einstein said, "It's not who rides the hardest or who rides the longest. It's who rides the hardest the longest."

mgraffeo

What Chris and Hayes said.

High VI riding = good when you're just out to hammer yourself away, get work in. There are plenty of rides where I'm happy to see a 1.2+ VI.

High VI riding = bad for race rehearsals and/or races.

You may want to take a ride or two somewhere along the way to practice the skill, so that come your first rehearsal, you don't have a 1.22 VI, but no need to strive for it week in and week out.

Al Truscott

A bunch of great advice up there, leaving me with only two more thoughts, one an expansion on the observation that your FTP is wrong. So the obvious next step: do an outdoor 2 x 20; (2') test and get an outdoor FTP.

But that doesn't help your VI, now, does it? Riding outdoors, the VI will be MUCH more variable that on a CT. Some of my CT rides have a VI of 1. With nothing following the decimal point. Outdoors, 1.2X is not at all uncommon - slowing down for lights, obstructions, corners, etc. So when I'm analyzing the ride after the fact on WKO or my power meter software, I pick out a section where I knew I was riding steady, or trying to ride steady, and use *that* to tell me if I've got a VI issue.

Linda Patch

Super thread! Great question that we can all learn from.

Norton

Another low VI Ninja point; when you think you've got the outdoors steady-riding thing down, see how close you can guess your VI before downloading it to WKO.

Steele

I'm new to power training, as well as EN - this is like learning another language.......WOW!!

TRIAJH

Thank you for expert advice. I appreciate it. I have a few comments.

Your  FTP.....isn't even in the ball park (Hayes). I believe you but......

During the OS I have done each ride on my CT, using the ERG+ and CS software.  I actually have some reservations about this because, used like this, the CT more or less forces a VI very close to 1.0, over periods of constant resistance load,  and probably also gives you a psychological advantage during FTP testing. On the other hand you cannot shirk during the ride!

I have also tested my FTP, initially and subsequently, in the same way. You get a pretty good idea from the rides between testing how much your FTP is improving so you know where to set the resistance load for the next test. Each time I have tested, I have had real difficulty finishing the test. This would seem to indicate the resistance load I chose (taking into account an offset of about 10W between my CT and PT measurements) was at, or very close to, my new FTP. My FTP may be greater than 186W  but if it exceeds 200W (using this method), I would be very surprised.

FTP: test outside (Al)

I agree. I will do it asap. But why should I expect a different result outside?

But when all is said and done, this will not affect my VI. So......

Is a high VI important this early in the season? (Chris G)

There is a slight difference of opinion in the thread about whether I should be worrying about a high VI on a long ride, this early in the season. I actually believe this is a skill I am really going to have to work hard to achieve and I think Mike's advice, to do some early rides to practice, is correct.

How you ride the hills generally determines your VI (Hayes)

I am able (and enjoy) powering up hills. And I am just beginning to understand the cost of my bravado!!

An average cadence of 78 suggests you are a bit of a masher (Dan)

Yes, I know......but I am getting better!!  My gear set is 53/39 28-12. Going to a compact (50/34 25-12) would lose me half a gear at the top and gain me about half a gear at the bottom. Would it be worthwhile?

Expect a higher VI outside (Al)

I do. All the more reason to get it under control. But I had to think hard why a higher VI results from slowing down for lights, obstructions , corners, etc. That is only half the story. The other half is, if you want to maintain your averge power, you need to compensate the lower power (from slowing down) with higher power somewhere else on the ride.

Practical training points, from duct tape to Ninja point

Thanks for all these interesting suggestions.

Next

This has now got me thinking about the key data I need to display on my Joule and the data interval I should use. Watts jump around far too fast for me to follow them, when I am riding. But I am sure there must already be a thread somewhere else on this topic.

Thank you all for your help.

Adrian

Dave Campbell

As for the question on the compact, I don't think any of us need to be riding a 53/39. At least 98% of us. But swapping to a compact won't automaticall raise your cadence if you still select the wrong gear ratio's. It will keep the gaps between gears smaller, which might help. It would be an interesting poll to see how many of us run compacts, and at what watts/kg level would be allowed to consider a 53/39 as an option.

gschlossnagle

I ride a compact with a 12/27. I like the flexibility it gives me, especially in the short/steep hills here in MD. I can take sustained hills at a rather low wattage if I want/need to, and I very rarely spin out the 53-12 combo. I could see trading up for something super-flat like Eagleman.

Tom Glynn

As to your "Next" column, the Joule allows you to smooth your data. My top line of the Joule is watts on the left and normalized power on the right. Power smoothing from 1 to 30 seconds will make it not jump around so much. Practice makes perfect

Page 58 of the manual 11.Press[JOYSTICK]up/down to change Power Smoothing from 1,2,3,5,10,30. Press[JOYSTICK] in and release to save settings. Note: Power smoothing 1 displays power data as it is sent from the power sensor, Power smooth- ing 30 displays power data as a 30 second rolling average which can be used for better pacing during intervals and races. Press [JOYSTICK] in and release to save changes.

Manual is here: http://www.saris.com/pdfManuals/393.pdf

cwhyte

For someone who knows how to control their VI, it's meaningless this time of year. However, for someone who doesn't -- a lot of people fall into this category -- there's no better time to start practicing than now. High-VI riding is ingrained in a lot of people. Roadies who become triathletes are the worst to convert. My suspicion is that you have this ingrained in your riding style and you need to break this habit. First thing I'd focus on is restricting your climbing to ~85% of FTP. You're likely going to find this painful. Of course, you have to find a semi-accurate FTP first.

Honestly, I don't even know how to produce a VI of 1.22 outside if I'm riding alone. I almost think it would be impossible for me to do these days. Low-VI riding is so ingrained into my style which is probably why I despise group rides of any size greater than about 4 people. Again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing for someone like Al who can flip a switch and ride steady at a moments notice but it's a bad thing for you to continue to enforce this habit, imho. I often see people take way more than a year or two to get their VI down to where it needs to be for IM. A lot depends on how determined the athlete is to fix it though.

Tom Glynn

The best place to practice low VI riding outside is by yourself, on a flat road in the middle of nowhere; no stop signs, turns etc. As you get better here, add in the variable terrain, corners, busier streets etc.

As the comment above about if you go slow now, you have to make it up later, I think that's a pretty dangerous comment, especially when racing. High VI is a good training technique, but a disaster in racing. "Making it up later" is called "burning matches" in power lingo, and it's not a good thing generally.

Coach Rich

1.22 VI is crazy high...though I did have an athlete put up a 1.22 at IMCDA'05. Guess how his run went .

I suspect you're getting the high VI because you're shutting it down on the downhill, easier parts. IOW, it's easier to get a higher VI by erring on the low side than on the high side. The low side numbers are WAY different from your on-the-gas numbers and they add up quick.

Power jumping around

Yes, you can change the smoothing so the display isn't quite so jumpy. But power is different from speed and cadence...it's gonna jump. I believe you learn how to smooth out your power a bit but you also learn to just not sweat it so much.

Cadence

A little bit of coasting on a outdoor ride will have a big effect on your average cadence. Net is that I wouldn't look at my average cadence as the end of my ride as an indication of anything. Instead I would look down occasionally during the ride to see what cadence I see naturally. That's likely a more accurate number.

TRIAJH

Chris. I agree I need to start practicing. Like you, I feel my high VI is ingrained in my riding style.



Tom. Thanks for the advice about how to do it. I did not express myself very well in my respose to Al. (That was more a theoretical point). I realise I should not be "making it up later" in practice.

Rich. That is a very interesting comment about the potential contribution of "low power pedaling" to my high VI. I had not thought of that.

cwhyte

Posted By Rich Strauss on 04 Feb 2011 09:38 AM

Cadence

A little bit of coasting on a outdoor ride will have a big effect on your average cadence. Net is that I wouldn't look at my average cadence as the end of my ride as an indication of anything. Instead I would look down occasionally during the ride to see what cadence I see naturally. That's likely a more accurate number.

Which is actually a very good reason why nobody should have zeros included in their ave cadence. There's really zero value in looking at your ave cadence at the end of a ride when zeros are included.

I only point this out because most people include zeros for ave cadence without really thinking about it because there are obviously very good reasons to include zeros for ave power. It's the latter one we tend to focus on.

Thanks, Chris