Analyzing first outdoor ride with power

scott dinhofer · April 24, 2011 6:13PM

below are the stats from my first outdoor ride with power, didnt focus on holding any intervals, just did the ride as i normally would, pushing the hills, etc. questions on what analysis i should be doing with WKO+, curious as to how to discover % of ride spent in various, zones, etc.

Entire workout (174 watts):

Duration: 1:27:32 (1:27:38)

Work: 913 kJ

TSS: 125.4 (intensity factor 0.93)

Norm Power: 201

VI: 1.15

Pw:HR: 8.47%

Pa:HR: 22.11%

Distance: 22.617 mi

Elevation Gain: 1337 ft

Elevation Loss: 1314 ft

Min Max Avg

Power: 0 470 174 watts

Heart Rate: 58 165 133 bpm

Cadence: 36 212 86 rpm

Speed: 0 38.5 15.4 mph

Pace 1:34 0:00 3:53 min/mi

Brenda Ross · April 24, 2011 7:00PM

I'm with Scott, but more importantly, what do I look at when I am riding with power? I have the little yellow computer and not sure what screens I should have up. I rode today with my son, who is not a cyclist, so I knew it was not going to be a ride I could analysis (lots of stops and starts to scope out some good fishing locations on the river), but thought I would put the power meter on anyway.

Top screen allows Avg Watt, Watts and Max Watts
Next one down shows Avg Mile, Mile and Max Mile
Bottom one shows cadence, avg cadence, e, o, heart rate

Thanks Peeps

Peter Greagg · April 24, 2011 9:08PM

Hi Brenda — I have the same computer as you and use power, speed and cadence as the top/middle/bottom displays. These are the only metrics I look at during the ride. I download the ride data afterwards and use WKO to look at the other ride statistics (eg TSS, IF and VI etc).

Scott — I am sure a WSM will help you but as I said to Brenda, I look at TSS, IF and VI after the ride.

Cheers

Peter

tuckerm · April 24, 2011 9:09PM

@Brenda, I think most will have Watts on the top line, Speed on the middle, and either Cadence or HR on the bottom. Might I also suggest making the Watts a rolling 3 or 5 second average to help smooth the data out? This can be done through Power Agent on your computer.

@Scott, as for post-ride analysis, there is a lot there. Might have to leave that to some more senior members with more experience analyzing. Here's what I look at:
IF = Intensity Factor. Tells you how hard you went. So you rode @ 93% of your FTP for you ride.
TSS = Training Stress Score. TSS = (sec x NP x IF)/(FTP x 3600) x 100
kJ = Kilojoules. How much work you did also pretty close to the amount of calories you burned. You burned 913 calories.
NP = Normalized Power. WKO uses an algorithm to calculate the wattage your actually rode at. You had a norm power of 201.
VI = Variability Index. Tells you have even your ride was. 1.00 is a perfect ride where NP=AP

This may help.
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/normalized-power,-intensity-factor,-training-stress-score.aspx

Al Truscott · April 24, 2011 11:52PM

@ Scott - as an example, here's what I put into the "Comments" of my training log for yesterday's ride, basically showing what I extracted from WKO as info I wanted to save (items in [ ] are my clarifying addition s for the sake of this post):

[MS of FTP intervals] 3 x 10': [NP/IF/svg HR of interval] 211/.982/127; 220/1.021/137; 217/1.009/137; [Total for the ride] TSS=154, IF=0.839, NP=180, HR=120

BTW, it may be you "outdoor FTP should be higher. An IF of 0.93 for a 1.5 hour ride is really cookin'; that would be good for an Olympic distance race of about 10-20 minutes shorter duration!

@ Brenda - Here's what I have (two items per line on my Joule):

Watts HR

Elevation NP

Ride Time Cadence

Using the interval function, I can check out all of these for either the current interval, or total ride. For some reason, I tend to look at the left side of things first, so that's why Watts are upper left - first thing to hit my eye.

I leave the display set on NP, so I can view the real time IF and TSS as well (as smaller numbers in the bottom area). Note I do not have speed or distance in front of me; I can check those by moving to the Ride time display, but I never do that. This is for training rides. For races, I will replace the time with something else. I don't want to know my speed or time during a race, if I'm really worried, I just check my wrist watch for current total race time, which is what I care about anyway.

The big point, is you should have in front of you the metrics you are concerned about in the workout. For me that's how hard I'm working (watts, HR, and NP), and the time (not distance) of the workout. My speed is irrelevant during the workout; it is interesting to view after the fact. I keep elevation there as I NEVER do a flat ride, and I sometimes need to know where the top of the hill is. And cadence is something I occasionally look at, trying to keep it between 80 and 90 unless I'm laboring up a hill.

scott dinhofer · April 25, 2011 4:51AM

@al
indoor FTP/Outdoor FTP - based on the #s i am hitting on the trainer, i am pretty confident of the indoor # being correct.
will this require two tests all the time?when you do an outdoor test, i am assuming you don't hold watts continually as you do indoors due to the variability of terrain? the other issue is also going to be when i switch bikes, right now i am on a road bike and at some point will be switching over to the tri-bike, do you see any variability there?

John Withrow · April 25, 2011 5:50AM

@Scott- Sample size of 1 here, but I was on my road bike indoors all winter. When I switched to my tri bike I was also switching to outdoors, but I swear my FTP is 10% lower now. I think most of it is from being on the tri bike, but some of it is from being outside. I'll be doing an indoor FTP test next week in the aerobars the whole time to try to verify at least half of that. No good spot to do an outdoor FTP test, so still trying to figure that one out.

Brenda Ross · April 25, 2011 9:38AM

@Tucker - okay, so I made the Watts a rolling 5 second average to help smooth the data out? Now, lets say I want to ride at 160watts, what should I see on the computer? Should I be looking for 160?

@Peter - see question above?

tuckerm · April 25, 2011 5:56PM

@Brenda, yes you should be looking for 160 watts on your top line. But 156-164 is all good too. You don't want to see 120, then 200, then 130, then 180, etc... You will want to keep it around that 160 +/- a few watts.

@Scott, yes you need to test your outdoor FTP as well because it may very well be different.

@John, that happens to me as well. Though the more time you spend on the TT that difference should get smaller but there are no promises it will be one in the same. And there are some good spots to test. You just need to ride/drive to them. I know of a couple spots if you are interested.

Peter Greagg · April 25, 2011 6:16PM

Brenda — I have only had power since September, and really only got the hang of it in December. So it didn't take me that long to work out how to use the power meter readout to help me pace my bike rides. I am sure you will learn it quite quickly as well.

The watts numbers do jump around a lot. I use a rolling average of 10 secs (which means that if I stop peddling it takes about 10 secs to register zero). By trying to think about the pressure I am putting on the peddles while looking at the watts displayed, I now have a reasonable idea what, say 180 watts, feels like now. This means that (if I want to) I can have a ride with a reasonably low VI (eg 1.02).

For example, on saturday I did my last RR for HIM and was targetting 185 watts. After the ride I thought I was close but a little on the low side. It turned out that I had a Pnorm of 183 watts and VI of 1.03 — it's a hilly course.

In summary, you will get better at riding to a power target, but it is something you need to practice. As many other have said, it's a skill once learned, it can be turned on at will. Good luck and have fun practicing.

Cheers

Peter

Michael Byerts · April 25, 2011 6:59PM

My first ride with power outdoors was quite a shock when I saw how bad the numbers jumped around and how high they spiked on the hills. I pay attention to different numbers depending on what I am doing. During the Z4 intervals, I look at average lap watts. For the Z5 intervals, I look at current watts, if anything. During Z3 intervals, I tend to look at current power because I tend to let that spike too high on hills.
I have a Garmin, so I probably have more fields than you, but my first screen displays (1) Speed; (2) total distance; (3) current power; (4) HR; and (5) cadence. My second screen displays (1) current watts; (2) lap average watts; (3) lap time; (4) lap distance; and (5) elevation.
After the ride, I look at what my normalized power was, the watts, cadence and HR numbers for each lap, and write those numbers into my log. I also include notes about what route I rode, how I felt if it's unusual, and general impressions of the ride. Especially if you are doing some hilly long course racing, the ride file can tell you if you made mistakes on hills. The EN Power webinar includes an entire podcast on analyzing rides, which I found quite useful.

Brenda Ross · April 26, 2011 4:59AM

k Boys, I will endeavour to do as you say.

scott dinhofer · April 27, 2011 4:00AM

i still dont get how we are supposed to ride outside? are we supposed to try and hold watts at a certain level for our interval? or base that on an average? clearly with hills, this is almost impossible.... last year in a thread on this same topic, Coach R's answer was "ride hard, ride fast, ride often" so i have interpreted that to always be pushing on my rides which is generally hilly terrain.

Coach Rich · April 27, 2011 8:52AM

Posted By Scott Dinhofer on 27 Apr 2011 04:00 AM

i still dont get how we are supposed to ride outside? are we supposed to try and hold watts at a certain level for our interval? or base that on an average? clearly with hills, this is almost impossible.... last year in a thread on this same topic, Coach R's answer was "ride hard, ride fast, ride often" so i have interpreted that to always be pushing on my rides which is generally hilly terrain.

Yes, generally. Depending on the length of the hill and it's place in the ride I'll look down at the dial and will myself to see numbers at, just below, just above, or sometimes way above FTP.

In between hills I'll then either sit at my 85-90% number as much as possible, or on FTP again, depending on how long the stretch is until my next admin section, downhill, etc.

More importantly, if you are doing the same routes on your training rides, should develop Pnorm, IF, TSS, KJ, and time benchmarks that you try to meet or exceed every time. When I leave my driveway I have about a dozen routes to choose from, for which I have these benchmarks for all of them (often hard to remember them, though ). It basically turns every ride into a TT of sorts as I try to meet or beat Old Rich.

Bottomline, when in doubt, ride at FTP and recover at about 80-85% when the terrain and admin prevents you from riding at FTP.

scott dinhofer · April 27, 2011 12:47PM

thanks Coach!

that is generally what i try to do, it is interesting to see now with the PM how much work i have actually been doing!!

per Al T's comment above, do you think i need to adjust my outdoor FTP # with a new test, i know from my work on intervals on the trainer that the number is def spot on indoors...