Using Lap Function During a Race
I've had my Joule now for a couple weeks and love it. I've done one RR and numerous workouts with it and am still experimenting. I've read a number of post where folks are using the lap function to keep themselves in check during a race and not trying to "catch up" after say 60 minutes in 1st gear during a full IM.
Using the lap function during a race makes sense to me, but wonder if folks can recommend how often between laps. I've read through the forums and seen folks doing it once an hour and once per mile. I'd think that on a course like Florida, doing it once a mile is way too often, but maybe on a course like Lake Placid, which i'm doing next month, i'd want to do it more frequently.
...and of course, i could be reading into this waaaay too much.
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Comments
You really want to be looking at real time watts while you are racing. NP is certainly a cool thing to have but as you alluded to, chasing an NP number is a terrible idea. If you are under it you are going to chase it and if you are over it is going to concern you. I will likely just hit the lap button at the end of the first loop, maybe not at all.
Do not forget the part of the power seminar about finding oppurtunities to do LESS work than target watts on race day.
Hitting the lap button and looking a lap data for every mile would be insane. Do not do that. If you want to be really anal about it. Maybe start a lap at the turn in Keene, another when you start the climb after the out and back at Jay and another by the gas station in wilmington. That will help you keep the important parts in check. Who really cares what your NP is for the downhill.
Yes, you are way over thinking this. Thats OK, it is a big part of long course racing. Starting to worry about things that do not matter or that you have no control over is a good sign. If you were worried about things like "how am I going to make the bike cut off" than I would be worried.
Like Chris said though I always watch realtime power, but a a secondary metric I occassionally glance at my lap average for the one hour laps. If my average is low or high, I make VERY small adjustments and continue to watch real time power. Once the lap (hour) is over I move on and do not try to "catch up" or anything like that. In other words, if my goal was to hold 200 and I only held 195, I still do the next hour as planned, I do not try to make up the watts.
I've been thinking much more about this after the "frequent intervals" method first surfaced in the forums. I plan to record an interval at the entrance of every aid station, so about every 30'. I'll then have the Joule config'ed to display current watts, Pnorm, IF, cadence, time, distance and speed, all for that interval. Do the best I can to manage everything inside that one interval. Manage the micro. I'll then occasionally toggle over to the overall data for the ride.
Thinking about not having speed up at all on the monitor. I don't really use it for anything, I don't let it get inside my head, but I often like to see it to give myself permission to sit up on a hill, for example, or coast above 34mph. The one thing I am bad about is toggling over to avg speed for the ride and wanting to see that magic 22.4mph -- the speed that equals a 5:00 bike split as everyone at the pointy end has done the math on that
. I don't do anything with it, but I can't help seeing a 22.2, or a 2:35 at mile 56 and do the math...
For the run I either take lap splits manually (and forget all the time) or will set it to autolap every mile, assuming it gets the signals right out T2. I then have a couple different displays, one shows current pace and the other has average pace for the lap. The latter is usually more useful, as current pace is affected by hills, etc.
n=1 here, but on my RR this past weekend at LP, I was going to do the every 30 minutes like all my long rides but realized breaking it down by section would be better. Most sections were about 30 minutes (except the screaming decent to Keene) but more importantly to me, each one was unique as far as ride and road conditions.
What I did was hit the interval at:
top of Cascade
the turn in Keene
beginning and end of the Ausable out and back (at rte 86)
the turn in Wilmington
High Falls Gorge
then Mirror Lake
Same thing on the second lap. Havent had a chance to write up my RR but the data intervales let me compare each section between laps.
Matt/Hayes:
If you were to break the WI bike into sections vs time, how would you do that? Needless to say, you've both ridden that course many more times than I have
For WI I have always just taking intervals with my hour method as it gives me consistant date across all races/race simulations to compare easily later (sure I could make intervals in WKO later, but I just stuck with what worked).
Here is my data from 2009:
Hour TSS IF NP VI Speed HR
1 47.5 0.69 186 1.05 21.9 162
2 48.8 0.7 189 1.04 22.4 163
3 53.6 0.733 198 1.04 22.9 167
4 53.4 0.731 197 1.04 20.9 167
5 45.4 0.674 182 1.05 21.9 162
6 6 0.637 172 1.2 18.9 163
I purposely shut it down after hour 3 as it was getting warm and I was going faster than I dreamed I could.
If you wanted to do it by section, here is how I divide it in my head... times are total swags as I haven't rident the course on a TT bike in 2 years.
1) T1 to Corner of Whalen/PB - Warmup - ~13 miles - ~35'
2) Loop 1 - settle in and don't go over my target watts at all - ~42.5 miles - ~1:55
Midpoint is the turn from PB to Whalen and I would like to see 2:30 or less here when I get here :-)
3) Loop 2 - get a little more agressive in watts (but the wind typically picks up to eqaul the same time) - ~42.5 - ~1:55
4) Whalen/PB to T2 - get ready to run and adjust power/nutrition based- ~13 miles - ~35'
For the loops the top of the climb on Garfoot right after Mineral Point and before the descent starts is pretty much the half way point. I know the first half is, because even with the three short climbs on the back half I was able to pick up a ton of speed on Garfoot/KP/Timber Lane/through Verona as they are all fast sections.
The only other portion I would break into a section was G/92 as I hate that part so I used to know the exact distance and have a swag at my time assuming normal conditions. I *think* it was about 5 miles on G and 6 miles on 92 and took maybe 32' because it is very slowly rising with a few small rollers/false flats.
@Matt - those sections make a lot of mental sense. A small disadvantage is having to manually hit the lap button (just one more thing...)
Garmin lets me "autolap" by time or distance, but it's at fixed intervals. I assume Joule lets you do the same, but don't have one. But your breakdown makes me think about trying to use waypoints as autolap markers on the Garmin. I think that's doable, but never tried. Maybe a project for the Rally! :-) If I figure out how to do this, I will post for other users.
Based on this thread I hit the lap button and broke my half into 20 mile segments. It was pretty cool. I think 10 miles ones would have been even better. That was a rolling course though. I really think most races using terrain features would be the best way to do it.
I use this lap as my "box" - I have a tendency to spike my watts so nice to keep the lap shorter and focus on restarting often if I do go over. If I rode more hills or a hilly course I would probably agree with the manual version but for me this works pretty well.
It also means on my 310XT I just show lap time, cadence, 3s watts and lap avg watts. Agree with the comments not to focus on speed, since changing to this screen have ridden a lot smoother without the mental need to hammer. One up arrow takes me to total time, total distance, current speed and HR. One down arrow takes me to time of day, calories, avg speed and avg total power - I use this screen mainly only when training or to take a sneak at the avg speed...