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Wattage

Nice post Sikochi. Reminds me of RapDaddyo from the epic thread.
Was it him who said 'cadence is a red herring'?

Didn't know there was a "magic number" for climbers. At 1.71 m that puts me at 1.73 lb/in.

5W/kg may be good for going up hill, but 260 W is not much use on the flat. I doubt I'll ever break the hour for 25 miles for example.

mike >> I've never worried about my power output.

If you've ever thought about or measured heart-rate or speed, power output is just the same, but a much more accurate and honest 'metric' for how much it hurts.
 
Nice post Sikochi. Reminds me of RapDaddyo from the epic thread.
Was it him who said 'cadence is a red herring'?.

Aw shucks :eek: I don`t remember that, but long rides on a Sunday...anything else sounding familiar?!! Seriously, I agree with most of his philosophy for training so that`s why I recommend the thread, plus he is a coach, so much greater knowledge than me, hence, best to hear it `from the horse`s mouth.`
Didn't know there was a "magic number" for climbers. At 1.71 m that puts me at 1.73 lb/in.

I posted it before:-
http://cyclingcommentary.typepad.com/cycling_commentary/food_and_drink/
But checking Friel`s actual blog, he seems to have changed it to 2.0 lbs per inch.
http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2010/04/power-and-weight.html
Trouble is the pros are riding at 6.8W per kg so you ned another 100 watts! I need another 200 :eek:

I doubt I'll ever break the hour for 25 miles for example.

I was thinking about this. I put my last L5 climb of the other day in my online caluclator and it gave 312W, so extrapolating for FTP would be around 260, so similar figure. (Current weight, only 3.8W per kg :( so you`d drop me straight off on a climb) And yes, I can`t imagine sustaining 40 kph for an hour. If I could manage it for 5 mins I`d be over the moon...
 
Sikochi, thanks for your comments.

One last thought is that the other day at the gym I was really surprised to burn more calories at a lower setting.

No worries, I`m happy to suggest something, but all my training is done off perceived effort so you are basically asking for sex advice from a virgin. Hence, why I was watching power meter developments as if a reasonably priced one comes out I will be first in line. As for weights, does this include legs, as weight training (legs) for cyclists is a can of worms. See here for the two camps:-
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/fitness/?id=strengthstern
If you are doing leg weights, just be aware that it might interfere with recovery from the cycling sessions, so whilst you are embarking on a cycling training plan I would put the weights (legs, by all means do the others) to one side and once your body has developed more cycling fitness, add them back in (if you want). One more thing, again, don`t assume higher gear = more effort. It is the gear combined with the cadence, so a lower gear at a higher cadence can require more effort.
 
No, I don't do legs. I always let my running take care of that. My weight days I a different routine every three days. Weights is maybe the wrong word as though I lift, I don't/can't lift all that heavy. I spend most of the time doing pull ups, push ups and dips. It's all just part of my overall fitness plan. I need some muscle to keep the fat off.
 
Measuring power (in watts) at the pedals is a novel idea. Definitely the lightest way to measure power. I bought one of the first PowerTap hubs about 10 years ago and it was a great tool for giving my coach accurate information about what I was capable of and performing each workout. It is a good tool for training your fitness and efficiency (I agree with what FarEast had to say about it). I ended up burnt out and gave away my PowerTap to the girl who would end up representing Japan in Olympic MTBing -I thought she had it in her so wanted to give her another tool to improve her training.

The weight of the Powertap equipped wheel made me not want to use it for races or fast rides but this new 50gram option may have me consider wattage again. The biggest problem I envision is that measuring at the pedals is measuring how hard you push the pedals not how much power is being transferred into forward momentum. For example it also measures some of your wasted energy like when your foot pushing down also pushes up the foot on the other side (unless you have a near-perfect pedal stroke). Measuring at the hub measures the power that actually gets to the wheel and you can see your wattage go up through better pedaling efficiency without increasing effort.
One of the biggest things I learned training with wattage was how to increase my efficiency: You can see immediately how focusing on a smooth pedal stroke applying power at all points AND A HIGHER (90-110) CADENCE will make you go faster without increasing your heart rate or physical exhaustion ...it just takes many hours of mental/physical effort to rewire your body to pedal efficiently.

My advice to the original post is to Gradually work towards a higher cadence both at the gym (while measuring) and on the road (while enjoying the ride) and you will see your power and bike fitness and time to exhaustion increase dramatically over time.
 
Measuring power (in watts) at the pedals is a novel idea.

I was looking at my pedals yesterday when I cleaned the bike and from the state of them, my only concern is going to be how durable the system is. If I go for this option (highly likely if the price is ok) then I shall have to be more careful.
 
Being two sensors in the pedal systems the computer calculations should take into account power at the same time and add it in to the calculations. Push and pull and double signals should not be a problem. Right?

But what about when you're just standing on the pedals out of the saddle and not pedalling? Does your weight on the pedals count as wattage or does there have to be some cadence happening?
:eek:

I'm sure the programmers have covered all this????
 
I didn`t have time to write this on Saturday. As I have no personal knowledge of you then I will just provide the backbones for a plan that you can adapt to yourself and anyway, neither should you follow any plan religiously that hasn`t been devised personally for you.

If gym time is governed by length, then first thing is to deduct time for warm-up/warm-down. As this is personal specific then the length of time is really what works for you and as you are used to doing running intervals then you know the procedure. So from a purely arbitrary point of view, I will take 15mins for both warm-up and warm-down. That leaves 60 mins for the work part.

As you are used to 22.5 min intervals then I will stick to that. I have not found any evidence pointing to how long intervals should be: the classic 2 x 20 seems purely an arbitrary figure which works for a lot of people in providing a reasonable amount of work in a workout, whilst stopping the workout from being too long, and hence, failing sustainability test. You can just do the one long session which to me is better, or say 3 x 15 so again, adapt the plan to what works for you. I do a mix of intervals (different hills, different bikes from 4 mins to 60 mins)

So if we have 2 of those intervals, then we need a recovery period in between. Again, recovery time is a personal thing depending on how long works for you. I use the feel approach (usually the how long it takes to get down to the bottom of the hill approach but I always wind down gradually so rarely from flat-out straight into recovery) but in `the thread` they recommend waiting for your heart-rate to drop to a certain level, so you can use that. If we put another recovery period in after that, then you can throw in your sprints (I`ll leave the ratio of sprint/rest to you), which leads onto the warm-down. So something like this

0 min start
15 min 15 min Warm-up
37.5 min 22.5 min 1st L4
42.5 min 5 min recovery
65 min 22.5 min 2nd L4
70 min 5 min recovery
75 min 5 min Sprint
90 min 15 min Warm- down

Like I said, all times are just for indication purposes, adapt them all to what works for you.

As for wattage figure to choose, then you need a figure you can sustain for both intervals. For simplicity, just pick a figure and if you find that the 2nd interval was too easy, increase it next time. If you couldn`t complete the 2nd interval then lower it next time. For it to be an L4 interval, the interval has to last at least 10 mins, or else you are targetting the wrong zones (L5+)

If you ride Sunday, then gym Tuesday, Thursday, that gives you a whole day recovery between sessions and one 2-day break. So maybe you could add a half-session on a Friday (I think 2 back-to-back sessions of the above will be too much to begin with). That puts you on pretty much the same schedule as Tyson on `the Thread`.

That program gives you 45 min of L4. Twice a week, gives you 6 hours a month and as you sound like you are doing tempo and L4 on the hills on a Sunday, then let`s say maybe 8 hours L4 a month. For an untrained cyclist you can gain between 1 to 2 watts per hour of L4 (estimates from `the Thread` and slowtwitch link) so that would give you 8-16 watts a month gain and over 6 months you would be looking at 50-100 watts. You should be able to see gains for 6 months before plateauing rears its head and then you need to start varying things.

I`ve been on a program for 6 months and can`t give wattage figures as no power meter. But for indication purposes, my times on my favourite hill climb are down from 21/22 mins to 15:40 but given the gradient on the last section of the hill, the progress isn`t as linear as it sounds, as the gradient becomes the determining factor. Not wanting to repeat myself, but I have no medical training, this is all purely based of my understanding. Follow at your own peril!
 
I'm sure the programmers have covered all this????

I`m sure they have too. There are a few pedal based systems coming but a few of them (Brim Brothers, O-synce) seem to have got themselves into a twist with how much stuff to calculate instead of just drawing a lin in the sand and getting a product out there, and leaving refinements to future versions. There is a Look/Polar one that is on the pre-launch stage (but you have to buy a Polar head unit as not Ant+ compatible, and will be expensive) and that is on about how accurate the system is relative to SRM so like I said, they must have.
 
Power meters like the ones found in cranks, or pedals work hand in hand with a cadence sensor..... stop rotating the pedals and the computer stops computing wattage. Very simple.

Also they need to be calibrated for your weight. The other thing is that as the sensor will be made up of the spindle I would hazard a guess that these could then be interchanged with a new body as and when required.
 
Sikochi,


Thanks for writing all that out. I'll give it a go next week.

Cheers
 
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