BT Winter Cycling Program Challenge 2015 - 2016

I guess a little bio would be good to get everyone somewhat familiar with each other, so I'll go first.

Name: Tom

Story:  Married with 3 kids and 2 grandkids with the Family being the center of it all.  Currently 57 years old and was a couch potato until age 50.  After seeing a lot of folks in a retirement facility who were basically sedentary, not because of injury or illness, I decided I was going to get fit and age well.  Started with running and have done 10's of half marathons and 5 marathons.  Moved into Tri a few years ago and have completed Olympic, HIM and IM distance races.  Was training for a 50 mile trail race last Feb when I got a combination hamstring and piriformis injury that killed my entire 2015 season.  It wasn't until September I could ease back into training and am now back on track.

Current Training: Log is current and last few weeks have been 10-12 hrs with a good mix of SBR.  Bike has been largely low intensity/endurance focus as I wanted to get some aerobic base in place and think I am now at that point. 

Goal of this program:  Build FTP in prep for next season and gain a good understanding of POWER and how to get the most out of using it in training and racing.

Goal 2016 race: IM Vineman in Sonoma, CA 7/30/16.

If we wanted to try and find the workouts for this challenge on Trainer Road, what should we be looking for?  I did a search of "BT" but found nothing useful.  Didn't look on GC, so I guess the same question would apply there.

I'm new to power with my only previous experience being TrainerRoad and virtual power for use during their workouts.  Couldn't carry that over to my bike as I had no power there, so did not really do any analysis or planning based on power.  I just recently got a early Christmas present from my wife in the form of the Garmin Vector S and have gotten a few rides in now not really watching power on the ride, but checking out the data post-ride to get a feel for it compared to RPE and HR which are the tools I've used in the past.  It has become abundantly clear that I need to do a lot of work to understand how to view the data to get the most out of it - what is important vs what is interesting - so was wondering if we will be using a certain program/site to look at results (GC, Training Peaks, etc.)  I'm in the process of reviewing the older Power Mentor Group from a few years ago in the hopes it'll help get me started.  Recommendations or suggestions welcome and appreciated!

Hi Tom,

Nice bio, late starter! 

Regarding TR I'm going to do another post following this one with a zip file that will have the workouts for the 1st phase. 

I wouldn't be able to help all that much on the power front, I only train with VP on the trainer.  Others in the main tri-talk page can be of great assistance.

Curious what type of trainer do you have?

Hello group,

(attached BTWCP-Phase1-weeks1-4-mrc-files.zip)

Trevor from TrainerRoad said the BT Winter Cycling Plan is not in their list of programs.  So I went ahead and made the .mrc files for the first 4 weeks (phase 1) that "can be dropped right into the TR Workout Creator" (I don't use TR so not sure what this means!).  He did also say that BT does have a pretty active team on TR (https://www.trainerroad.com/teams/105-beginner-triathlete) so if someone here can post them there they should be able to be found (again I don't use TR so not sure what this means!).

These files can be imported into any program that accepts .mrc files.  Let me know if you find any issues with them.  Thanks.

My trainer is a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine - built like a tank and smooth as silk when riding.  If you can't tell, I'm pretty happy with it.

I downloaded the workouts and tried to get them uploaded into Trainer Road, but am missing something in the process.  I've sent an email to the support there and based on past experience, think I'll get a response tomorrow.  Once I get them in, I'll let you know.  I'm hoping I can get this resolved tomorrow as I want to do the 5 minute test on Sunday and the TR platform makes it easy to execute to plan.

Here's a link to the TR page that talks about importing a workout.  It has some guidelines you might be interested in: http://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/201944204-Creating-a-Workout-from-an-ERG-or-MRC-File

X

Update to TR upload.  I figured out what the problem was.  Apparently special characters such as - and + are not allowed when importing, so I got rid of them and got the files into TR.  One file seemed to have an error in which the last segment actually started in the middle of a previous segment, so I changed it to where it started at the end of the previous segment instead.  Sorry, didn't think to note which one it was.  Other than that, everything looks good now.

In naming the files, I used the file name you provided as the basis, but had to eliminate the "Phase 1" in all as there was a character limitation.  So the nomenclature I used was as follows:

BTWCP weekworkout - name

an example being:

BTWCP WK1WO1 - 5 min CP Test

So when searching, all can be found by typing in BTWCP then scroll down to find the appropriate one by week or name as I'm not sure how you will be referring to them.  I'll try to get a screenshot of this uploaded.

Tom,

'You da man!' Thanks for your help with this.  I was hoping there wouldn't be any character limitations, was this for the headers and/or file name?  Trevor didn't say anything about character limitations, oh he also forwarded me that link about making the files.  I'll ask him about characters and file name length.  I also made the optional prep weeks with "Phase0" so we need to look into how to rename them so they all line up in a file list properly.

The limitation was in the file name you used in saving the files and occurred when I tried to drop them into the list in BT.

Here's what they look like now in the app:

For the Phase0 we could use WK0WO1, WK0WO2, etc. as one option to make it line up I suppose 

I guess I should post those prep .mrc files.  I didn't I uploaded them to my OneDrive so when I get back to the office I'll post them and you can check them out and include them in TR.  I'll name them with WK0a and WK0b

Looks like starting out on 11/30 there's a potential of 9 and maybe others will join in.  So far only myself and 5stones have entered names in the spreadsheet, but of course there's you and from the feeler thread:

kloofyroland (late December or right into January)
GAUG3 (undetermined)
tluckey
johnthecat
SHTri
TriPatrick
Hook'em
Bradleykd

I hadn't put my name on the spreadsheet yet as I was going to do that after the first test, but have done so now. 

I want to make sure I did not get things messed up in translating data.  On what you posted you have the 5minCP as Wk1WO1 and the 20 minute CP as Wk1O|WO3.  On the plan at BT it shows that the 20min test (day 16) precedes the 5min test (day 20).  Just want to confirm that the order has changed so I don't mess anything up.

Here's what I like to do;

1. Do the 5' test first.  Since its shorter I find it mentally easier to go "all out"and hang on.  Note that 'all out' is not 100%, its relative to the time duration as you can't go all out for 1' and expect hang on for 5'!  After 1' you should feel "ah no problem I got this", after 2' "dang its getting hard, after 3' oh @%#^! I can't do this, 4-5' hang on and suck the wind!
2. Then do the 20' test.  Knowing the 5' average, you can be a bit conservative if its the 1st time and start somewhere in the 85% range of the 5' power and build from there or go from a higher level around 90% and see how it goes.  My personal worst case ratio has been 85% coming off of no training to 93% at a peak in training.

Did the 5 minute test today.  Tried to follow your guidelines from above:

Here's what I like to do;

1. Do the 5' test first.  Since its shorter I find it mentally easier to go "all out"and hang on.  Note that 'all out' is not 100%, its relative to the time duration as you can't go all out for 1' and expect hang on for 5'!  After 1' you should feel "ah no problem I got this", after 2' "dang its getting hard, after 3' oh @%#^! I can't do this, 4-5' hang on and suck the wind!

 But was a bit too aggressive in the beginning.  30 seconds in I was at the "no problem" stage, but by ninety seconds in I knew I went out too fast so was at the just hold on and suck wind stage.  Seriously considered stopping at 2:30 in as I knew that this was far from an ideal test, but chose instead to gut it out to see how deep I could dig.  Was able to stop the decline of power and actually finish the last minute with a (slight) increase in power.  Ended up with an average power of 230W but a really crappy power profile for the test.

 I was DONE after the 5 minutes and cut the just spun for 30 seconds before shutting it down.  Info entered onto the Google spreadsheet.

It was my first 5 minute test so learned a lot with the two most important being to moderate the start and that I had deeper reserves than I thought.  In retrospect, should have started at the 225-230W level. 

Side note:  I started this test once but noticed in the first couple of minutes my power and HR values dropping to zero periodically.  Stopped the test and did some web research and found that this happens often when your ant+ devices are being interfered with by other 2.4 MHz radio frequency devices, with Wi-Fi routers being a main cause.  The suggestion I found was to reset the Wi-Fi router to channel 1-6 as Ant+ operates on channels 7-12.  After resetting the router, the Ant+ signal was strong and steady.

Good work there Tom, yes the 1st time is a bear to get "right". You have 3 more times to get it right!

I'm going to attempt getting mine done tomorrow.  I did a prep workout on Saturday after cleaning up the garage some and getting the bike & PC back together.

OK, my 5' sucking wind test is done, 242w avg.  I really had to focus with 90 sec to go as the mind was begging to stop, I swear time stops with 30 sec to go on these tests!

Hey Brad, this'll be fun, right?  Answer after your first 5 minute test :-)   I've been through the ITBS mill myself forcing me to miss the Chicago Marathon.  Now I never miss a day of doing my preventative rolling of not just the ITB, but all the hip/glute/hamstring muscles.  

Don, great finish on that 5-minute segment.  Looks like the clock may have stopped on the last 30 seconds, but you just accelerated!  Was the outcome about what you anticpated?

For anyone planning on using Trainerroad to do the workouts, in order to view the workouts you may have to join the Beginner Triathlete Winter Challenge Team there as I'm not sure the workouts will be available to all users.  You can first do a search to see if they show up, but if they don't, joining is easy.  To join, just sign in to TR, click on the "TEAMS" button at the top, choose 'browse teams' and type in "winter challenge".  Then click on the "join" button and you should be good to go.  This is all new to me and I can't test it since I started the team, so if it doesn't quite work that way and you figure out the fix, please post here so others can see.

Thanks, I put my head down during the last 30 sec and embraced the pain!

Not looking forward to the 20' test!  Weather here on Friday won't be ideal with high humidity, oh well.

Brad, looks like you are ready to go.  I've got the same trainer and love it.  Discovered a neat trick just recently, probably the last one on this site to know it but I'll share anyway.  I found that if I just rotate the bike up and against the wall it stays there and gives me ready access to all the stuff on the other side.

Originally posted by Bradleykd Got my little pain nook set back up for the year... After the stall mat gets some heat in it and lays down flat, I'll put that psychology book under the front tire. Its all in your head! Also, I just flip that computer around for the screen. Looking forward to tomorrow!

And yes it is all in your head, LOL!