Oct 15-Nov 15 "Triathlete's Guide to Training with Power" Book Club (Page 2)

Perhaps I should update the pogo stick analogy to these things.

 I don't have flying dreams, but I do have bounding running dreams--those look AWESOME!

I'm not sure if too much flexibility can hurt you, but I do know that not being particularly flexible is ok.  I'm flexible enough to get into a pretty aggressive bike position, but I probably wouldn't last outside of an entry-level 101 yoga class.

Despite not being able to fold myself in half, I can still throw down some decent run times.

I'm going to try TR this week.  I'll just do my normal workouts with it for a few weeks before I test with it, which is pretty much what a lot of guys recommend with power meters.

Yes, there is a balancing act going on. You want enough so that the necessary range of motion for the activity is easy, but not so much that the joint becomes less stable. Think of say an advanced swimmer having very flexible feet. They can have trouble with ankle stability at first when they pick up running as they don't have the strength developed yet. Then the elasticity part can be hard to tell as we may just think we're getting into better shape.

Another thing to consider is what I've seen refer to as mobility. Flexibility doesn't really matter so much as many will have enough for much of what we do. But it can take some training to be able to actively use that range of motion without assistance. Like with the bike fitting. It doesn't really take much flexibility to get into a David Zabriske like position, but it does take some development to be able to put out power and be able to hold it for some time. Few people have developed well enough to utilize the available flexibility that well.

Matt, have you tried TR yet?

I tried my first set of over unders on the bike this morning with TR.  3 x (just under FTP, at FTP, just over FTP (4minutes work, 1 minute rest.))  Interestingly, the first set was the hardest of the three.  I think I'm discovering I need a longer warm-up than I think I do.

Pg 41 discusses threshold training and the idea of over-unders, and reinforces the idea, again, that if progress has stalled, just change it up a bit.  I think I might need to post that by my bathroom mirror, as I can get into training ruts, and do the same kind of workout without giving much thought to the specific goal of that workout, and if that is the thing I need to be working. 

Our "run with a purpose" challenge in September helped me think about that quite a bit, at least with running, but I am trying now to really think about it more with swimming and biking too.  I feel like it's helped with some of the mental fatigue of training.

I got all the software set up for TR, and I was planning on doing a ride for fun with it before testing, but I may have my first ride be a FTP test, which I'm doing Tuesday.  I'll borrow a friend's PT wheel for it, so I can see what the differences are.  I'll use TR's protocol, which is the Coggan test.  It's going to hurt, but it will be nice to know what my FTP actually is.  

If I had to guess my FTP right now, I'd say 260ish.

JD recommends something similar as well.  After you plateau you change stimulus to promote improvement, if I remember correctly.

I've pushed the edge just a bit and became more used to it. I could still ride quite strong and stay in the position for awhile, but more time was helpful towards holding it throughout an entire race.

With little bike work going in (as I understand it) should be interesting to see how things go..

Thanks for the advice.  I have never done the FTP protocol, but I have done several LTHR tests.  For HR you do a warmup and bike as hard as you can for 30 minutes.  You reset your HRM 10 minutes in, and the average HR for the last 20 minutes of your test is your LTHR.  I've borderline puked a few times doing that test.

The FTP seems to be a hard test as well.  The part that looks tough is the 5 min flush effort before the 20 minute test.  Going all out for 5 and then pushing your best average output for 20 sounds challenging.  I do enjoy pushing myself on the bike though, and the thought of trying to get a big number should be enough to keep me going.

Really, the main difference between the two is just in what's being measured. One is HR, the other is power output. The sensations will be the same.

Then for the 5' & 20' efforts, there are two ways to do it. One is the "flush" with the 5' and taking a direct percentage of the 20'. The other is to be fairly well rested for each one and put the results into an algorithm to plot a curve. Most do the second method on separate days.

Yeah Skiba recommends the two day method, but I don't know how much I like that method.  Coggan does the 5 minute as a flush method to get rid of the burst we can get from fresh legs, so that the 20 min portion of the test is a better representative of our 1hr effort.

The problem with the Coggan method is that people will game the test by not going hard enough on the 5 min effort, doing just a hair more than their FTP.  A lot of people in my area are moving to power, and they get upset when I call them on not going out hard enough on the 5 min effort.

Off the bat I have to admit I'm just dipping my toes into the world of training with power, using TrainerRoad and their virtual power.  Did the TR Ericsson ride today and in reviewing the results see an odd relationship between time spent in the respective power and heart rate zones.  I'm not sure if this is normal, if something is wrong with my zones in TR, or what, so wanted to put it out for those more experienced to provide some guidance.  Here's what the data looked like: 

 Does this mean that my muscular/aerobic development is out of synch since I nominally seem to have spent the same percentage of time in the sweet spot based on power and in tempo based on HR?  Or is this not unusual for a power vs. HR relationship.  FWIW,  I did a 20-min FTP test about a month ago, so the inputs to TR should be relatively fresh (HR avg 165/avg pwr 251 for test).  Any thoughts?

As said in TT, maybe some tweaking, but not really surprising that HR lags. HR creeps up rather slowly for me when working sweet spot. Especially if I'm lower in that range, it might take nearly the entire time for bigger intervals to get up there.

I thought the pic at the top of pg 48 was really helpful.  Ben, very patiently, tried to explain this to me after my first HIM this summer--thanks Ben:)  I felt really great on the bike, and at the end I got carried away and went to hard for about 5 miles--like 3mph harder than I had the rest of the ride.  Doh!  This is definitely one of the books I wish I would have read BEFORE racing :)

Sometimes there are points when I'm training now when I'll learn something and  I'll think, I can't believe I've been training/racing/whatever and I DIDN'T know that.  That's how I feel when I look at the graph on the top of page 48--how intensity feels to your body and the toll that it takes. 

And the bold from page 52:

Triathlon racing is all about riding fast enough that you don't lose too much time, but slow enough that you can run hard afterwards. As we now see, it is also very much about having an evenly paced effort. Thus, the optimal strategy is most likely not to kill yourself on the climbs, particularly in  Olympic through  Ultra distance racing.

How is everyone doing?  Could we shoot for being through the end of Chapter 7 this week, and then finishing up with 8 and 9 next week?

Since you're in science of some sort, I think you would understand the idea of linearity. And that many people many tend to assume that darn near everything operates in a linear fashion, or very close to it. From all the reading you're doing, I think you're catching on that very little actually is. Even trying to approximate using it tends to be silly. Like in this graph on sweet spot, There are no straight lines anywhere. Everything is a curve.

That's a GREAT graph.  I might print that off and post it by my trainer.  Side note, I spent some time looking around that site, and I must be getting OLD as all of those trainers and coaches looked like kids.  And if i wasn't already pining for a powermeter, I just read their top 10 reasons to use a powermeter.  Oh magic 8 ball, all signs point to yes.

And, yeah, I am realizing that there is almost nothing linear about my training.  I was a *little* slow on the uptake on that one.  Nothing like a swim focus to drive that home multiple times a week :)

I was on the trainer this morning doing and my husband came in and looked at the screen and asked what I was doing today.  I did a TR program that had a set of 3x (9 x 30 seconds 125% FTP 30 seconds EZ).  And his response was a line from the movie Dodgeball, "Oh changin it up.  Keep the body guessin" and I said "Yeah, pretty much.  As funny as it sounds that is probably the take home from all of the reading I've done lately."

I've been reading through it slowly.  I think that schedule is feasible. 

Picking up my buddy's PT wheel today to test tomorrow.  This should be interesting.

Hey Matt--how'd the FTP test go?