SBR "U" (Page 30)

seriously Chris - now THAT is a comeback! How is it holding up today?

my first race of the year is also in the books: 11.5 mile trail race, 1580' of vertical (according to Garmin, but who really knows...) and a spot-on -6:00 PR (6:01 to be exact) from last year, when I thought I ran a really well-executed race at the edge of my abilities at the time. This time around I basically executed the same race plan as last year: ease in to the first 4 miles, murder every downhill and recover the ups just a little (basically as neutral a VI as possible, in bike terms) and then Inthe last 4 miles go for broke. It seems to have paid off well As I managed a 16th OA, which is fairly good as this is a very competitive regional race that sells out every year in less than 10 minutes from going live. With about a mile or so to go my left calf started to flake out on me, and cramped hard just as I crossed the finish line. So the calf is still really sore today (channeling some of Chris' miracle healing powers) but other than that I have actually recovered fairly quickly and was able to make it through a set of somewhat challenging overgear intervals this morning.

Originally posted by BrotherTriOk did a 20' Power test today. I was really apprehensive about it for two reasons. I had a HUGH argument with a fellow co worker that I care about. That was about a hour before the test and I know I dumped some adrenalin . The other thing is yesterday was another extremely fatiguing day, but not as bad as last week. Anyway I did the test with great results. My current 5' is 342w and 20' is 313 My CP is 303 and my W' is 12Kj Still not sure what that W' does for me or really what my FTP is. Anyways here are the screen shoots. O' the 20' test was interrupted a bit because I goofed with the erg file. I put 315w in for the 20'. I guess I was still upset, so I stopped that file and loaded a flat slopped file for the load. This is why you will see a drop in Watts about 5' in. Its all good and my zones really seam to make sense now. About time.....EDITIf I did bad I would have not complained.....

James those look like some really good numbers going in the preferred direction. Just doing some back-of-the-napkin math in my head it looks like you have a huge W/kg advantage on the 5 minute interval over me but we converge and get really close to each other on the 20 minute interval. I will leave it to the smarter folks in the bunch to really say what that may mean, if anything, but I think it probably points to the fact that:

1) I don't really know how to suffer.

2) I am puny little weakling. And

3) you might have some cardiovascular overhead space left to claim.

Marc - I don't even know what you are asking me!

Looks like I need to read through the Power Mentor thread once and for all....

I have a really huge spread in my 5' and 20' power.  Last year it was somewhere around 368 and 305-310.  Marc says that my W' (or battery) is the size of a small SUV.  I'm not sure if that's a compliment, or him just implying that I'm fat.  

I think your 5' power is a lot higher than 342.  It takes a lot of extreme suffering to actually hit your max 5' power.  Usually around 90 seconds in you start cursing and it's pretty much the longest 200ish seconds of your life that you are counting down.

Yup, I agree.  You are still in the "figuring it out" stage and while you said your zones at least make sense now I bet over the next few weeks you see more signs that will narrow things down a bit tighter for you and then re-testing will give you a pretty good idea.  A W' of 12 kJ seems low to me with your CP around 300w.  Unless you are just a big diesel engine with one gear.  

Rusty - Nicely done! I hope the calf is back to normal soon.

Ooooh, I missed this post!  Nice work Rusty!

Yes, exactly - the bigger the difference, the higher that value will be.  My 362w and 311w gives me 20 kJ but my CP is lower at 294w, also due to the larger difference between the two.

I have so much work to do...once the Pan Am Games are finished then I think I'm going to find some structured cycling programs to take at the track.  I got my certifications this past weekend, but they had a drop in program riding right after so I watched these guys ride for a few minutes and it was little intimidating given I have minimal group riding experience.  Just need to find a semi-quiet day to test out how I ride with a bigger group.

I'm also thinking there could be more left in the 5' test simply based on estimates of my own from last year and the W' that comes out of it. My W' would have been about the same as what's been said even though I hadn't really done that much work over threshold. A good deal of hard work was being done, but more in the 90-95% range than at 100% or more that James has been doing.

ETA: I don't know that it's a huge deal to find it like right this second, but more to know for next time around. It would bump CP up a little bit, but they guy seems to like going hard!

Bike or running? 

If it's running, I really struggle with the "murder the downhills" part. Any tips?

My coach said that I have improved greatly in terms of form (not over-striding, keeping hands and knees low) I'm just not fast at doing it. 

Marc - I don't have actual test numbers from anytime recent. All I have is inference. For example, this morning I had a very, very hard 2 minute interval that was built to 318w. A very solid (but still with gas in the tank) 10' interval earlier this week was 253w, but it was also an overgear interval. But I might be doing some legit testing soon - I just got this in the mail today: