Power Mentor Group with Shane & Marc - Closed. (Page 46)

I'm using WKO+. It tracks cycling and running TSS very painlessly. For running you can figure out your threshold pace and it will calculate a grade normalized pace for your run and calculate a rTSS score for you based on you pace for the run. For swimming the trainingpeaks website talks through how to calculte your swim TSS (sTSS). built a simple excel spreadsheet that I use to calculate sTSS for each workout and then manually enter the sTSS score in the WKO+ calendar so it feed into my PMC.

Here's my PMC chart. Thanks Marc for easy explanation on how to post this.

Edited by tallytom 2014-02-09 3:02 PM






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OK, I got Week 5 Sweet Spot pounded out and I think my perception is that it was a bit tougher for me than most in the group. That was the longest I've been on the trainer and stuff was hurting. I was glad to swing the leg over and off the bike. The all out efforts were fun and that really changed the look of my CP graph since it has some big power in there now.

I tried a Chocolate GU after the first interval and really felt it kick in around the 3rd interval. I really feel like it gave me a little energy boost to finish out strong. Not to mention the chocolate tastes like frosting. Yums!!! I'll be trying some other flavors on these long sweet spot rides each week.

Also have a bike update. Pick up a 2012 Scott CR1 Team off eBay with all 105 components. User said he has about 2500 miles on the bike but just put new chain rings, cassette, chain and cables on the bike. Got it for $800 and free shipping. So hopefully by the end of the week I will be off the hybrid and onto a bike that actually fits me.

Marc mentioned that his trainer tire blew up...What are y'all using for trainer tires? I was thinking about picking up a $30 wheel off eBay and mounting a dedicated trainer tire to it. However, I saw some people saying that the alignment might be a little different than the wheel the bike is adjusted for and cause shifting issues. Let me know how you handle this.

Threshold 1 = 87 TSS
Threshold 2 = 96 TSS
Sweetspot = 144 TSS
Weekly Total = 327

File attached for Sweetspot

Have a good night
Ron



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Oh ya, forgot to mention. The way I post pics.

On a windows machine go to start and do a search for Snip. It should find Snipping Tool. When you run the snipping tool you draw a box around what you want to copy. Once you do this you can save it as a jpeg and then post as a file. I find this easier than having to open paint, paste and save. Either way works though. I save the snipping tool in my tool bar so I don't have to go looking for it. Microsoft really should make that tool easier to find and get to.

Ron

I use a spare wheel and a continental trainer tire. With the stock wheels the shifting was a little off but easily adjusted with the barrel adjuster. With the new wheels the shifting seems to be right on the money when I switch them out.

Wow....thanks!

Thanks. I'm probably going to download their trial version this week and see what I think.

Very nice. That will be useful for many things.

AHA! Now that you point this out, Nicole, I'm sure the same thing is going to happen to me, and I bet this is why my Threshold workouts have been kicking my #%$@!

I missed 3 days of training for travel, but back now and ready to hit it for another week. I think I was a bit tired out from increasing the running mileage as well, so I think the rest was good for me.

Jaime

Very much a personal preference, they are all excellent products. So excellent, that I will probably continue using them all :-)
TP = training peaks, GC = Golden Cheetah, RD = Raceday

I started a few years ago with RD.
Then I moved to TP
Then I was using TP & WKO
Recently I dusted off my copy of RD because some of the things I didn't like as much have improved. I am really liking it and I suspect I will use it more and more


They only really become interesting when you have a certain amount of data to load in. If you have a bunch of Garmin files for the run and swim, along with what we have been doing on the bike, a trial version makes sense. Load up a bunch of data and start analyzing. If you don't have data, the trial versions will be kind of boring. Do you have data ? RD and WKO both have trial versions.

WKO is PC based, currently not on mac but the new version will have a mac version. It has been delayed a few times. You pay once and that's it.
TP is a web/online version. You pay monthly with discounts if you pay yearly. WKO and TP really play well together.
Raceday is PC based with a Windows and mac version. You pay once and that's it.
GC is free. It's great for cycling, not so great across the 3 sports

Here are some thoughts

What I like about TP is it's really easy to upload workouts to it. All my data is saved on the TP server. It does a good job of managing S/B/R. It's easy to use.
Ride Analysis is not as good as WKO or GC. Maybe similar to RD

What I like about WKO is the charting. You can chart anything. PMC charts with workout performance data overlayed, it's very analysis rich. This is it's strength. I really like charting workout performance on top of my PMC. "what was my best 45 minute training run". "When did I do it". What was my TSB when I did it". All easy things to do with WKO.

What I like about Raceday is it's simple to use and has some very unique features such a performance prediction and things like the W' analysis. We talked about the PMC chart giving a picture of fitness and fatigue, Raceday allows to "fit" this model to performance to help predict performance. It has tools to better calculate tapers. I think this is very very cool. But if you are not the type that will test regularly, I think you lose a lot of the benefit of RD.

WKO isn't hard to use but it's not as easy as Raceday. It's hard to describe . You know how mac products seem 'simpler' to use than windows products ? It's kind of like that . Raceday is very intuitive, WKO a bit less. Not hard, but I found it took some getting used to.

Raceday, WKO and TP all do what Mitch mentions about normalizing run data based on terrain. Running up a hill at 7min/mile gives you more TSS than running on flat at 7min/mile. What annoyed me about RD was that my Garmin altimeter data went wonky and RD could not do elevation correction. My 10km runs looked like I was running up Mt-Everest at 7min/mile so I would get lots of TSS points. It wasn't a RD error, it was a Garmin error, but TP and WKO allowed me to correct it. Maybe RD can, but I couldn't find it.

Raceday swimming input used to be clunky, they made it much easier with the Garmin 910-.RD. This is actually what brought me to TP. I had just ought a swimsense watch and it uploaded perfectly to TP. I tried it and go hook and kind of put RD aside. But RD incorporated 910xt/swim watch support. It works well and it allows to easily correct some of the data. For example, I upload a swim workout that contains some kicking which shows as a big 5min block at 0m. So I just say it's swimming at a very slow pace. Big improvement there IMO.

Since we started this group I have been using RD more and the more I use it, the more I like it. I bought my license maybe 3 years ago and I have been getting all kinds of improvements since, all for free. I wasn't even aware of all the improvements they have done.

So each does something better than the others.
RD is the performance prediction, some of the calculations, ease of use and good consistency across the 3 sports
TP is the web convenience, good high level dashboards, easy to uplload data. Good across all 3 sports. Weight and other metrics are good. It can track equipment use.....Transfer from TP to BT is easy.
WKO is the analysis and charting capabilities. I think WKO could be overwhelming for some.

GC kind of throws things off little. It's really only for cycling, but has stuff nobody else does.
GC complements RD quite well. Detailed bike analysis can be done in GC. Performance across all 3 sports in RD.

All these products are weak at planning IMO. I do my planning in Excel spreadsheets.

If I wanted to spend $0 I would go with GC and Excel spreadsheets for the combined S/B/R
If I wanted ease of use and good performance prediction, training load analysis I would go Apollo. GC would fill in some of the cycling analysis shortcomings.
If I wanted advanced reporting on training data I would go WKO. It's more complex to use however
TP is a good all round tool.

So what's important ?

Ease of use ? RD, TP
Performance prediction ? RD
Analysis of workouts ? WKO (GC good for the bike but not as good)
Cost ? GC, excel
Mac version ? RD, GC

PS : there is a new version of WKO coming out soon
Do the trial thing. But before doing it, accumulate a certain amount of data. Properly store all your Garmin files, keep your swims logged and then bulk load when you have 2 months or so of data.
Until you have data, the tools will be boring.


And to the people who don't like playing with data : hire a coach to do it for you. That is a big part of the value they provide. But picking a good coach is even harder than picking one of these tools. I can recommend one or two however :-)


Edited by marcag 2014-02-10 5:27 AM

If thats the bike you showed me, that is a good deal.
For the wheel, I think a dedicated trainer wheel is a great idea. One more reason to use a crank based power meter vs hub.
I never had shifting issues swapping wheels in and out.

I was using a continental tire specifically for the trainer. But I have been using it for 4 winters. It has done it's duty

Marc

Thanks for the great breakdown of the applications. I have a decent amount of data to play with, Garmin for running, swimming and biking over the past year as well as trainer road files for my indoor work on the bike since July.

Interesting; I was curious as to whether the hard efforts were truly maximal efforts with very long recovery or what endurance athletes typically call hard which are usually hard aerobic efforts with about equal recovery.

Generally the second type of hard efforts improve aerobic performance because while they are hard efforts, they are still primarily aerobic efforts and anaerobic contributions will decrease as the workout progresses since there is not sufficient time to recharge the battery.

For these, where there is long recovery, I suspect that benefits are similar to what can be seen with Daniels R-pace work in that they force the body to develop power as economically as possible resulting in improved performance.

I would guess that if you wanted to spend even less time on the bike maintaining than we have been doing that it would be more time efficient to warmup, then hammer so VO2max type intervals with about equal recovery as while the work in these efforts is much greater, the very long recovery likely leads to less training stress for the time involved.

Something like:

5:00 warmup
4x3:00 hard (>105%), 2:00 easy
5:00 cooldown

Shane

Edited by gsmacleod 2014-02-10 7:08 AM

Marc could give DC Rainmaker some 'competition'-excellent reviews.

Thanks for that very nice summary. Too bad it's hidden here in our thread...

It should be bookmarked for the next question in TT about these.

After all this W' talk, I got most of my anaerobic work in for the week. Nice to get it out of the way. I think I'm getting better at the shorter stuff than I am at the 20 minute long efforts...at least on the trainer. I have a really hard time buckling down on the trainer. I also notice my power is a few percent higher on my outdoor rides which is a nice little bonus.
I had bundled up for a 2hr tempo ride outside yesterday but flatted 1:10 into it. 30 degrees and my sweat immediately turned cold in about 2 minutes. Was luckily coming through a little area that had a nice place to sit and get a cup of coffee while I called for backup. Luckily I didn't take the turn I was going to take into the boonies. It took 30 minutes to get picked up and I would have been freezing.

edit: I admit I just wanted to try that snip tool. That is great. I never realized it existed until now.

Edited by JAYCT 2014-02-10 7:50 AM






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I was thinking these were much more like Billat 30/30-all out efforts than like Daniel's reps, which are controlled a quick. Billat wanted to get her athlete's at MAX, then let them incompletely recover to be able to get back to max quickly and keep the enzymes etc turned on. Mini-breaks to allow longer vo2max improvements at the cellular/muscle level, well, at least that's what I think...

I'm just thinking that using this could really prevent detraining during 'off periods', even if it doesn't allow progression. There is always a loss of race specificity with loss of volume training also, along with aerobic capacity, but this tiny study seems to suggest that there is even a benefit/improvement, so if there is a huge decrease in time, doing 2-3x1/2hr trainer workouts with 5x30sec max might possibly maybe prevent detraining.

If anyone does this experiment with a PMC chart, it would show low TSS scores during the 'off weeks' but theoretically, if it helped detraining, there would be a benefit in terms of tolerating the workouts and getting back to 'baseline' more quickly, IMO.

Just thinking out loud here-

Here is a PMC chart since Sept 2012
Notice when the Blue line (CTL) is dropping. This is my "off season"
Look at the Green bars. Those are the % of time I spend in the VO2 range. Notice how it kicks up during my "off season"
The Orange line is my 20' efforts. Notice that despite a period of low TSS (ctl is dropping), my 20' efforts do not drop off much more than when I am in my peaks in terms of training

I don't believe you need to do 10-20x30s.
But I do believe that a high % of intensity even if in a low number of hours/load preserves/builds/kick starts the season quite well






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you exemplify exactly my point!
your CTL goes down while mainting 'fitness' overall
excellent job at figuring out something that few understand

if athlete's understood that there is very significant detraining during breaks, that can be avoided by a few, short, intense sessions-there would be more talk about doing this during the offseason
it is important to allow the body to recover and recharge, but we all hate to see how many weeks it takes to get back to that level of near peak fitness at the end of a training season

one problem that I see is that you need to maintain focus for intensity, even if for only short periods of time and hard is still hard...but if it was for the least amount of time, like several 30 sec intervals rather than 20 min high FTP efforts, more people would be willing to do it

in that study the work time was like 1/5 of the regular training-just 3 sessions of about 1/2 hr-heck, you could do that for a month and really feel pretty refreshed physically and mentally and be ready to get back to volume training earlier and from a higher level (like you are doing already)
which will allow faster progression overall

what types of workouts were you doing in the late fall to achieve that 20min peak power?
what was your TSB? (I'd expect it to be going from negative to positive, unless there were a lot of cumulative hard workout time in there)

and Shane-I believe those 30 sec efforts were truly max, with lots of encouragement shouting at these participants and the %FTP was like ~250%
It may be that you could do 1minute reps at ~200%, but the study hasn't been done-any volunteers??

Edited by dtoce 2014-02-10 9:37 AM

I went into GC and could see the PMC chart but I can't figure out how to set CTL to 20. How do I do that?

When you go into the PMC chart, there are the dates to pick from on the left hand side. At the top of that, on the right, there are a few horizontal lines and if you click on it you can create a season (or custom date range) and enter a value. ....took me awhile to find too. Not sure why they like the invisible menus. I always get the feeling I"m missing a ton of stuff because I just don't know how to do it.

Cool, thanks, I'm usually pretty good about finding stuff like that. Was sick all weekend after I thought my cold was gone and a decent ride on Friday.

Here is an example of the W' stuff

Today I did W6-VO2-1.
I tried "overdoing it" slightly in order to get as close to a W' of 0 to see what happens.

I was told "On average, people become ‘exhausted’ when they hit a W’ balance of about 500J (0.5 kJ). When you get down as low as 1.5kJ remaining, you have an 88% chance of being ‘exhausted’.

If you look at the blue line which is my W' it goes down and at the lowest point hits 1504J. I felt exhausted.

I did the 5' w/u above CP, which is why my W' is dropping , Then I was doing the 5x3.5 minutes, first 2 min at 320w (110%), then 1.5min at 308w (106%). I didn't believe I would make them at 110% for the whole duration.

On the last one I decided to stay at 110% for only one reason. The Olympics moguls was on and Canada got gold, silver. The Frenchman that won came down during my last interval. It is what pushed me through but I was zonked

Load it up in Raceday and sure enough my W' was 1.5kj and my '88% chance of being exhausted' was true.


Edited by marcag 2014-02-10 2:22 PM






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Yep. That is exactly what I did. I took VO2-1, I tweaked it to get to a theoretical empty battery and I tried it.
This is what I have been experimenting with. It seems to be accurate for me, except if I do short intervals, like 30sec. But W6-VO2-1 was perfect to try
Next attempt is to see how low below a 0 W' I can go with 30' intervals.

BTW, it's kind of cool to see the impact music or some video can have on our motivation. I have a few songs I can pull out to get through a tough time on the trainer.

Which brings in the whole mental part. If I sent you a workout and told you that you should be able to do it, but I knew that it was 1000J beyond what the model says, but I didn't tell you...would you be able to do it :-) ?

If you want to try, let me know your next VO2 workout. I will tweak it to get you to an empty battery. Or maybe beyond....hahahahahahahah. Just kidding.


Edited by marcag 2014-02-10 4:39 PM