BT Winter Cycling Program Challenge 2015 - 2016 (Page 3)

The impact on the CP calc is significant due to the slope calculation, for example:

• For a 20' avg of 244w the CP calc would be 230w
• For a 235w avg (starting at 225 and building average) the CP would be 217w

GO FOR IT MAN!

Dude, you win the man of the year award for that!  No fan,especially for a long duration test I cannot fanthom it

I'm a bit late to the party but would like to give the challenge a shot.  Last time I was on the bike was Sept for a late season Century.

I completed the 5min CP test today and posted my numbers in the spreadsheet.

I'm running a Computrainer using PerfPro.

Randy

OK I'm toast, 20' CP test done, 217w, CP works out to be 209w. My legs are sure lacking endurance, had to play the cadence game, was stronger with lower cadences today. Hard to believe that in 11-13 weeks the 2x20' workouts will be at this level!  Now I can resume some running, I didn't want to "taint" the legs any

Lets get this party started!

(2015-12-04-20min-CP-test-217w.JPG)

Good job, Don!  I've had to defer my 20 minute test from yesterday as I had some suspicious tenderness in my butt which made me think of my recent hamstring issues, so wanted to give a day or so of rest.  Will get mine done today or tomorrow.

FYI, for anyone using trainer road for the 20 minute test, I added in some text just before and right at the end of the 20' test segment to remind you to start and stop a lap timer if you are planning to use one.  I'm thinking of setting up my test to show Virtual Power on the computer screen and to have my Garmin 910 show the Vector power on the head unit so I can see how they differ, but haven't decided if I want to add that into the mix yet.  Hitting the lap timer will provide a recorded 20 minute interval of test data on your garmin data that will be there for posterity, just in case one drifts away from TrainerRoad.  And I don't know about you, but at the end of that 20 minutes I'll definitely need a reminder to hit the lap button!

Don, on your graph I see you have the green band around your power.  In MaximumTrainer do you get to set up the 85%-95% values and it displays the green bands during the test?  I think that is an awesome feature if it does - wish TrainerRoad had that capability.  Right now I split the range down the middle to set the target value, stressing when I fall below it when in fact, a 2.5% drop is perfectly allowable in the context of the workout.

20 min test done, but not cleanly. A comedy of errors as it turns out.

As Don suggested, I targeted 200W for the 20'.  Ended up having to take a break at the 15' point (explanation follows) but got back on board at 16'.  Ended up with a 202W AP for the first 15' and 203W for the last 4 minutes.  Overall, the 20' segment came in at 195W.  Here's what the ugly thing looked like:

At somewhere around the 12 minute mark I started to get a squeaking sound from my rear wheel.  I'd decided to set a new standard for setup following Don's example and go to 110 psi and when I did I found I needed to actually crank the tension up a half turn to make sure that there was no slippage.  So, when I started hearing the sound, I thought I'd screwed it up and was getting slippage.  Over the next few minutes the volume and duration of the sound increased so it seemed slippage on the trainer shaft wasn't the issue, and I could not get it to correlate to anything in particular in terms of pedal position, etc., but it seemed that it took more effort to sustain the cadence.  I put that off to fatigue and at 15 minutes, the effort had gotten high enough that I had to back off for a minute.  I noticed when I did the periodicity of the sound also dropped, but the volume continued to increase.  Said screw it at minute 16 and cranked it back up determined to finish the test with some modicum of composure.  I have to admit to being somewhat worried it could be metal on metal somewhere but wasn't going to stop the test that far in!

So what was it?  For this challenge I'm using my Cervelo P2 Tri bike, doing all the work in Aero to make the power results track to race day.  The rear fork of the Cervelo where the wheel mounts uses a horizontal mount as opposed to a vertical mount.  Thus, the wheel slides on to the frame directly from the rear of the bike as opposed to from below it.

Apparently the combination of the increased tire pressure and the increased in tension, coupled with what apparently was not a tight enough skewer, pushed the wheel forward in the mount.  It seems that either the tire has more rubber in one section or the wheel is slightly out of true, with the result that one section of the tire was actually rubbing up against the frame on the vertical bar beneath the seat, increasing the effort required to maintain a given cadence - and causing the grating sound.  I don't think it would have any impact on the outcome of the test if I had kept going for the entire 20 minutes, so I'm going to just go with the 195W number for this period of the challenge.  Oh, and reposition the tire while tightening the snot out of the skewer.

Yeah take care of that.  I was having some specific glut tightness yesterday and used the roller, then the tennis ball then a golf ball to work it out last night.  Now I'm feeling my calf's hard roller session coming up!

In MT for any power target value you can set the +/-W value and it is always displayed as the green band.  In fact, on the bottom left where I have the power details for the last interval completed you can also have a +/- 15sec zoomed in portion of where you are at on the main curve that is usually +/- 5 watts above and below the current tolerance range, its a nice feature.  I'm requesting Max (developer) make a combo of the two with a smaller zoom in with the details.  You have to have some tolerance as the rolling average (even 3-5 sec averaging) is jittery.  MT also has the interval change audible warnings & display text available about 5 secs from the next interval change.  There's also a audible beep warning you can set for going below, above, or below & above the target band.  I only use the below warning, very helpful when my head is down and I'm gutting it out.

Personally I'd go with 202W as the test result.   Reason is phase one is mostly short interval type workouts instead of longer duration WO's and the CP will be 193w with the 202 vs 183w with the 195.  I know you can gut out the a few extra watts for 30-60 seconds!

Personally I'd go with 202W as the test result.   Reason is phase one is mostly short interval type workouts instead of longer duration WO's and the CP will be 193w with the 202 vs 183w with the 195.  I know you can gut out the a few extra watts for 30-60 seconds!

Talked me into it.  I was bummed about being sub-200, and now I have permission to get back into the green

Don - question:  Are we using CP and FTP interchangeably for setting workout levels here?  TrainerRoad uses FTP so want to make sure I'm doing it right.

Welcome Dave, no problem in jumping in, both tests this weekend, wow!  Make sure you add your info in the Google spreadsheet (here).

"The key is that so long as you stay below Critical Power, your body is able to maintain a physiological steady state. After several minutes, oxygen use levels off, and lactate concentration levels off. In the muscles, the concentration of creatine phosphate (PCr), ATP, inorganic phosphate and hydrogen ion (i.e. pH, or how acidic it is inside the muscle) stabilizes. Once you go hard enough to cross Critical Power, bad stuff happens. In other words, let’s say your CP is 240W. If you go to 250W and hold it, the result is a major metabolic upset inside the muscles . Even though the work rate is not changing, there is still a progressive increase in the amount of oxygen used, a progressive increase in lactate concentration in the blood, and a progressive decrease in ATP, PCr and pH inside the muscle."

It really clicked with me and ties nicely with Friel's approach to 'burning matches'.  And the statement highlighted in yellow is one we can all probably relate to if we've gone out too hard on a ride and just could not keep it at that level, but just backed down a bit and it became bearable.  Being new to the power game, these understandings are invaluable, so thanks again for the link.