Training for Power

[Tom Kunich]

As I probably misplaced in Andre's string, I have decided to train in the winter for power. I can't remember doing this before but I must have done so.

I had a couple of toutes that are between 20 and 30 miles and I do a fast first half. Stop for coffee and donut and then a fast return. 24 miles ends up being about 2 hours with the stop.

When I started a couple of weeks ago I was averaging between 11 and 11.5 mph. Yesterday I was a git sore from Tuesday so I tried to take it a little easier. Tuesday's average was 14 mph and Thursday's was 14,75. There are a couple of rises that I was slowing down on and I'm not slowing down nearly as much now.

So let's see how this winter progresses and then when the weather improves I'll do some endurance rides since early April is a century. Last August my younger brother dropped me like the layer of dust on his bike. But he ran out of steam 10 miles from the end. But that ain't the way he tells it.

So, lets see how it goes.

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

If you want training for power you have to do that with a power meter so you know what you are doing. Average speed is not a good indicator especially when traffic lights are involved. If you just want to train (for what?) more effective than I agree short rides with higher intensities followed by enough recovery time are the way to go. Long boring rides with constant and low intensities are something from the past. For training that is except for PBP of course.

Lou

[Frank Krygowski]

I agree with the high intensities vs. long, low intensities. But in the
past I was able to do that without a power meter.

My speed capability increased most significantly after I moved to a
place where my ride home from work included a couple miles of mandatory
uphill. I attacked the hill as a challenge, hurting myself to keep my
speed up. And after a few years I was quite a bit faster.

On the other hand, when we did 4000 miles coast to coast, we didn't
push, we cruised. My wife was hopeful that on our return she'd be able
to keep up with faster club rides, but the long ride seemed to make no
difference. I think it's because she never pushed herself to the point
of pain.

Vaguely related, I recently read an article about weight lifting for
strength training. It addressed the question of whether it's better to
do lower weights with lots of repetitions, or heavier weights with fewer
repetitions. The article claimed that recent studies show it doesn't
matter - that as long as you work a muscle to the point where you can't
do one more repetition, you get the same strength benefit. The key is
pushing yourself to exhaustion. Without that, there's little or no
strength gain.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[Tom Kunich]

I absolutely disagree with the idea of power meters. Even the pros are stopping using those things.

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

What do you disagree with? Pros stopping with power meters? For training? Absolute nonsense.

Lou

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

To get better you have to push yourself. A hilly terrain makes this easier. It is dead flat here so I make use of a headwind but with a headwind the chance is that you overdo yourself. A power meter helps here.

Lou

[Tom Kunich]

Pros usually do not ride with power meters anymore. You use them when testing for TT's so that you know how much power you can put out for the length and difficulty of the course. Eneos was using them to monitor climbing power. The problem with this is that you have to go with the breaks so all your plans go out the window. So about all they are using them for is lab work and TT's.

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

A power meter is a trainings device and all pro riders use one. A race is a race and it is rue that you have to ride in the red zone to win a race or stage, but the majority of the riders ride a race with a power meter at least to analyse the data afterwards or do you think all the Garmin head units you see on their bikes are for following the route? . GC riders use de data of the power meters during the race because for them it is 3 weeks race to win.

Lou

[jbeattie]

Yep, and Ineos uses Stages power meters, my son's former employer here in Portland. I think Tom is just now hearing about some pros complaining about being slaves to their power meters during races and power meters ruining the "show." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrl5HO5S_lE

-- Jay Beattie.

[Tom Kunich]

https://cyclinguphill.com/pros-and-cons-of-power-meters/

I can't find the article now - they blamed the Tour loss of Froome on his power meter and that riders were stopping using power meters except in TT's

[John B.]

It is a bit more complicated as that. The current recommendation for
building muscle mass is many repetitions while to build strength
fewer repetitions are recommended.
see https://www.builtlean.com/2012/07/19/high-reps-vs-low-reps/
The weights lifted of course are commensurate with the number of
repetitions, probably 80 - 90% of your single lift weight for the low
repetitions work.
--
cheers,

John B.

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

What kind of nonsense is that? Did the power meter slowed hime down? Chris Froome won 4 Tours, 1 Giro d'Italia and 2 Vuelta's because he used a power meter. The Giro stage where he beat Tom Dumoulin was because of a fine team tactic/plan and he knew exactly what he was doing. Tom Dumoulin lost that Giro because he was not confident of his ability and waited on the downhill of the Colle Delle Finestre for some help from other riders. He should just have trusted his power meter on a man to man fight with Froome. Maybe he did but in the previous days he was better than Froome.

Most of the times the criticism of the use of power meters (and communication) don't come from the riders (except Nikki Terpstra maybe) or staff but from the audience/spectators who think races become predictable and boring. They like to see the riders attack all the time like a headless chicken and then competely collapse 5 km before the finish. That is easy to say sitting in front of the TV with a beer.

Lou

[Tom Kunich]

Chris Froome was riding at his near max while being pulled up the mountain by is team. That meant he burned out his team and was at his near max power output himself. So he didn't have the punch when he needed it.

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

That tactic require the use of a power meter and this is what the Sky (Ineos) did; being pulled just under your limit and only the last 1-2 km of a climb in the red zone gaining just a couple of seconds in mountain stages. The big time gain is in the time trials were a power meter is even more important. It is also a dangerous tactic if an opponent is as strong or stronger. He then sits 'comfortable' in your wheel and take advantage of the pulling of your teammates. Look what happened in the big tours with the Movistar team. Quintana and Valverde were not strong enough.
Pro riders not using a power meter during the big tours is ridiculous.

Lou

[Tom Kunich]

I was wondering why there are many many power meters for sale on Craigslist.

[AMuzi]

On 12/30/2019 8:05 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
> On Monday, December 30, 2019 at 3:06:44 PM UTC-8, lou.h...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Monday, December 30, 2019 at 7:00:24 PM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
>>> On Monday, December 30, 2019 at 1:31:56 AM UTC-8, lou.h...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Monday, December 30, 2019 at 1:30:19 AM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday, December 29, 2019 at 1:23:31 PM UTC-8, lou.h...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Sunday, December 29, 2019 at 7:32:31 PM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
>>>>>>> On Sunday, December 29, 2019 at 9:53:48 AM UTC-8, lou.h...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Sunday, December 29, 2019 at 6:25:29 PM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Saturday, December 28, 2019 at 11:50:06 PM UTC-8, lou.h...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On Saturday, December 28, 2019 at 1:23:54 AM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:

-much snip-

> I was wondering why there are many many power meters for sale on Craigslist.
>

Both people who bought (or were given) one, yet found
structured cycling activity unattractive plus riders who
continue to upgrade to improved (or maybe just more
feature-laden) models.

To some smaller extent, people who bought one cheap at a PX
or overseas outlet and also those who pilfered one or some
at work. Not to mention the ever-present shoplifters.

In short, just like everything else in the secondary
markets; nothing to see here.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

I think you are right about that. There will be people that are disappointed in the fact that is a little more complicated. You have the numbers and now what? Same applies for heart rate monitors, GPS devices, cadence sensors or even cycling computers. Tom should ask himself what 'training for power' means to him as a 75 year old. If he means training with varying power blocks he needs a goal, a trainings plan and a power meter to know what he is doing. Him mentioning that he already sees an effect after 1 or 2 rides based on average speed make me suspicious. I hope that when I am at that age I'm satisfied by just riding the best I can without worrying that it gets downhill with age. I think Tom has a hard time to accept that.
Happy new year to you all.

Lou

[Duane]

Happy new year.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 12/31/2019 6:13 AM, lou.h...@gmail.com wrote:
> Tom should ask himself what 'training for power' means to him as a 75 year old. If he means training with varying power blocks he needs a goal, a trainings plan and a power meter to know what he is doing. Him mentioning that he already sees an effect after 1 or 2 rides based on average speed make me suspicious. I hope that when I am at that age I'm satisfied by just riding the best I can without worrying that it gets downhill with age. I think Tom has a hard time to accept that.

I agree with all that, especially the part about riding the best I can.

To expand on that a bit: Not only is aging inevitable, but for many
people, life complications seem to be increasingly inevitable as one
ages. For any number of reasons it can become much harder to do long
rides, intense rides, or even to ride as regularly as you once did.

I think it's important to find a way to both keep moving, and to be
reasonably content with moving not as briskly as before.

> Happy new year to you all.

And to you, Lou.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[Tom Kunich]

If you look at them you can see that most of these are probably "upgrades". Unlike Andrew's thoughts, these are hardly the sort of thing that someone pilfers or buys at a PX.

[Andre Jute]

Happy New Year, everyone, and many Prosperous Returns.

Slainte!

Ande Jute
There goes my alarm. Time to open more champagne.

[Duane]

+1

[Tom Kunich]

OK, ready to ride, the Colnago carbon fiber Taiwanese bike weighs in at 20 lbs. I rapidly completed the Basso last night and rode it today. Ready to ride, it is 4 1/2 lbs heavier. I did a familiar ride and the total time on a 3,700 ft 37 mile ride was zero difference. Since my 185 lbs and the Colnago's 20 lbs makes an increase of 4 lbs only a little more than 2% I wouldn't expect to see any difference.

I might even have been a bit faster since I had a slightly loose rear wheel which turned and locked against the left chain stay on a steep part leaving me to sort that out and try to get moving again. And I passed what was quite clearly a stolen SUV and reported it to the Park Police. Then on the return trip the Sheriff was there so I stopped and gave him the information that just around the next turn from that car had been a pickup stopped and as I passed I had a funny feeling and looking in there were two people with hoodies on with their faces totally obscured. The motor was running and there wasn't any steam coming out the exhaust so they most obviously had a heater (the windshield wasn't frosted over either) and were covering their faces for a reason. I considered calling the cops after I saw the stolen SUV but thought it better to get out of gun range first. Down the hill is a Golf course so they have a camera recording their front gate which covers passing traffic.

Now although I did the ride in the same time, I am pretty tired but I write that off to doing nothing but short flat rides for the last three weeks.

The test ride also showed that the mechanic overpacked the bearings so they settled as the extra grease squished out. The front derailleur was a standard and threw the chain twice but Amazon delivered a Compact so I installed that.

I must be getting very good at eye-balling the rear derailleur adjustment since it too, like the LeMond I just set up, worked absolutely perfectly including the shift from the lower half of the cassette to the upper loose cogs.

[Tom Kunich]

And great luck in the land of good beer. Yee Gods, I bought a 12 pack of what was supposed to be a good small brewery lager. This stuff is almost clear and stinks of hops.

[cycl...@yahoo.com]

What do you think is complicated about reading instantaneous power and average power since the reset?

[lou.h...@gmail.com]

Try it Tom. Reading is easy it interpreting the numbers. Try to measure your FTP. The definition is simple: maximum power you can sustain for an hour.

Lou

[cycl...@yahoo.com]

That was one of he readings the power meter supplied. After using it once or twice I stopped paying any attention to the readings.

[cycl...@yahoo.com]

Now, if you are racing long distances I can understand that some riders who do not have a good feeling for their outputs might want to have a power meter in order to monitor their total output.

But for you and me, the time between points is much more to the point.

As I noted before, I have been power training. Today I did the same course again and there was one hell of a headwind all of the way out there. 12 and 13 mph in the first part was pretty difficult until I warmed up and could hold 15 mph for about 6 miles. Had a cup of coffee and came back. I didn't feel like I was riding very fast but I wasn't slowing down to keep from passing people either.

Got home and the average speed was 14.96 mph. So power training is working and doing so much faster than I thought that I'm quite surprised. In about a month I've had a 30% increase on flat ground. This probably doesn't translate all that well to climbing but that remains to be seen.

How this effects endurance still has to be seen as well. I will have to make endurance rides in the spring for the spring centuries. What I have found is that the first one or two endurance rides are real killers and then they don't bother me. So increasing the speed of my endurance rides for the spring centuries is the object.

I intend to be able to keep up with my brother when he's fresh. Since he is 15 years younger than me that is a pretty steep order. So let's see how it goes.

[cycl...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, December 27, 2019 at 4:23:54 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
> As I probably misplaced in Andre's string, I have decided to train in the winter for power. I can't remember doing this before but I must have done so.
>
> I had a couple of toutes that are between 20 and 30 miles and I do a fast first half. Stop for coffee and donut and then a fast return. 24 miles ends up being about 2 hours with the stop.
>
> When I started a couple of weeks ago I was averaging between 11 and 11.5 mph. Yesterday I was a git sore from Tuesday so I tried to take it a little easier. Tuesday's average was 14 mph and Thursday's was 14,75. There are a couple of rises that I was slowing down on and I'm not slowing down nearly as much now.
>
> So let's see how this winter progresses and then when the weather improves I'll do some endurance rides since early April is a century. Last August my younger brother dropped me like the layer of dust on his bike. But he ran out of steam 10 miles from the end. But that ain't the way he tells it.
>
> So, lets see how it goes.

It was colder than a well diggers butt this morning. I started worrying about my usual ride since I have done it in conditions like this and hit black ice which was totally invisible. I didn't fall but I would just as soon not now that everything is sore all the time.

So I did my power ride and AGAIN I kicked the time down. Average speed this time was 15.3 mph. I can't believe that I'm learning the spots to pour it on since I've been over this route 1,000 times.

Going from an average of 11.5 to 15.3 in less than a month seems to me to be to be unlikely as hell but I notice on rises and the like where I would slow to near 8 mph before than I am riding over at 13 or 14 mph.

I will continue this sort of thing most of the winter since it's a lot better than riding rollers. Whether this is actually causing improvement or not I'll only be able to tell after I can try it on longer rides or hard climbing rides.

This time there were several spots that slowed me down that usually wouldn't - there is a driveway that is normally the exit for a Oakland International Airport long term parking lot. I have to be careful there since cars can come flying out of it and it is a blind approach. This time there was a bus blocking the entire bike trail. As I slowed to about 12 he pulled out. I proceeded forward and he had his right turn signal on for the next turn so I came almost to a stop and he waited. Finally I kicked it and went across the intersection and it turned out to probably not have slowed me anyway since the next light a block away turned green as I approached.

I would be a terrible track racer since I cannot for the life of me hold a steady speed.

[cycl...@yahoo.com]

My leg muscles hurt all night I guess and I had nightmares about riding a Spring Classic in Europe. I suppose the muscles are growing.

[cycl...@yahoo.com]

It was supposed to rain this entire week so I went out on Friday. I did not try to make any speed since the XXX battery in my wireless speedo had gone dead. These things are really power hogs no matter how you cut it. The Garmins are a lot worse but they ae rechargeable. I don't like the idea of plugging everything in after a ride.

In any case my time was pretty slow which I think was just as well judging from the way my legs have been hurting. I'll do a ride today and the climbing ride on Tuesday and then will hit the rain on Thursday and I have no intentions of riding in the rain any more this year. When I wrung about a pint of water our of my gloves alone last time I made a vow to avoid it whenever possible.

Whether I turn up the wick today or not remains to be seen when I get out there. Instead of the Basso which really needs work on the cables I will take the LeMond which has a low profile. While I don't think I got close to my limit of speed on the Basso yet because I can't pedal continuously yet at that level, there's no sense in riding a bike into the ground when it needs inner cable replacements. I'd hate to have the brakes go south when the cross traffic is heavy.

[Tom Kunich]

On Friday, December 27, 2019 at 4:23:54 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
> As I probably misplaced in Andre's string, I have decided to train in the winter for power. I can't remember doing this before but I must have done so.
>
> I had a couple of toutes that are between 20 and 30 miles and I do a fast first half. Stop for coffee and donut and then a fast return. 24 miles ends up being about 2 hours with the stop.
>
> When I started a couple of weeks ago I was averaging between 11 and 11.5 mph. Yesterday I was a git sore from Tuesday so I tried to take it a little easier. Tuesday's average was 14 mph and Thursday's was 14,75. There are a couple of rises that I was slowing down on and I'm not slowing down nearly as much now.
>
> So let's see how this winter progresses and then when the weather improves I'll do some endurance rides since early April is a century. Last August my younger brother dropped me like the layer of dust on his bike. But he ran out of steam 10 miles from the end. But that ain't the way he tells it.
>
> So, lets see how it goes.

Since it rained Tuesday morning and I only started a ride only to turn around almost immediately because it was like riding on snot I was looking forward to a Thursday ride. Well since it was going to rain hard tomorrow I took another training ride today.

Instead of the Basso I rode my LeMond Zurich. The rear tubeless has been having some problems because of a puncture I received on the rain ride a month ago or whenever. But I pumped it up and off I went.

Well, the ride was fast. It was quite cold and I was wearing as few layers as I thought I could get away with.

21.8 miles (35 km) came in at 15.84 mph (25 kph). I still haven't reached the point at which I can hold a steady power output but each ride shows an improvement over the last one.

For the initial 7 miles (11 km) I held a stead 20 mph (32 kph).

I wonder how much I can improve?

[Tom Kunich]

On Friday, December 27, 2019 at 4:23:54 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
> As I probably misplaced in Andre's string, I have decided to train in the winter for power. I can't remember doing this before but I must have done so.
>
> I had a couple of toutes that are between 20 and 30 miles and I do a fast first half. Stop for coffee and donut and then a fast return. 24 miles ends up being about 2 hours with the stop.
>
> When I started a couple of weeks ago I was averaging between 11 and 11.5 mph. Yesterday I was a git sore from Tuesday so I tried to take it a little easier. Tuesday's average was 14 mph and Thursday's was 14,75. There are a couple of rises that I was slowing down on and I'm not slowing down nearly as much now.
>
> So let's see how this winter progresses and then when the weather improves I'll do some endurance rides since early April is a century. Last August my younger brother dropped me like the layer of dust on his bike. But he ran out of steam 10 miles from the end. But that ain't the way he tells it.
>
> So, lets see how it goes.

Yesterday I took another run. The lights were all against me and it was cold and the air was very dense. My average speed on the Basso was back down to 15.16 mph. That was a drop of 0.14 mph average since the last ride on the Basso. My top time was on the Lemond which is 4 cm smaller so that I am much flatter on the bike making it much more aero.

[Andre Jute]

On the public roads much more than 0.14mph average would be well within the margin of error, due to happenstance or Murphy's Law, like the lights being against you.

AJ

[Tom Kunich]

That is an interesting thought. I will think about that.