Thoughts on Cycling : Training with Power
Training with Power
I have long been a premiere advocate of using an indoor training device to
execute measured training progressions that can be extremely effective in
advancing fitness. The ability to precisely measure work output in a
controlled environment, and thus study the effects of different training
techniques is something that I have enjoyed for over 18 years now.
Indeed, it is precisely this ability to measure work output that has caused
me to develop training methodologies distinct from the boilerplate garble
that characterizes general training quarters. Long slow distance, more hours
in the saddle, subtract your age from a random number like 220 or 180 and
keep your HR below this arbitrary number, arghhh!
In recent years technology has been developed that allows riders to measure
power/work output on the open roads. Talk about an endless laboratory! It
is fascinating to have a tool that allows you to clinically measure your
work output on your standard routes, epic climbs, and competitive events.
The 3 basic devices for measuring power on the roads are a Powertap, an SRM,
and an Ergomo.
There are relative pros and cons to each device, but I think the Powertap
represents the best overall value – accuracy, ease of use and installation,
price.
My pioneer training facility, M2 Revolution, is equipped with 35 state of
the art Indoor Cycles that also use a Powertap device to measure power output.
I thus enjoy using the same technology indoors and outdoors to accurately
and consistently measure my training progress and organize workouts.
Making Power-based Training Productive
The Powertap is a great training tool that can really sharpen your road training.
To make training with this tool effective, it is helpful if you do the following:
1. Establish a benchmark.
2. Structure rides/routes with wattage targets and times.
3. Often times use a running average for designated intervals so you
both tighten up your effort and sustain that same effort.
4. Download the data to evaluate.
My experience is that just looking at the numbers provides limited insight
and value.
Pedaling Form
Folks that take my classes at M2 Revolution will always hear me saying to "pedal smoothly,
not hard...cadence motion and form should be quiet and largely uniform... no oomph-oomphing
or stabbing at the top of the pedal stroke."
In short, one goes fast not by hammering, but focusing on a smooth and even pedal stroke.
Where the CycleOps Indoor cycle measures power as does the CT or Tacx, it should be clear
that more power is not comfortably generated by slamming away. What does not work indoors,
will not work outdoors - remember this.
Case in point - Floyd Landis. Floyd's pedal stroke looks the same at 200 watts (50% of his
1hr watts and thus a very easy spin) as it does at 450 watts. The coup of the evening was
being able to display Floyd's wattage on the plasma screen for all to see. Pretty interesting
to see Floyd purring along at 500 watts, with the only change in form being his familiar
grimace.
Floyd's 30 second standing accelerations looked equally measured and calibrated. In fact,
it looks so progressive that it was all the more shocking to see wattage progress 500 >
520 > 540 > 560.
Far too often the average rider dramatically spikes power when standing, and where the
power is not sustainable, standing wattage dribbles off and the rider sits down to legs
that are barking at having been abused. In my experience, an equal generation of power
when standing should give one the sense of dancing lightly on the pedals.
Power Measurement
Only 4 months ago, the vast majority of the people in my Indoor Cycle program would not
have been able to distinguish a watt from a widget, and thus would have had no
appreciation for the scary numbers that Floyd was able to make appear on his electronic
console. The device that measures the power on these cycles is called a Powertap, and
it is this same device that is built into wheels that you can use on your outdoor road
rides.
Although I have trained with power for more than a dozen years now indoors, it has only
been fairly recently that riders have devices that can measure power outdoors.
I use a Powertap for my road training, and I must say that observing one’s power (work
output) over longer periods of time in the great outdoors provides very interesting and
useful insight into one’s training and fitness.
Here are the things that immediately stand out when you can observe power for your outdoor
rides:
Global Cycling Pacing
It is shocking to see how difficult it is to evenly pace a ride on the basis of perceived
effort. When I first began riding my PT several years ago, I would do a 2hr20min modest
tempo ride on flat to slightly rolling terrain. Despite having what most people would say
is a good sense of sustainable effort, and despite beginning at a pace that I thought would
be comfortably sustainable, I consistently saw watts drop by 10-15w over the second half
of the ride.
Finally, I decided to abandon my RPE based gauge of appropriate wattage, and began instead
with the average that I had produced in my heretofore uneven pacing efforts. Voila! I
finished with the same average but with an overall RPE that was decidedly more comfortable.
Lesson > even pacing can produce the same time but with considerably less effort. Although
even pacing being a better approach is obvious in swimming and running, absent a powermeter
it is not so easy to gauge work output on the bike. Swim is easy to control given the confines
of a pool, a pace clock, and no variables such as wind, road surface, gearing. Ditto for the
run where terrain is more regular than what one encounters on a bike, and wind/etc. do not
affect nearly as much as on the bike.
Wasted Energy
Globs of it everywhere on a ride. Jamming out of the saddle, dramatic spikes on uphills,
pedaling irregularities – all of which may have provided short term gain, but in the big
scheme of things contributed only to mashing your legs and compromising your overall ability
to ride a given wattage for an extended period of time.
I find it useful to use my PT where I set it to a running average, and where I will ride on
an uninterrupted road at a prescribed intensity (tempo intervals 90% of Benchmark # 3, Endurance
with an edge at 80%). My average will vary only slightly as the PT helps me to smooth out my
overall effort. It can be quite the body buzz to see oneself so dialed into a rhythm and
measured effort based on a relevant benchmark.
The PT also helps you to tighten up your ride effort. Observing your average, you pretty much
lock onto a particular intensity – gone are the many time-outs that one takes along the way.
I have always felt that a general shortcoming in most people’s outdoor training, be it for
Olympic, ˝ IM, or IM distance, is that race day is the first day that riders actually pedal
constantly, with little abatement.
Observing one’s power with the PT has the effect of significantly tightening up one’s overall
ride effort.
Decreased Relevance of HR
For many years folks have used heart rate as a means to monitor and organize training, particularly
for cycling where there was no means to measure work output. Speed and distance are not good
measurements for cycling because of the wide degree of variables that affect both – wind, road
surface, elevation changes, etc.
Heart rate based training thus provided a way to monitor your body’s response to training.
The limitation here however is that HR is an indirect measurement of your work effort – it is
not measuring your work output, but rather your response to an unknown effort.
Furthermore, there are many variables beyond your work effort that affect HR. Temperature, hydration,
stress, and the duration of exercise all can significantly affect HR and thus limit the effectiveness
of HR as a means to evaluate work effort.
Cycling is an activity that allows people to train for extended periods of time. Yet as
training duration increases, the use of HR to monitor work effort/output grows much less
relevant in so much as it measures your work output.
In using a Powertap to measure your work output, you will observe how HR will increase considerably
over time for the same work effort. If you were guiding your training effort by maintaining the same
or a steady HR, you would see that you would be steadily losing power for the same HR.
It is your goal in training/racing to maintain a certain pace. HR will not be an effective tool to
do this. A Powertap, on the other hand, will allow you to precisely measure your work output and
effort, and thus be a critical tool for determining optimal pacing.
As training duration increases, the use of HR to monitor work effort/output grows much less
relevant in so much as it measures your work output. What you will observe is that if you are
doing a set of intervals at the same HR (indirect work output measurement and subject other
variables such as heat, hydration, or simply drift over time), your power for these intervals
will decrease in subsequent repeats – you might think you are maintaining the same work output,
but the watts (direct measurement of work output) and pace will be less each time.
Pacing over varying terrain and climbing
Those of you with computrainers will have practiced various rides where you are to ride at a
steady power output
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