First club run in a while

Decided to go out on the club run again, seeing that the weather was looking all right and was wondering how my form was developing. Unfortunately the majority of the club was out at an event so only a handfull of riders turned out, so I started off with 4 others with the moderate group as there was no fast group.

The ride out was ok, sat on the back as I had no mudguards and the majority of the road was wet, so I did not feel too guilty about that, even though I recieved a fair bit of spray from the bike in front (with mudguards).

On the way back the wind was begining to tell on two of the other rides, one of whom was not feeling too well shortly after we set off and a couple of hill later they broke off. The other rider and myself did not wait for them as we were closer to home so I took the opportunity to burn some energy in a test.

Big ring and head down I pushed hard until we reached the city sign and then backed off a bit.
The end result was a peak 435W average over 5 minutes at 175bpm average, which is 29W lower and 2pbm higher than my peak from last summer. But..... one was a hill climb.

Conclusion so far - the training is improving things but the cumulative training stress from riding to work is not returning the same results as sitting on the trainer in the shed for a shorter period of time ! The jury may still be out as the commuting is only 7 weeks (trips) so far.

Going nowhere fast or no perception of going somewhere

Click on the images for the full resolution.

Trianing solo can be good and bad over time, the best bits (for me) are riding round on an early morning blue sky day in summer (the worst are commuting in the p***ing rain) with the main problem bein a lack of feedback or measurment to see how your going.

After doing a bit of a 5 minute test out on the road (417W) I though I'd have a go at my 60 second record today. My previous was actually 603W early last year and not 640 (not sure where I'd got that from) and todays test I managed 622W.

The first try I burned out far too quickly after setting off 200W over a sustainable level and by 30 seconds I was out of gas and a bit put out, however I waited for my HR to drop back to into 120 and then went for it again but a more steady pace, which felt right. I did not have any particular target worked out rather I rode at a pace, which I thought I could sustain before falling off the bike.

My 622W at a lardy 75.5kg puts me at 8.24W/kg for 60 seconds rather than 8.5W/kg if I were down to 73kg. So, now I'm into CAT3 zone for 1 minute I should at least be able to do a decent solo in a CAT4 event for the last lap (in theory) but if that where the case (according to cycling peaks) I'd already have won a lot more events by just riding off the front for the whole race. Hmmm...

Power to weight cost for criteriums of 2.5 watts / kg

Looking at new wheels is a bit of a mine field in terms of the different benefits that are listed with the list that I have seen in various adverts indicating different characteristics with the main three being weight, aerodynamic drag and stiffness.

Thinking about weight and the cost of this over either a time trial or creiterium and the weight characteristic is split into three elements. Horizontal energy expelled lifting a mass is not fully recoverable in cycling as the down hill speed is not necessarily recoverable in the same degree as the speed is higher and therefore more aerodynamic drag as a whole is increased.

When you take a 1kg mass and lift it 300 meters you would need to input 2940 joules of energy or an average of 0.817 watts over an hour. For a typical crit, which lasts just under an hour you could approximate this to around 1 Watt per kg of weight you are carrying around, on average.
So, if your on a heavier bike, heavier body and lugging 2 water bottles around you could need an extra 10 watts more than the next person.

Accelleration and inertia are the next element to evaluate, in terms of the constant accelleration and decelleration during a crit. Suppose the riders mass is 80kg (inc bike) and is accelerating from zero to 22.4mph in the space of 30 seconds, which would require 133 watts input (excluding drag, rolling resistance, etc.) just to accelerate the mass. The cost of an extra 1kg in mass would equate to an extra 1.7 watts over the 30 seconds.
The typical crit could involve 3 accelerations per lap of 10mph average increase in speed and over 30 laps this would equate to an average energy requirement of 100 watts if the event lasted 45 minutes. So, add and extra 1 kg into the pot and this equates to 1.25 watts per kg average.

Rim weight is the next interesting one as the acceleration of the bike, effectively includes the energy required to accelerate the rim weight to an average speed of the bike but the rim is travelling between zero and twice the speed of the bike as you move. As the potential energy includes the square of the velocity this makes the rim more critical and the hub can be ignored. The energy input for the rim is therefore double that of a mass attached to the bike, so your extra 500g on the rim could equates to approximately an extra 1 watt over the duration of a crit.

Drag is the last one to add could be anywhere depending upon your bike position and choice of wheels the easiest options to change, for this example we will assume the bike position is un changed and the wheels equate to a 10 watt difference in drag (approximation for medium carbon rims and a reasonable alloy race wheel)

So, summary so far is you require an extra 2.25 watts per kg for a crit to cover just the kinetic and potential energy of the mass, if it where attached to the bike (not the rotating mass of the wheels). If you were a 77kg rider on a 8.2kg bike racing against a rider on a 7kg bike and weighed 73kg you would need an extra 11.7 watts just to compensate for the kinetic and potential of the mass.
Add in an extra 1 watt due to the heavier rims and then throw in the extra 10 watts for the arodynamics and you end up with a 22.7 watts difference in energy requirement for the two riders.

Station run TSS

When returning home from my weekly longer commute into London one evening last week I ended up getting the train for the last stop, having almost made it home but ran into thermal dropout (i.e. I was starting to get tool cold from being wet and not eating enough).From the station I had a typical ride back home and then had a look at what the TSS was for the ride, which I had previously been logging as a conservative TSS of 6.

Turns out the ride home (one way) registered at 10, so in theory my daily TSS was getting a weekday base support of around 15-20, which now seems to make some sense in relation to my previous training and impact. I now can notice the impact (good and bad times) when I do not have a day on the bike, which either helped with the recovery, misses an input at a time it would have had a beneficial effect or a detrimental jaunt.

Riding no more than 150% your event distance

I had a thought about this in relation to my crit performance from last year, the training for my events this year, the comments from some other riders and a bit of common sense. Taking an extreme approach to this would mean that training for a 1km persiut event you would only ever ride 1.5km and potentially spend the rest of the day in the gym or ride the 1.5km repetatively ? The other extreme would be for a 24 hour event would you try and ride for 36 hours ? This leaves you with a mix inbetween where a degree of moderation exists but I do believe that the longer rides are beneficial in different ways than just riding 1.5 times the event distance. Training for a 10 mile time trail by riding 15 miles every day would help but a single longer ride (replacing some of the other miles) at the weekends should help a lot more.

The other way to think about it is with your training stress as you need to build up the training stress to get fitter and this equates to getting on your bike and doing some miles. As a guide I think you will not win a race on a CTL of sub 50 and a minimum of 45 is required for a top 10 (on a reasonable CAT3/4 event).

To get to a CTL of 60 you will need to be doing a minimum of around 120 miles per week (at 3.5 TSS per mile).

Remember, remember, a map

Well, the day started off a little later than planned with the usual directional aid from the sun and the wind, which should have worked quite well if I took a watch out and kept track of the time. Once the sun dissapeared from the sky that was the first sign things were not going to plan (basically to get back home while I can still see the road). So, about 20 miles from home and only a rough guide for directions (London 33 miles, Hemmel 16 ? on a signpost) I set off, fortunately with a back wind, down the A14, alhough it's not the best of roads to be riding in sunlight. With 2 lights on the bike (both rear) flashing away like a christmass tree I did not feel too alarmed at riding down a dual carrageway. With cars thundering past I only recieved one blast of the horn from a white van driver, which summed that up and carried on praying the light would not fade too quickly. In the end I managed to get back while I could just see the road with a couple of lessons learnt.
1 - Always take full lights out if you run the risk of getting cought out in the dark (a puncture would have delayed me to the point I'd have been on the phone for the recovery vehicle !)
2 - Take a map if you don't know the area, unless you have plenty of time to leasurely ride around in circles.
Days ride - 266TSS, 301Wavg, 324Wnorm, 3624Kcal, 56.3miles, 3h 7m (3h 24m lapsed - inc food stop)