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1 day ago
World’s Rides Comparison
A few training notes:
- 5/29 was a bigger ride, less time spent on front
- 5/29 was a bit spikier, probably more time spent in 400-500W range and 100-200W range
- 4/17 was closer to 100% effort over the duration of the 1 hour workout
- lower HR on 5/29 may be due to being less rested, or HR strap not working perfectly
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2 months ago
Elevation Gain: Garmin vs Android App (RK)
With the introduction of Strava, a topic that’s come up a lot lately is the reported elevation gain. I’ve noticed several cases in which the numbers did not add up, but never looked into it closely and wrote it off as a loose estimate. Sort of like Strava’s estimated power. Still, people like to brag about their elevation gain, and with contests like the upcoming Specialized (Vertical) Challenge, I wanted to see just how much discrepancy there is.
Last week I started using a Garmin 500. For the previous year I’ve used the Runkeeper Android app on my phone. The Garmin uses a barometric altimeter. Runkeeper uses elevation data corresponding to gps coordinates. Two totally different means for calculating elevation gain.
Then there’s the discrepancy between Strava and Runkeeper for the same gpx file (see #1 and #2 below). I imagine there’s a bunch of assumptions that go into the elevation gain calculation, like the minimum increase that’s counted. For example, Runkeeper may count every little 10 ft rise while Strava may ignore it. Around Boston that could really add up.
I suspect Strava defers to the Garmin calculations for files with that data. So there’s potentially even a third calculation going on there.
Here’s how the three different scenarios stack up:
1) One way, recorded with Runkeeper Android app, values reported by Strava:
12.5 miles, 230 ft elevation
http://app.strava.com/rides/4366935
2) Same ride as #1, but with values reported by Runkeeper:
12.45 miles, 631 ft elevation
http://runkeeper.com/user/jtheskier/activity/71726940
3) Round trip, similar route (but not identical) recorded with Garmin 500:
24.9 miles, 1,001 ft elevation
http://app.strava.com/rides/4916712
If you divide the #3 numbers by 2, they should be very similar to #1 and #2. If I had data for the exact same rides it would be a better comparison, but I don’t have that data yet. It’s not perfect, but it should be relatively close.
The big outlier is Strava based on the Runkeeper gpx file (#1). The elevation gain is 1/2 to 1/3 of #2 and #3. What’s that mean? Don’t try to win the Specialized Challenge using Strava elevation calculations!
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3 months ago
R3 Measurements
Played with bike fit tonight to resolve fit issues that came up after switching saddles. Measurements are:
BB-Top of Saddle: 77.5cm
Tip of Saddle- C of Bars: 59.3cm
Saddle Setback: 8.25cm
Handlebar Drop: 9.3cm
Notes:
- Reach feels long after switching to Romin Saddle
- Saddle is nearly slammed forward, may need zero setback seatpost
- Saddle leveled to zero degrees tilt, may need to tink
- Triceps are relaxed on bar tops, tight in hoods
- Saddle feels low relative
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Notes: 1 / 4 months ago
Three inches of snow + 20F high temperatures + record amounts of sand and salt resulted in the coldest, wettest 5 mile ride of my life.
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9 months ago
Tour of the Unattended
Ride Studio Café put on one heck of a good event last week: The Tour of the Unattended (aka TotU). It was the first time I’d heard or seen of a format like this. The race was a 5-day stage race and each competitor would complete the day’s course whenever he or she could. At the end of the day the competitors emailed their results, including gps files for proof, to the race organizer.
Essentially it was 5 days of individual time trialing. 3 of the courses were 26-27 mile loops in the Dover and Concord areas, one was a 7.6 mile loop (Dover TT), and the last was a climb up the ~300 vertical foot Prospect Hill (Waltham, MA) access road. For those of you adding it up, that’s nearly 90 miles of individual time trialing. This year’s Tour de France had less than 40 miles of time trialing. Granted we didn’t have to do the other 3,000 miles, but still, ouch.
By the way, registration for this event was $20. And it had a pre-race party with free drinks and food. And it had a post-party with free drinks and food. The prizes were over the top. And I had a ridiculous amount of results, data, and courses to look at for an entire week. Strava just made this even better. I can’t think of an event where such a modest sum of money has provided me with so much entertainment.
I could write a book on each of the stages but I won’t. Day 1 Dover TT probably hurt the most. I hadn’t done a TT like this in a long time. My only wheels available were my box rims with the Powertap hub, so I rocked the skinsuit and aero helm to get back some aero advantage. Maybe that was cheating. But I’d rather have my 68mm wheels so I didn’t think so. I ended up going with this setup for every stage except Prospect and Day 5.
My legs were insanely tight for Day 2. The worst of the entire week actually. And Day 2 hurt the most too. A 27 mile time trial is incredibly painful. Especially when you’re staring at your power meter trying to keep it in zone 4. I was blowing up around minute 35. By the one hour mark I was in tears and my average power was dropping off a cliff. Maybe this is how racers felt in that insanely long Giro TT back in 09.
Prospect was super fun. I’ve ridden this hill a billion times. Maybe two billion. I took all the excess weight out of my pockets (keys, food, wallet) and off my bike (water bottles), put it in a bag and hid it behind a tree. After all, this is serious business. Didn’t quite set a new personal best but I came within a second or two. I was really flying last year when I set that best time so I thought it was pretty awesome.
The last two days felt like cruise control. Both were 26 miles, but I knew how to pace myself based on Tuesday’s efforts. Not going over LT early on makes for a much more comfortable race so it didn’t feel so bad. Well, actually on Friday I was chasing Dave Chiu the entire time and started off way too hard. But I wasn’t wearing aero gear or riding in a very aero position so I was quite a few watts more powerful. I still blew apart at the end though. The attrition of TotU had taken its toll.
Since 5 straight days of racing wasn’t enough (now that I’m not anemic anymore, booya!) I also did the Topsfield Circuit Race on Saturday. We’ll call that TotU stage 6. It hurt too. A lot. I haven’t finished a mass start race with the bunch in 2011, but this will go down as the first (and most likely the only). Thought I was going to get dropped 15 minutes in, but I dug in just shooting for one more lap. Same thing 30 minutes in. Then I ran out of water around 70 minutes in. The last two laps I was cross eyed. Technically I dropped off with half a lap to go in the race but who wants a cross eyed noodle getting mixed up in a bunch sprint? And there was a crash shortly after so I was pretty happy about that decision to fall off.
Also interesting was the impact that this 6 day block of racing had on my hematology. I’m currently having my blood tested weekly every Monday. Before stage one my HCT was 39.8%, about normal. The following Monday it was 38.2%. Prior to this week it (HCT) had been increasing at a rate of ~1.0%/week over the last 5 weeks. So I was a bit shocked to see this result come back. Also, my white blood cell count (WBC) shot up over the top of the normal range. I’ll be taking a rest week now…
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9 months ago
Hematocrit and FTP Relationship
2011 has been a season of next to no racing for me with Colitis kicking my butt and my hematocrit being in the dumps. Still, I’ve been training since early February and collected a bunch of power data. I’ve also had blood tests every 2-4 weeks to measure my hematocrit. Now that I have about a half year of data, I rounded it all up, estimated my functional threshold power (FTP) the best that I could (I wasn’t doing very much testing while anemic), and plotted these estimates against my measured hcrit values. Even with 6 months of data I only ended up with 6 reasonable data points, but that’s still enough to have some fun with. Here’s an Excel plot of the data:
The linear trend line fit has a r-squared value of 0.96. That’s a pretty good fit so the relationship must have some reasonable level of significance. The trend line also intercepts the y-axis near the origin. So, my theory is that a 10% increase in your hematocrit could result in a 10% increase in FTP. When my hcrit increased from 28 to 35 (a 25% increase) over a 4-week period, my FTP jumped from 200W to 250W. That’s a lot for 4 weeks.
So what about using EPO to boost your hcrit? My hcrit was 40 when I was healthy last summer. If a person like me with a hcrit of 40 and a FTP of 4 W/kg were to use EPO to boost their hcrit to 50, would they see a 25% increase in their FTP to 5 W/kg? That would be a pretty huge increase, a few seasons’ worth of training at least, and enough for a cat3 to make it to the cat1’s.
How about people at the top of the sport? If a pro with a FTP of 5.5 W/kg had gotten a 25% boost from EPO, would their FTP otherwise have been only 4.4 W/kg? That wouldn’t be good enough to win on App Gap in the cat 2’s.
Anyone know of any data similar to this? Is there some sort of physiological reason that this would make sense? Or is there more going on than just HCRIT vs FTP in my case?
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