Maui Velominatus Dave is tapering for this Saturday’s Cycle to the Sun. It is more mass start, time trial to the sun as there is nothing like 3.3 km of continual climbing to sort everyone out by their power to weight ratios. After 2 km of climbing there is no pack and no draft. Everyone climbs as hard as they can and almost everyone is riding alone.
Dave has been training like a bastard. He doesn’t have a coach but he does have a power meter and an analytical mind. As we talked about his up-coming race he could not contain himself any longer, “I don’t know how you and Frank can train without power meters. They are fantastic. They make your bike an extension of your body.”
What? I had never considered this as a possibility. Isn’t this something we all want; the rolling centaur? This is a feedback loop: the brain to the legs to the cranks to the strain gages to the head unit to the eyes to the brain. The bike is getting involved here. The bike is telling you how hard you are riding it. Dude.
Presently I’m just riding with a V-meter. I’ve used heart rate meters and cyclometers but got tired of seeing how slow I was. I wanted to simplify; I wanted an unadulterated ride. Also, I obviously didn’t want to formally train anymore, just do rides that I barely made it home from. Is that training? To quote Roy Knickman*, “you are what you train.” His admonition is something Abandy should take to heart; if all you do is train in the mountains, that’s all you are going to be good at. I might have been just training to barely make it home but really it was not training. Training should be more work and less play.
We all need cycling goals. We all need something to get fitter for, even if the goal is as simple not to get shelled as quickly on that same climb.
Let us be very clear on the idea of training rides versus other rides. A training ride may not be too much fun and most importantly there should be a clear plan for what will happen, see Rule #71. This is where the power meter has to shine; it is the most reliable, direct and accurate instrument for monitoring effort on the bike. The prices are coming down and the model choices are going up. Here is a nice amateur guide for them.
The head unit stays at home on the weekend group ride to the café and back. That ride is why you did the training ride(s) earlier in the week. Don’t try to mix the two or you will be abused. We do the training rides so we can drop our friends on the weekend, that’s what friends do. And nobody wants to be accused of staring at their power meter when they should be looking where they are going, no matter how well they ride.
I am intrigued by the concept of the bike becoming more of an extension of the body through the power meter. Does this violate The Rules? Does this make you a stronger cyclists?
*Who is Roy Knickman? American Hardest of Hardman of the 7-Eleven and La Vie Claire era, FFS.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
I'm a known user so no surprise I will contribute an hallelujah to the chorus on this one.
As Gianni says it is without doubt the most accurate and reliable way to monitor effort on your bike. If you are training for anything, even just for suffering less pain on the Sunday club ride, then you will potentially benefit from a power meter.
I say potentially because I think a lot of people have them but don't benefit from them.
If you view them in much the same way as getting an HR monitor or a GPS that logs miles then it's just another expensive toy and I fear Gianni's advice is still at this stage.
You have to go further and make your entire training power based - and that includes keeping it on your bike even on the weekend club ride. You might not ride to a pre-determined power level as you would in a training session but you do want to know exactly what your effort was on the ride as this will have an effect on your weekly and long-term training.
People who start with power training are often surprised by the amount of recovery - and how very light that recovery is. Because you train so accurately at higher levels a power-based training plan has a lot of recovery time at levels where previously you might have thought it was hardly worth being on the bike. So if you do a three hour club ride you need to know where that fits on the scale.
I can't compare to DCRainmaker but have written a short guide to power training for Men's Fitness magazine. It talks about the various systems, not in the same depth, but also adds something about the concepts and terms. It's a PDF not an image so I can't upload here but if anyone is interested you can email me at ohearnc at gmail .
@ChrisO
That is a very good point and it demonstrates how little I know about training with power. Yeah, that makes sense. The point I should have made is, when on a weekend group ride and you let your power meter dictate your ride that day, your friends will abuse you. A group ride is probably not an individual power training ride also. But your point about needing to record all your rides so you have all your data is an important one.
@GogglesPizano
You are right, right there. I think people misuse the term Man with the Hammer to explain fatigue when your description is the one I like for him. When it takes four times as long as it should to ride the last 15 km of a ride, then you know what it feels like. And you have to experience these things to never repeat them too, valuable life lessons.
@DeKerr
Until the spider crashes his bike and has two bad days in a row. Those last two days of the Dauphine were damn exciting to watch. And the final day was crazy. It was like everyone said fuck it; the break was bigger than the main peloton, and the main peloton was in total disarray. It was beautiful. I think Froome will be at his best by July 5th but maybe those two days will somehow haunt him a bit.
I started training with a power meter and coached plan last December and it's made a whole world of difference for me. Whereas year after year I'd overtrain, then get sick, then recover and repeat the cycle, this year I've consistently improved over the months to the point where I am riding better than I ever have and with more confidence in having good long rides than before. To a certain extent, the science still befuddles me, but learning that science and how to interpret it is all part of the fun for me. I know I'll be branded a heretic by some, but most of us around here own a carbon bike or component of some sort; a set of clipless pedals; STI or equivalent shifters on at least one of our bikes. I've embraced the progress, but only because it suits me. I'd never criticise anyone who decides they don't need one. I was just looking for ways to improve my progress and it was an experiment that worked out really well.
Accepting all the arguments about knowing your sustainable power level and sticking at that, the part that always puzzled me about using one in competition is the law of marginal gains. The laws of physics mean that a power meter takes some power away from that transmitted to the road. So using one in competition is having some negative impact on performance. I wonder what the impact is compared with the gain say for latexvs butyl tubes - which is something that I've always found intriguing as to how an inner tube (weight aside) can influence rolling performance.
@Teocalli
There is always an observer effect I suppose but I've never seen anything to suggest it is even remotely significant or comparable to other factors like chain friction, bearings, rolling resistance or aerodynamics.
The systems vary but they essentially work by measuring the distortion caused when applying effort. It's not sitting between the power transfer but measuring the effect of the transfer - it would be barely quantifiable, other than in weight.
Back when I was in college in the late '80's, I used to do a crazy sprint work out every couple of weeks or so. I'd do repeated sprints until I reached total exhaustion or some other calamity happened, like vomiting. It was always a real challenge to ride home. I think a power meter would have helped me gauge my efforts a little better, or perhaps having less dumbassness would have helped too. One or the other.
Having a non arbitrary number to quantify my training load has been a fantastic addition to my bike and training. As @ChrisO stated, I was astonished at what a recovery effort really is, when compared to what my "light effort" consisted previously, on my so called recovery days. Peaking and tapering now has all the guess work removed.
Taking the time to recover, and recover completely is fucking glorious when you ride your club mates off your wheel, as they have done to me on many a ride.
hmmm...does this violate The Rules? Does this make you a stronger cyclists?
Being fairly old school, you know where I am going with this. CogFather merckx NEVER needed no foulfilthing meter to measure his wattage. My beloved, Gino, never measured such a thing. For petes sake, I'm not convinced, rising from the ashes as a Pheonix, that Pantani ever was equipped with such. BUT, they did measure something else...the size of their heart, their inner faith that they could...would, and did have it.
Its nice I suppose to have such a meter, and for the money, I would/do trade it out so quickly for other equipement on the bike, most commonly new hoops. I just cannot justify for myself, using the power meters, given my paycheck on any given weekend is just not going to pay out. Maybe one of these days it gets to that breakeven point, but for now...I'll subscribe to 'ride more'