20 minute test?
Nice work! Couple questions, looks like you’re doing a ton of miles according to garmin connect- are those all trainer miles? Second, y u no Strava? Either way good work
There's been snow on the ground since the beginning of February, and not the kind I can ride in. So conditions have limited me to indoor.
A more practical guide on DFA a1's utility:
HRV-based aerobic threshold estimation for endurance athletes: a practical guide
A new tool in the box for polarized trainingmedium.com
Said strap arrived today and I had time before my 5-10 PM shift to hop on the bike (again--already did a 45 minute top of zone 1 120 bpm spin this morning) and do a DFA alpha 1 test.
I’m not going to admonish you for riding indoors. I hate winter riding. Roads are narrower, covered in salt, trails are soft or icy. Either way it’s cold af and crashing hurts more. I’d rather buy more good summer gear than terrible winter gear for double the price. So I get it, was just curious
Oh I ride outside in the winter when conditions permit, but this February we've had snow on the ground literally the entire month (which is the longest since I moved back to PA). Conditions just haven't been good unless you have a fat bike (and even then it was marginal from what I heard). Winter riding gear is pricey sure, but you'll get more years out of it because the season for it here is shorter.
The instructor says to empty the tank for the last set! I can only do that after the recovery block. Creatine kinase depleted at that point.You’re just showing off that you’re a 1.5kW human.
*eyes gloss over*View attachment 157252
followed by chasing DFA alpha 1 > 0.75 in a recovery ride, clearly ignoring the called out zones for this purpose
Rough correlation between these heart rate values:
and these DFA alpha 1 values:
finally, a close up of that exuberant peak in the first rep of the last set of the first ride, if you will:
Ok, enough difficult-to-comprehend charts. Takeaway points:
- even with my zone 2 for zone 3 substitution in the second work block (as I do as a rule these days) this was a hard ride
- I will check my heart rate variability tomorrow to see if this tough effort dropped it, and if so will do an easy (== DFA alpha 1 > 0.75) ride tomorrow evening
- the ride itself changed my thresholds, in that to maintain that same > 0.75 level on the metric in my recovery ride today I needed to be about 7 bpm and 80-90W (!) lower than to maintain that same level yesterday on totally fresh legs
Do I find these extra data to add to my experience? Actually, yes. Power and heart rate zones are pretty crude/general guidelines. Riding to my daily aerobic threshold tolerance (when aiming to do so instead of beating myself up with intervals as was the plan today) is infinitely more tailored to me.
...that needs an e-moped to ride offroad.You’re just showing off that you’re a 1.5kW human.
Does it report zones as targets? Whether in zones or % of FTP what does it have you doing and for how long?
yea i have no idea how it set that. i'm still messing with it, that was my first ride with it. trying to decide if i feel like doing another FTP on the garmin, or if i should just set it at 245 from my last FTP test (which, btw i sent kinetic the file for them to calculate the FTP based on the test I did, and they got the same result I did when I calculated it myself).
Could be either, depending on the workout. Sometimes it's just "hey hit this zone" and other times it's "hit this wattage specifically" or whatever.
The other night it was kind of all over the place... I think there was some method to the madness though. My FTP is currently 225, and the other night it had me doing some nonsense that looked like this:
www.cyclecoach.com
That sounds like a super brutal workout even with a proper FTP. I'd do at least an equal amount of time afterwards at 100-150W, nice and easy.
Okay then... maybe the FTP isn't set "wrong" since it was (in fact) super brutal. Especially with the trainer in ERG mode... no rest anywhere. Had to flip ERG off in like the 4th sweet spot set and chill out a bit... Zwift alternated between yelling at me to increase power and speed up pedaling.
ERG mode?Okay then... maybe the FTP isn't set "wrong" since it was (in fact) super brutal. Especially with the trainer in ERG mode... no rest anywhere. Had to flip ERG off in like the 4th sweet spot set and chill out a bit... Zwift alternated between yelling at me to increase power and speed up pedaling.
The workouts include a warmup (I didn't include it in my post) and I also did a 20-25 minute warmup "just pedal" before I did the workout. Maybe next time I start with the workout, and tack on extra at SUPER low effort afterwards if I feel like I need more... as per your suggestion.
You may already know this part: on the smart trainers, whatever app you're using can tell the trainer to add or remove resistance. Usually this is done to simulate the terrain that you're "riding" on... so if you're climbing a hill in the app, the app tells the trainer to add resistance. Descending, the opposite. ERG is a mode where the app tells the trainer that you are trying to hit a specific wattage, and the trainer adjusts the resistance to match your pedaling and keep you at that wattage. This can be manually set (as in, you tell the app/trainer that you want X watts and it keeps you there) or by an app during a workout, the app will tell the trainer what watts you're trying to hi for that segment of the workout and it adjust accordingly. This is a nice feature in that it almost completely eliminates the need to shift during a workout... you just put your bike in a gear that is less noisy than the others and pedal away, the app/trainer takes care of the rest.
good to know, because i do find myself often running out of gears trying and/or spinning out trying to get over 500w. and that's with a 53T chainring.
www.kurtkinetic.com
That's a nice thing about the Peloton: the resistance range goes up quite high. At indicated 99% or 100% resistance and a high cadence in full sprint it'll register up to about 1500W, so for non-actual pro sprinters it's perfectly adequate. My record thus far is 1532 for about 10 seconds, limited equally by my own creatine kinase system and the resistance/cadence limits of the device.
