Practical Triathlon

Happy New Year!

Get started on your 2011 goals with a personalized triathlon training plan and coach support from AllTriathlon.com.

Here’s the link when you’re ready to get started:
http://alltriathlon.com/at2002/trainingprograms.shtml

A quick look at the weather data for Louisville and Pentiction so far this month.

Louisville (data for the month of August through Aug 22):

Pentiction (data for the month of August through Aug 22):

Data Source: WeatherUnderground.com

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This is a fun debate with a volatile mix of hard data, conjecture and extrapolation – perfect for endless arguement. This year’s Tour de France results clearly lacked in explosiveness in comparison to previous Tours where the eventual victor strapped on wings for the mountain stages and coasted to the top at a ”physiologically impossible” power output (or not?).  I’ve heard some experts argue that this is clear sign of the efficacy of new controls on doping in the sport of cycling.

For example, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas argue that the significant calculated declines in power outputs on mountain stages, specifically the Col du Tourmalet, indicate that the sport may be a little cleaner this year:

I suggested that the power outputs of the 90s and 2000s, where these climbs were frequently done at 6.2, 6.3 and even 6.7W/kg, were a sign of doping.  You may recall the notion, developed by Dr Ferrari and communicated by Armstrong in his book, that they aimed for 6.7W/kg as a threshold climbing output.

Nobody has managed to achieve even 6.2W/kg for any length of time in this Tour de France, let alone 6.7W/kg.  Unless I am missing something.  6.6W/kg for 11 minutes, yes, but that rider then dropped to 5W/kg for the rest.  In days gone by, that was the tempo the whole way (Incidentally, you can play around with this and work out how far ahead a guy would be if he did ride at 6.7W/kg – I estimate close to 3:00 on the climb.  Contador and Schleck, dropped by 3 minutes….?)

And the top two climbers yesterday arguably rode at around 6.0 to 6.2W/kg for the first half of the climb, but their power output dropped off in the second half (which we know, because the time gaps ceased to grow over someone who was producing 5.5W/kg).

What is the physiology of riding at 6W/kg?  If a cyclist has an efficiency of 24%, then the VO2 at 6W/kg is about 71 ml/kg/min.  If this represents 85% of a maximum, then a VO2max of 83 ml/kg/min is estimated. If the efficiency is 23% (measured by Coyle for Armstrong in 1999), incidentally, then the VO2 is 74ml/kg/min and the estimated max would be 87 ml/kg/min.  Neither jumps out as not-seen-before-physiology.  But, if you go up to 6.2W or 6.3W/kg, then it starts to become, well, questionable.

Horner, incidentally, riding at 5.6 W/kg, would have an estimated VO2 of 66 ml/kg/min.

Was it an absence of doping?  Did tactics or other environmental factors mellow the contendors on the climbs?  It’s hard to say, but the 2010 Tour was certainly full of excitement absent the 500 watt explosions on the climbs.

Feel free to weigh in.  I’m sure the debate will go nowhere.

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A repost of my March 27, 2009 blog post.  How’s your cardiac drift looking?

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It’s that time of the year when many triathletes are starting to wonder if all of that base training has paid off.  How can you know that you’ve achieved adequate base aerobic fitness and you’re ready to start building toward your race peaks?

David Warden at tri-talk posted an excellent podcast on this topic about a year ago and if you haven’t listened to the audio or read thetranscript, I’d highly recommend it.  Here’s a little excerpt on how to determine base aerobic preparedness using heart rate and output:

There is a method to determine if you have a sufficient aerobic base, and I want to thank Joe Friel of TrainingBible coaching for providing me with this information.

This test protocol simply compares your power or speed with heart rate over an endurance ride or run. There is some research to indicate that when aerobic endurance improves there is reduced heart rate drift relative to constant power or constant speed. And, of course, the reverse of this is that when heart rate is held steady during extensive endurance training, output may be expected to drift downward.

For example, the next time you download a workout from your training device, you probably have the ability to graph HR and power or speed on the same chart. In a perfect endurance ride, where there were no intervals or significant intensity, just a nice long Zone 2 ride, these two lines would run relatively parallel to each other.

However, you may have noticed that on some of these long rides, your HR tends to drift up even when output remains the same. Or, if you are trying to maintain a Zone 2 effort, you may notice that when you look at the graph that even though HR remained the same, out (power or speed) went slowly down. In those cases, the lines on the graph representing HR and output no longer run parallel, but begin to drift apart.

The parallel relationship between heart rate and output (power or speed) is referred to as “coupling.” When they are no longer parallel in a workout they have “decoupled.” Excessive decoupling would indicate a lack of aerobic endurance fitness.

But how much is excessive? There is an acceptable amount of decoupling that can take place and still indicate a solid aerobic base. A good indication that a base fitness has been met is less than a 5% decoupling over a Zone 2 workout.

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The Practical Triathlon blog is moving from it’s old location to here.  All of the old posts will still be available from the old links but going forward all new posts will be added here.