While others are trying to gauge intensity through a cloudy veil of emotion, which makes perceived exertion and even heart rate nearly useless, the athlete with a power meter is focused on a number that, if maintained with only slight variations, will produce an optimal bike split. A maximally fast bike time means a 2. Such a marathon always leads the dejected athlete to believe he or she is simply a poor runner. That’s seldom the case. It is usually a bike- related issue. It provides several real- time measures of progress throughout the race. Two that are critical to the Ironman triathlete are Training Stress Score. Determining what these should be weeks in advance of race day and then training with these numbers allows the athlete to ride at an intensity that will produce an optimal split and a best- possible Ironman run time. Few athletes, however, really understand their value in a long, steady- state bike race such as an Ironman. So let’s do a quick refresher using a couple of recent Ironman Hawaii examples and then I’ll show you how to use these numbers to produce a fast Ironman. Reviews The Power Meter Handbook. Voor dit artikel zijn nog geen reviews. Download The Power Meter Handbook: A User's Guide for Cyclists and Triathletes By Joe Friel EBOOK.Andy Coggan, a highly regarded exercise physiologist and roadie. He has singlehandedly created a system for effectively measuring and using power data. What is described here comes from his genius. During the race or workout the head unit on your handlebars is doing the same calculations and displaying the numbers in real time. Bear with me for a short time while I explain them. We’ll start with the formulae and then I’ll explain. It’s based on the interplay of intensity (power) and duration (time). Again, this is not on the test, but it’s important for where I’m taking you with this discussion—to a faster run off the bike. What you must understand is the other part of the formula: Functional Threshold Power (FTP). They accept whatever you tell them your personal FTP is. It’s simply a number that lets you know what the greatest average power is that you can do for an hour. It generally takes a test or race to get this number right. This is the most critical component of using a power meter for a fast race. Age Grouper. OK, now that you have a better understanding of what the numbers on your handlebars mean, let’s take a look at two athletes—a pro and an age grouper—from this year’s race in Kona to get a sense of what it all means.
So why was Pete 2. TSS were essentially the same? Because his FTP is higher. Pete’s is 3. 70 watts and Chris’ is 2. The higher your FTP, the faster you can ride. That means his Normalized Power was 2. The men’s pro winner in an Ironman almost always finishes the ride with an IF of about 8. That produced a bike split of 5: 0. Kailua Kona. Note that in the “% NP by Half” metric that he rode at a much higher power output for the first 5. This is partly explained by the greater amount of hill climbing in the first half of the course. But note that Pete, on obviously the very same course, parsed it out with a slightly more balanced power distribution (1. The pro race strategy must be significantly different from that of the age groupers—an interesting topic for another time. Chris’ strategy would have resulted in less fatigue by the start of the run had he done something like 1. That would have produced the same NP but would have better reflected the nature of the course while conserving energy. Finishing 4th in your age group at the Ironman World Championship is quite an accomplishment and his finish time of 9: 2. What he definitely got right was the overall Intensity Factor and Training Stress Score. Had he gotten these too high or too low it would have resulted in a far slower finishing time. He could just tweak his pacing a small amount to make the bike split even faster. This was created by Rick Ashburn. If you know how to use it you can nail your Ironman bike and come off with good legs for running. Then on the left side of the table find your goal bike time. By looking to the right of the goal time and in your color- coded category you’ll see a range of one to four TSS numbers. Then by glancing up to the top row for both ends of this colored range you’ll see what your IF should be throughout the race. Then you simply ride in that IF range on race day and—voila!—you have your optimal bike time and are ready to actually run the marathon. My goal is to have a six- hour bike split in my next Ironman given my experience, the nature of the course and anticipated race- day weather conditions. I categorize myself as an “age group athlete with good preparation” (dark grey). By looking to the right from 6: 0. I can see the anticipated TSS must be in the range of 2. Then looking up I can see that the IF range must be 6. That means I’m going to ride at 6. FTP. So if my FTP on race is expected to be 2. FTP rises as your fitness changes so it must be tested every four weeks or so), then my power range on race day must be 1. I’ll go about 2. 0% higher on the steepest hills (2. I’ll coast the steepest downhills (0 watts). By setting my head unit to show both instantaneous power and IF I can monitor and gauge my intensity throughout the bike leg of the race. And, of course, I will do workouts in which I practice doing the same, exact numbers. So on race day there will be nothing new. I just do what I’ve rehearsed dozens of times in training. And have a great race! Joe Friel's new book The Power Meter Handbook offers triathletes and cyclists a simple user's guide to using a power meter for big performance gains.
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