I think it’s only if you win the 3/4 Nath…

Well done TiRed- that’s some serious training load 😆

I haven’t ditched Hillingdon Nath, it’s still my favourite but until I can ride at 27mph in Z3, there’s no point (and definitely no points 🙂 )

I’m curious to see if my training plan does give me a proper Peak. The base weeks have definitely done the job of lifting my aerobic fitness so I’m keen to get some icing on the cake now 🙂
Kudos for managing the volume you do TiRed- it feels like a full time job cramming 11.5hrs in 😆

If you’re a 3rd then you’re a 3rd, surely you can choose if you do 3/4 or E123? Yes if you win the 3/4 a few times you’ll be a 2nd, but they can’t make you ride the E123 just because you won the 3/4?

I’ve ridden a few E123s and they’re certainly steadier, if faster.

You’re getting SO close CH, keep it up!! You’ve got all the ground work just need to keep your cards close to your chest until you can unleash that awesome power in the last 200m!!

No:
3rd Category riders can choose their race, however if they move up to ride the E/1/2/3 they can not swap back unless there are extenuating cirumstances . It is anticipated any 3rd Category rider winning a round of the 3/4 will move up to the E/1/2/3 event

Read more at https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/events/details/156353/BC-West-Thames–2#YWJSQDd0IZWsKV7c.99

You can race both, and about half a dozen of us did last night. Its not a big deal really. I won’t be racing another 3/4 though as It was awful. It used to be a lot of fun, when you could try some do or die tactics, and generally mix it up. Points changed that. Trust me if you want to learn to race, you, want to ride the E12/3. The bunch riding is excellent.

Fair enough!

I’m intrigued if I could ride them back to back, but it takes me 30 mins to pin the damn numbers on haha.

Suppose I could take two jerseys….

If you race both, you haven’t really swapped back because you’re still racing the big boys race 😆

There was no finesse in last nights Cat 4 that’s for sure. Main problem was half the bunch staring at the wheel in front. Braking downhill at 35mph on a straight is just ridiculous!!!
I started shouting at people to keep their eyes up. I don’t care if people think I’m a knob- I want every chance to avoid a crash! …which there wasn’t so it must have worked 😆

You ride the second race with a yellow number. They are easier to spot then! Apparently it was prizes down to sixth on the web page, but alas not on the night!

Breaking downhill on a closed circuit race, hmmmm. Average speed last night was a lethargic 46 km/hr. Id like to do that again tonight on the TT bike. As if!

The E1,2,3 race lapped us last night. They averaged 27mph and maxed out at 40 to our 25/35.

Crosshair / Nath – Do you use Golden Cheetah? [or Training Peaks?] If you work out your CP profile and plug it in to a W’ calculator you can put the numbers in your athlete profile and get some really useful ride/race plots. This can help visualise where you may have used more energy than needed.

It can also be a really useful training aid. One common training flaw is that people are not able to extract the best from themselves during threshold tests. This leads to setting FTP too low in training software which then hugely [b]overestimates[/b][/I] TSS, and subsequently ATL [Acute Training Load] and CTL [Chronic Training Load]. So then when you think “I’m tapering to a peak from a great training block”, you’re actually not. If a W’ Balance plot goes below zero, then something is wrong. Zero means total exhaustion, so that probably means some of the estimates are wrong. From the original W’ tests, most people were in the range of 20-30000 Joules. If your W’ estimate thinks you have way more than this, then it’s most likely to be that your FTP estimate is actually the thing that’s wrong.

Personally, I am really bad at this. I’m quite good at really hurting myself for <10min efforts, but pretty crappy at getting everything out for longer efforts. Part of it is learning just how far you can push yourself. Over time you learn that threshold pace is actually a lot more unpleasant than you would initially have believed. (which is both good and bad in equal measure 😉 )

In Golden Cheetah, you set up your Athlete profile, then from the main Menu there is Tools -> CP and W’ Estimator. Just put in your best efforts from the specified ranges and hit Estimate. Then plug these numbers into Preference -> Athlete -> Power Zones.

Here’s an example for me from last week where I did a big hill effort:

As you can see, the Wbal graph (the middle one) drops below zero, so my fitness has moved on from when I last updated the values earlier in the season and I probably need to re-test.

From a circuit race, the graph will waiver around as you make efforts and recover. Here is a plot from a race at Hog Hill. You can see that the graph drops a lot during the first hectic lap, then bobs up and down for the next 8 laps in the pack. One guy went up the road on lap 9, and then on lap 10 I tried to bridge over to him. Another guy came after me so I eased up at the start of lap 11 and then we set off after the leader. When there were 3 of us the original leader made another big effort up the hill on lap 12 and I could no longer hold the wheel. I rode the next 6 laps alone and just held on for 3rd.

The great thing about this is that you can see points in the race that you maybe didn’t think about at the time. When you are fresh at the start it’s easy to get caught up with adrenaline and make bigger efforts that you should. Did you sprint up the outside of the bunch? Close a gap? You can later see these in your graphs and visualise how it impacted your freshness for later efforts.

So a biggy for me this weekend doing my first proper road race in about 6 years. 3/4 SERRL Laughton road race, which is a bit too close to the South downs for my liking. Properly excited though, I’ve only ever done one road race before in the pissing rain in Diss so this will be a different kettle of fish.

It’s only 65km so fingers crossed!

Had my fingers crossed for you Flange 🙂

I had a nice group ride with the Newbury bunch today. 50miles at 21mph but with more people and a bit more racing on the hills and stuff. Legs took literally an hour to warm up but then I felt strong to the end.

When I got back, I had a lightbulb moment and googled “Ultegra lever reach adjustment” and blow me down if it isn’t a two minute job with a screwdriver to half the distance to the levers 🙂

Hopefully that will give me the confidence to descend on the drops and use them all the time in a race.

Oh yeah, I’m going to go have a look at mine now.. just reminded me 😆

I’ve been meaning to do that too! Had a ride last Monday where I spent about half the time on the drops. Comfiest I’ve been like that since I screwed my back. Course, I had surgery on it two days later… seems to have gone well though so maybe next year I’ll be dipping my toes in the winter series!

Sorry @matts – not ignored your post, I’ve read it downloaded the software but haven’t had the time to digest/understand the info yet.

@gray – it’s such a good series, really set high expectations on future races if they are half as well organised/run as it.

Cheers crosshair – taken me 24 hours to recover! Was a properly quick race, the last road race I did wasn’t nearly as quick as this- 27mph average for 40 miles. First time I’ve ever gone under the hour for 25miles!

Course was good but standard of riding was terrible. Had a crash happen directly in front of me within 200 yards of the start, then another in front of me during the sprint for the line. Crossed in the top 30 I think, but just happy to finish with the leading bunch as at points I thought I was going to get dropped.

That sounds crazy! Sounds like you did really well though. Out of curiosity, were you riding with a power meter? If so, what were your numbers like?

Well done! That sounds like a success then 🙂

I’m gonna miss racing this week but my fatigue score is through the roof so I’m going to follow my plan and have an r+r week. (Well apart from perhaps trying a 10mile TT on Wednesday 😉 ).

Matts- I don’t really understand the need for such detailed analysis for road racing as sometimes you just need to follow the move. If you don’t, you’ll be fresher but you may also be off the back 😀

I think it’s more useful if you follow a software based training program but for me following a simple spreadsheet, all I need is a pretty good FTP number to set my power zones and rough HR zones to match.
But actually, RPE is still important to me too as it’s something I can utilise without having to look down at my Garmin. Actually, having a power meter has shown me how closely you can guess your zones by feel alone.
What has been interesting though, is watching my F+F score and trace on Strava. As I started my plan at Base, you could see fitness wasn’t particularly shooting up, but just generally increasing steadily. Then as I’ve started the Build weeks, it’s rapidly increased in some much more pronounced peaks.
That’s pretty much all I need really- just something to show me that the workouts I had planned myself are creating the desired effect. Also the fatigue score has shown me that doing 2 build instead of 3 before the r+r week, was the right decision.

It looks interesting but I can’t see as the practical application would give better results.

Well done flange. Sounds brutal, but always very satisfying to be there at the end. It’s funny how you think you are struggling during the race, but fail to notice the numbers of riders falling off the back, until you see the results. A big step up in endurance from circuit racing, I found, which led to being dropped a lot more, and more endurance training.

CH I take every fourth week off, in that volume goes right down but intensity stays the same. A race will keep intensity up whilst not providing volume. In the last rest week I rode to work a couple of times very gently and did two short circuit races. I always seem to feel rubbish on those weeks with sniffs and sore throat!

Thanks gents, really appreciated. Yeah, was a shock to the system after racing crits. First lap it was going mental so I figured it’d slow down. Second lap was just as mental and it continued….through to the last lap when it got even more mental.

It’s funny how you think you are struggling during the race, but fail to notice the numbers of riders falling off the back, until you see the results.

This is very true – it’s difficult to remember that if it’s hurting you, it’s probably hurting those around you too and it’ll slow eventually. Well, it’ll stop being quite so mental for a short while.

Power wise I averaged 332 watts for 1hr 35 minutes (3.71 w/kg), first 20 minutes were at 354 watts (4 w/kg) so was pretty happy with that, especially with a seat post that was slipping from the 4th lap onward. They’re the highest numbers I’ve hit for a LONG time, probably higher than when I was racing back in 2012 on MTB’s.

Interesting reading about having a rest week – I’ve not had a proper week off since the start of the year, however I seem to be getting quicker at the moment. I’m a bit concerned that I’ve got a double header this weekend (Cyclopark and Ixworth crits) so we’ll see what sort of state I’m in after that.

NOTE: If your other half is ever struggling to sleep, talk to her about power numbers…

How does Strava F&F work then ? How does it know you’re tired ?

From memory it uses the volume of rides and your suffer score to work out how fatigued you are. Similar for fitness I believe. It’s normally bang on – apparently I’m fairly fatigued this morning and I’ve just turned down a meeting as it means walking down some stairs…

It takes a guess at an input from your average heart rate and/or power, then applies a relatively simple model that stimulates fitness, with a (faster) decay for fatigue. The model was developed by Banister in 1975 and has been adapted for many endurance sports. Just been reading up on it. Coggan appled it in the cycling world first. There is no individualization in the Strava model – your effect of training load and recovery rate is the same as mine in the model. It’s really crude basis, but helps to give an indication of form.

My F&F has climbed in a nice periodic fashion based on my training much increased load this year (and you can see the week of lower intensity in the graph), but sadly, has now plateaued at the steady-state level expected for my weekly training. The only way to raise it now is more training volume or higher intensity 🙁

Plenty of references, a nice critique from elite swimming is here . An updated model using slightly different underlying mathematical models has been published here. If you have any questions, just ask.

It’s really only a rough guide, so it pays not to be too critical. The precision required is only really needed at the Elite level -as it says in the swimming reference, the difference in performance at the Olympic final was only 2%, compared with 6% at the national championships, and naturally much higher at the lower levels.

Matts- I don’t really understand the need for such detailed analysis for road racing as sometimes you just need to follow the move. If you don’t, you’ll be fresher but you may also be off the back

That’s not really the point. It’s about analysing your performances to determine:

a) where you race well/badly so you can improve your race tactics.
b) where your weaknesses are in order to be able to better target your training to the demands of your races.

What I mentioned is that it is also sometimes useful to indicate when your FTP/CP/etc numbers may be off so that you can re-test to adjust them.

Another indicator that can sometimes be useful is ‘NP Busters’. The rule of thumb is that a ride of about an hour can have a Normalised Power of no more than 105% FTP.

Yeah I see where you are coming from Matts. I still personally find I know where Threshold is by feel. So I can tell from my PM if my FTP is ballpark correct.
I did doubt this until I did my FTP test the other week and realised nah, it was still the same. But also Strava had guessed it correctly with its predicted FTP figure.

I also fear I would add another hour onto every ride analysing it all 😀

Weeksy- unless you add in every bit of physical exercise you do, F+F is limited anyway because it only knows what you tell it you’ve been doing.
But as I said, it’s a good indicator. If I’d done two hard weeks and Fatigue was still low, then I’d know my definition of hard wasn’t correct 😆

I’ve tried, I really have, to get into this analysis data stuff in more depth. I just can’t do it/see the need at my level.

For me (I emphasise this) I just want to know:
– FTP as this indicates to me if my fitness is going the right way.
– Watts used in a race, so I know how much more I can give/where I am wasting them to improve on next time.
– Weight, because I eat a lot of food 😆

Should I really spend more time looking further into the detail?! I’m not convinced yet.

Should you spend hours pouring over the data every time you ride? No.

Will a better understanding of the data give you the potential to train more effectively and progress faster? Absolutely.

That’s the reasoning for me following a plan. To make the most possible progress between point A and point B in time. But also for discipline- I’m often getting pulled in five different direction but having a plan to follow means I make sure I get the hours in one way or another.

You’ve made great progress in two years Nath following the ‘high volume, low structure’ plan. And in fact, Joe Friel recommends exactly that for someone starting off- 2yrs of no structure.

So let’s say you get a new job or get married or have a kid and cant ride as much- then maximising your training time to progress from where you are would be pretty hard without a plan.

Lastly- you’ve not really had to raise your game yet. You have done really well harnessing the power you had already accumulated but you are going to start racing against people with the same strengths as you now. So without doing an even greater volume of unstructured stuff- you will need to analyse your weaknesses and train them accordingly. Which is much easier with some kind of data.

“Plans are nothing, planning is everything”. I’m the biggest geek about (it’s my day job, after all), but to be honest, I’ve had a fairly laisez faire attitude to “training”, and just “rode a bit”. To improve this season, I’ve taken a dose of my own Level 3 medicine, and actually prescribed myself a plan that seems to work for me. I’ve seen the benefits, but I did start the first few years with little more than club rides and a bit of circuit racing. I could have probably got further faster but life intervened.

I spend all day analysing data, and I do sometimes look at my own in detail, but to be honest, you know when you are really fatigued, and you know when you have “good legs”. What you get from F&F is a sense of prediction of these two events. Riding the same training loop with RPE, HR or power can give you the same message. I rode my loop on Saturday with a target of 3.5 W/kg, for example.

“Ride lots” is a training plan that worked rather well for at least one rider 😉

Nath, you need some Tuesday E123’s. Busy tomorrow evening?

No not busy, but I’m not in the right mental state at the moment – it’d be pointless and unsafe 😆

This job malarky is taking longer than anticipated…soon as it’s sorted and I’ve got stability back in my life I’ll be back to racing in a flash!

Going to change the cars brake pads instead – because that’ll relax me 🙄

How did you get on TiRed?

saved myself for tonight’s vets race and went for a gentle spin instead. I have a three-day stage race at the weekend, so I’m taking it a little easier this week.

have a three-day stage race at the weekend, so I’m taking it a little easier this week.

You can’t just leave it at that !

Yeah come on – spill the beans! That sounds mega!

I’m racing Cyclopark on thursday, again on Saturday and Ixworth crits on Monday. Needless to say, i’ve not ridden in to work today!

Guessing it’s this one? https://www.riderhq.com/events/73530/surrey-league-may-3-day-stage-race-1

Looks nice!

Everyone’s in a team 😆

That’s the one. I’m on Domestique duties for team Twickenham CC. Should be brutal, but the forecast is to be a little warmer than now.

Rode the Masters E+ race last night. Attacked on the first lap, joined bu one rider and we pressed on. Two more bridged and we rode team time trial to pull well clear. Was very windy up the hill and I seemed to be on the front doing 400+ watts every lap. Two to go and we start to attack each other, and after one final dig, I couldn’t hold onto the other three. Still we all lapped the bunch and I finished fourth.

Powerpod power was about 330 watts, but I think it is over-reading on my race bike by 10%, possibly due to CdA calibration. The distribution has a big spike at 400 Watts going up that hill!

That’s most impressive sir !

Well done sir! I dream of doing something like that, I’d rather get third after sitting in a break than winning after smashing it out in a bunch sprint!

Are you just using a powerpod for power readings?

Early start this morning leaving the house at 5:30 to be in to work (city) for 7, so I can leave at 3 and drive to Gravesend for tonight’s race. I’m absolutely hanging now so Christ knows how bad I’ll be come 7pm. I’ll also be fitting my new stages in the car park at cyclopark so if anyone’s doing it, be sure to come past and laugh at me

Awesome job TiRed! Bet it’s a great feeling lapping the bunch!!

Yes I use the powerpod for just power. I do have a Stages, and could estimate CdA in real time, but it’s on loan at the moment. On my TT bike the second powerpod calibration is spot on, and my 25 TT effort is 290-310 Watts. On my other road bikes, the pod is mounted under the bars and gives very comparable readings to the TT bike, which is fine for maintaining training target efforts on the road. On my race bike, there are no round bar sections (thanks Giant), so it is mounted out front under the Garmin. It gives consistently higher readings of about 10% at the moment, which may be down to “aero watts (CdA is 10% lower than in the profile), but the out front mounting profile needs a tune. I don’t worry about it. When racing last night up that incline and into a stiff headwind, all I thought was “oooh that’s a big number”, whenever it started with a 5, not much else I could do if I wanted to stay in the break!

Very pleased with the powerpod overall, and it is nice to look at wind and bike speed after yesterday’s race.

Gentle riding for the next two days.

Cyclopark is my favourite circuit. Watch that first downhill 180. I’ve attacked there on the first lap in the past and the bunch splintered after minutes! We give corner coaching on that bend for a reason.