There is pain to be found upon this road. Photo via Symonbike
My training hasn’t gone as I’d like it to be going. My days keep getting loaded up with things that pay the bills more than they add to the account at the V-Bank. It’s part of not being a Pro, I suppose, as if to spite my obvious talent which is a sort of talent sleeper cell where only I recognize my potential while the rest of the world perceives it as mundane mediocrity. I’ll show them, when I get around to it.
[rule number=10/]
To be an athlete is to mimic the animal world; this is the luxury of our age, stimulating the survival instinct through games rather than an actual need to survive which is itself a staggering accomplishment. It is our nature as animals that drives us to find the next level of achievement as athletes; as athletes, our success is rooted in our ability to process the act of suffering into a productive output, to push beyond the plane of perceived capability. What is left to the adventurer who walks along the path – the Velominatus – is to discover the complexity of suffering.
And, as Rule #10 implies, what lies hidden within the complexity of suffering is deceptively simple: more suffering, like some diabolical Mandelbrot Set set of pain where every point on its continuum contains an infinite set just like it.
The strange thing about suffering is that as you gain fitness, your lens shifts. When our fitness has the most opportunity for improvement, we alternate between pushing through a blockage either in the legs or the lungs – never both. The human mind is, after all, equipped to process only one pain at a time. But as our fitness develops, the mind learns to delegate the pain to the lesser organs and allows them to self-manage: the strength of one learns to support the weakness in the other. Over time, the suffering body becomes a holistic organism that can compensate for the most acutely weak unit with those which still yield some reserves. This is how we go faster; we transform how our body manages its resources.
When we speak of suffering, our minds shift to the climbs. Climbing is the easiest place to find suffering, a sinister gift of our old friend, Gravity. But suffering is to be found anywhere just as easily, provided you can motivate yourself to push as hard as gravity can pull. The Hour Record doesn’t have a climb in sight, but it scores a 100% on the Cycling version of Rotten Tomatoes (which, I am not too modest to suggest, finds its logical home right here at Velominati.)
As I suffer my way towards some level of condition, I am grateful for the opportunity to rediscover the pain behind the pain, to find some hint of control over the suffering, the ability to compensate one suffering unit for another. The ability to, despite every signal emitting from the body, push a little harder and resist the temptation to yield is perhaps the most noble gift our generous sport imparts upon us.
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View Comments
@RobSandy
Yes if you can keep 3w/kg that's probably about 35-36km/h on the flat so 26 to 27 mins is realistic. 270 watts is a perfectly respectable output, probably similar to most people in your club, but it just comes down to what you divide it by.
I wouldn't worry about the clip-ons, not for that distance. Not that I'm an expert on TTs by any means - @Tessar may have a more scientific view - but if you aren't getting the bars down any lower or bringing your seat forward then it isn't making that much difference to your position. Slightly narrower but I doubt it's worth the trade-off in power.
@ChrisO
I'd be pleased as punch to go under 27 mins first go. We'll see. I'd like to think I've got capacity to improve considerably on that over time, too. The opportunity to warm up properly might help, too. I'll let you know how it goes!
I might see if I can beg borrow or steal some basic clip on bars at some point and try them out at the track. If they help me go faster - they're in! Having tried the phantom bar position I think tweaks to the bike fit might be needed, which if it's more than shifting the saddle a bit I wont be arsed to do.
Plus, if I'm riding a TT on the drops or Beligian-style I can pretend I'm RDV smashing it.
@RobSandy
Oh hell, this has to be my favourite post so far and I nearly missed it. Thanks ChrisO of raising my attention to it... Got a long day at the lab tomorrow to read the discussion so far while Matlab hogs my workstation.
Recipe for "aero on a dime", it's pretty basic:
Basically, how fast you go in a given solo race is dictated by your power against your aerodynamic resistance: W/CdA. Cd is a coefficient determined by shapes and their interactions: Smooth, airfoil tubes on the bike, hairless legs and tight clothing all lower it. In a pinch, a baselayer that's a size too small will do if you don't have a skinsuit.
The A in CdA stands for area, so reducing that - via height and/or width - is the goal. Aerobars allow you to do both: They support your elbows so it won't be as hard to hold your body low in a set-forward position, and they hold them narrow at the same time.
P.S: Unless your road bars are too high, Belgian-style is faster than the drops. Level forearms = less surface area.
P.S2: Don't feel bad, I'm ~270W@FTP right now as well. Though that's 4W/kg for me...
@frank
I'll take an Adelaide autumn over a Seattle spring any day thanks...
@tessar
Cheers for the advice. I will certainly put it into practice if I decide aero bars are worth a try at some point. I've got quite a big surface area, in terms of upper body (years of rock climbing and rugby do not a skinny chest make), so anything I can do to reduce that would probably help.
I've been training on the velodrome and turbo riding the full distance, and also sets of shorter distances to try and improve speed (i.e. 16minute TTs, 6 Minute TTs), as well as occasional longer rides (30 minutes or track sessions with my club).
Anything else that is worth adding in to my training? It probably wont help for a week sunday but it might going through the season.
@ChrisO
Per Andy Coggan, the FTP is, technically speaking, the maximal power one can hold where lactate production can be kept in check. It just happens to correlate with an hour's effort for most riders, and when we reach that length of effort then power decays rather slowly anyway. In any case any testing is an estimate, so determining it to more than the first decimal is more precision than the error.
My coach and several other sources also said similar things: The "zones" are a continuous spectrum, and there are many ways to complete a given workout correctly. Depending on residual fatigue and the goals of a session, I might aim for the top of the range or aim to stay at the lower end. There's a world of difference between lower and upper Z2... And an even bigger difference in Z7. If I've got sprints on my plan, it depends on the rest intervals but it could mean anything from all-out 15s @900W or shorter 600W bursts which don't register in the same class.
@RobSandy
Long term: Once you're talking 20+ minute races, there's a significant aerobic component to success (that's the reason the common FTP test predicts using a 20-min effort). Therefore, even if your races are shortish, don't neglect long rides. Overall riding volume has the strongest correlation with aerobic improvement, and aerobic capacity is a good predictor for these time-trials.
Short term: Familiarize yourself with the concept of the Variability Index, and aim to keep it low. From the Individual Pursuit and the Kilo all the way to the Steven Abraham's Year-Long TT, the best pacing is even pacing, both on the micro and the macro scale.
Back on the subject of width and aerobars: How wide your shoulders are when upright is only half the deal. If you're a rock climber you probably have some decent flexibility, which is good. What you're looking for is to "move your shoulders up" by rotating your scapula, which then narrows the shoulders. Tony Martin has wide shoulders but reduces his width by ~30% in a tuck. Here's a test result on that, too - free speed!
@tessar
Cheers! I knew I'd get good advice here.
I'm also training for a 120km event in June, so am getting in longer rides plus quite intense hour and a half track sessions with the club. My aerobic fitness is probably the best it's ever been.
I haven't looked it up but I'm guessing the Variability Index means keeping your speed as close to your required average as possible? Or if you're using HR or Power, keeping these close to a sustainable average for the distance? I try and do this anyway.
Tony Martin is a dude. I have seen how he shrugs his shoulders in when he's in his aero tuck, I can see it'd take some getting used to. And a bit of strength. Long term shoulder problems are what's stopped me climbing. Would it work without aero bars?
@tessar
Just read on a bit more. I can see me getting on the turbo in front of the mirror!
@RobSandy
A mirror works wonders for feedback.
Correct guess on VI, except the speed bit. Speed will vary on the course depending on surface, winds or elevation, but your effort shouldn't variate. Therefore, VI applies to objective measurements only: Power and, for longer events, heart rate. With power, we're talking the ratio between Average and Normalized Power, where Normalized is an algorithm that weighs power spikes more heavily than a pure average would - the idea being that gives a more accurate measurement of the physiological toll an effort has exacted on the rider. Think of an hour ride at 250W, vs an hour alternating between 300W and 200W - both have the same average, but one is significantly harder.
I'd say shrugging would be very hard to do without aerobars. The biggest advantage they give is exactly that: Skeletal support to hold otherwise difficult positions. I can ride in a deep tuck for hours on my TT bike, but holding the same position on the road bike is like doing planks - super-hard for more than a short time. The pads do a lot of the work your back muscles would do otherwise, and ideally, a good tuck should feel like plopping yourself into the bike. When Steve Hed (of HED Wheels fame, RIP), one of the original '80s aero gurus, first saw aerobars his comment was "It's basically like an upside-down recumbent!"