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| A depressing chart of my fitness |
I could have kissed Matt (my physical therapist) when he told me I was clear to ride the trainer for five minutes last week. I held back though, on account of being married. And being a man. Five minutes hardly seems worth the time to set up the trainer, put on cycling shorts and socks and shoes, and embarrassingly realize the helmet I spent three minutes looking for was unnecessary – but I didn’t care, I was going to be on my bike!
Spoiler alert. Though I haven’t posted it yet, the bike build is complete, as evidenced by this post about a trainer ride. I hope to publish the build posts soon; it’s just taking longer than I thought it would to organize photos and descriptions.
The high heart rate value aligned with my labored breathing. But the power output did not. I was convinced something was wrong. I must have miss-calibrated, or maybe the power meter came from a bad batch, or the Garmin is incorrectly reporting the value, or...
Or maybe I lost a little fitness. And by “a little” I mean a lot.
Before I was finished with my internal debate on whether my power meter was giving me accurate numbers, the five minutes were up. I frowned and dismounted, then considered deleting the ride. I kept it though -- and even uploaded it to Strava for all to point and laugh at my measly 47 kJ of work. Half an apple later and I had sufficiently replenished the spent calories. Not much of a ride.
But I didn’t care, I was happy. Because it may be small, but it’s a start.
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| Five minutes after five months |
Yesterday after work I was clear to add five more minutes on the trainer. For kicks, I decided to do 30 seconds of near-maximum effort to get my heart rate up. I wasn’t paying attention to power (which was good because again my output was pretty pathetic), but it is somewhat interesting to compare the power with a pre-accident effort.
On August 1 (three weeks before the accident) I was riding up Lemmon and interested in achieving a personal best one-minute power (i.e. I did a Kilo Interval * ). For the first 30 seconds of the one minute interval, my average power was 633 w at an average heart rate of 180 bpm. It isn’t quite a fair comparison since it was a portion of a longer interval, but I don’t want to completely destroy my ego.
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| 30 seconds three weeks before the accident |
* A Kilo Interval is one minute of maximum effort. Named “kilo” because at maximum effort for one minute you hope to travel around a kilometer (which would mean averaging a little over 37 mph). The interval can simulate the final kilometer of a race, where one might want to launch an attack for the win. Kilo Intervals hurt. Bad. I highly recommend them.
So, on the trainer for the second time after five months of inactivity, my average power for 30 seconds was 327 w at an average heart rate of 174 bpm. About a 48% decrease. Half the man I used to be. Cue STP’s “Creep”
♫ Take time… with a wounded back… cause it likes to heal
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| 30 seconds five months after the accident |
I’ll be honest, it was a little discouraging at first. I knew I’d see low numbers but I didn’t expect them to be that low. My fitness has tanked and it will be a while before I am back to where I was.
But I don’t care, I rode my bike!
Awesome Buzz! Really good news and looking forward to your future post of the build too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ryan, I'm hoping to get something posted this weekend.
DeleteThat first graph, man...that first graph is amazing.
ReplyDeleteYeah man it sucks how fast we lose fitness. It took me a year to get to 80 and after 3 weeks it was cut in half. It's kind of like pushing a snowball up hill. The higher you get the larger the snowball is so the slower the progress... and letting go results in a very quick roll down hill.
DeleteBuzz, I'm glad you didn't delete that first ride. We were all very happy to finally see your name pop up in the Strava feed again. I do wonder how accurate the first graph is, I have my doubts that the TSS calculation (which I assume that is based on) is very accurate after a couple of months off. After all what does it mean to have 0 fitness? If you actually had 0 fitness could you ever pedal a bike?
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing how quickly your form comes back, there is no doubt in my mind that it will.
Thanks Kyle, as insignificant as that trainer ride was, I felt some pride in uploading it. The actual values of the graph are pretty meaningless -- but the shape of it does seem to follow real life. The gains are huge at the bottom, but the losses are huge at the top. When I raced after peaking/tapering per my TSS values and Fitness/Fatique/Form I definitely felt strong and fresh so I do think the chart is helpful -- but I agree that 0 fitness is not really 0. If one were to lay in a bed and truly be innactive for 5 months their muscles would atrophy -- which would be the true 0. In reality, I walked and moved and burned calories each day -- so really my daily TSS has a baseline of 10 (or something).
DeleteThat's true, and yes I agree I use that type of graph frequently to asses my progress and help come into form for certain races. I would say you hit on a good point, keep in mind that you'll make good progress in the beginning. It'll take a while to get back to the form you had just before the accident but you can get a lot of it back relatively quickly (it's not going to take you three years to get back there).
Delete*Nerd Alert* Something that came to mind this morning regarding that fitness graph is that the TSS value is based on FTP, which decreases with innactivity (and therefore increases TSS slightly) -- so technically the graph could never reach zero. The trainer/roller rides I've done the past few weeks have all had low TSS values, but that is because they are based on my FTP from before the accident.
Deleteyeah I'd probably adjust my FTP to something more reasonable. But then I guess the question is if it's worth bothering with it until you're ready to do a new FTP test.
DeleteYeah I figured I'd just wait to do a new FTP test once I'm back on the road. Another factor is the different power meter -- I had an SRM before and am now using the Stages.
DeleteI'd think the difference in power meter shouldn't be big, they are both ~+-2%. So worst case scenario you'd be off by 4% if they were skewed to the max in opposite directions (which is unlikely).
DeleteI agree, unless my left leg is significantly weaker than my right. I noticed that I could vary the power quite a bit by focusing on doing more work with one leg or the other.
DeleteI wonder if we could get accurate leg-strength comparisons looking at power output pedaling with both legs and then looking at output using just the left leg (while keeping cadence constant and not changing gears). If the legs are equal in strength, the power should be exactly double for the left-leg-only. So if the power is more than double, the left leg is weaker, and if it is less than double, the left leg is stronger. Does that sound right?
Out of curiosity, are you using the Stages cadence values (which I think is measured via an accelerometer) or a magnet on your crankarm?
DeleteThat is a good point it's not exactly apples to apples since one power meter (SRM) is +-2% accurate for the total power and the other (Stages) is +-2% for left leg only.
DeleteThe only challenges I see in comparing single to double the way you've laid out is that 1) you'd need to get a good estimate to how the accuracy numbers compare. I'd think doing a left leg only test with both PMs using the same gear and cadence would show you how far off they are with respect to each other. 2) you'd probably want to do it at several different power's. I've seen some data from people using PMs that measure each leg independently and at lower power levels they usually line up pretty well but as you go to harder and harder levels that is when you start to see that it isn't 50-50.
Oh and on cadence I use the value from Stages. It feels relatively accurate compared to what my Garmin sensor reported. I think absolute accuracy when it comes to cadence is not overly important (except for the tests mentioned above but even then consistency is ultimately what matters). When racing I mostly use it to remind myself not to mash my legs into oblivion for no reason or if I'm spinning like crazy to get into a harder gear so I can respond to a sudden acceleration easier.
DeleteGood point about leg discrepancy at different powers... I may play around with this when I'm bored some weekend.
DeleteI'm using the Stages for cadence too, and opted to not install the speed sensor for the Garmin (GPS will record somewhat-accurate speed and distance). I don't really care about speed/distance anyway and I like having the bike set up as minimally as possible without the magnets and sensors. I tend to only look at power, heart rate, cadence, and time.
For funzies, on the trainer last night I performed an experiment. After sufficiently warming up, I rode at a constant 100 rpm cadence for a few minutes. Then I unclipped and rode single-legged (left) at 100 rpm for about 30 seconds. I repeated this twice more with some "recovery" time in between. Here are the results:
Delete2-leg = 128 w
1-leg #1 = 283 w
1-leg #2 = 272 w
1-leg #3 = 291 w
1-leg average = 282 w
If you double my two-legged power, you get 256 w -- so I'm thinking that since my 1-leg average power was higher, my left leg is producing less power than my right when pedaling 2-legged (about 9% less at this specific power).
I wonder how this is affected by the fact that in order to maintain 100 rpm with your left leg alone it has to work much harder during the power portion of each stroke. Unless you were able to keep you pedaling very fluid and circular (I've always struggled with this when doing 1-legged drills), you would lose a lot of momentum trough the top of the stroke requiring you to over compensate as you go back through the power portion so that you can maintain an average of 100 rpm.
DeleteYeah, I was able to maintain a fairly fluid pedal stroke by keeping the power pretty low. I'm not convinced this method is very accurate -- but I agree with the results (~10% lower power from my left leg). When I played hockey I could tell my left leg was weaker when doing leg-specific sprint drills and weight training.
DeleteThis left-leg-doubling inaccuracy is the main downside of using the Stages meter. But to me, it really doesn't matter much because I'll only be using the Stages and only using the power numbers for personal comparison. Repeatability seems to be more important than accuracy.
One thing that is annoying with the Stages power meter is when doing single-leg drills cadence drops to zero when spinning the right leg. The power drops to zero too, but that isn't a big deal -- it would be helpful though to know what cadence you're spinning at. I suppose I could use the magnet cadence sensor if I cared enough.
The inaccuracy wasn't bad enough to keep Sky from switching to Stages power meters from SRM. Well at least once they received the sponsorship check. My solution to the single leg drills is not to do them, they seem to wreak havoc on my knees and I had read somewhere (from a training source I trusted, but can't remember who ) that they provided little actual benefit.
DeleteIf you remember the source let me know, I'd be interested in hearing their take. Everything I've read/heard on the subject has recommended isolated leg drills stating that they will result in a smoother, more energy-efficient pedal stroke. I don't do them often, and usually only do them during the Base period.
DeleteI can't wait to hear about the build! Also I dont give as much credit to power values on the trainer as I'm sure you already know. They always come out lower for me.
ReplyDeleteBuzz, glad you're on the trainer sion we'll all be trying to catch you on My Lemmon. stay encouraged!
ReplyDeleteBob Marley said it best" to get anywhere, you got to start somewhere". Today on Lemmon you were definitely getting somewhere. I just couldn't believe my eyes. .. wow.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jason, you and Rafa were flying up the mountain, I was just trying my best to keep you in sight!
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