New Team

Last weekend I had a tune-up race at Eastern Creek. Mainly to have a good hit out and also to ride over part of the circuit that will be used for the UCI World Cup event in early May. I had a puncture which interrupted proceedings for a while but a wheel change saw me back into it and doing my best to put myself in the hurt box often.

Attacks and covers didn't pay off results wise but that didn't matter. I didn't quite make it across to the attack that actually stuck, which featured Eddie Salas, Pete Milostic and Trent Butler. Go figure.

Still, a few silly solo efforts and big pulls on/near the front practicing a few things meant a great hit out.

1hr:22min with Normaised Power of 302W, so not too shabby.

Since then been training pretty solidly, some good longer rides and also started some higher intensity work at around 90% of Maximal Aerobic Power or 120% of threshold power. Nasty buggers those. We call them Aerobic Power Intervals (APIs).

Plenty of racing for me coming over the next few weeks. On the agenda are:

30 Apr: Cervelo Masters Series Round 1 (64km Kermesse)

4 May: UCI Paracycling Road World Cup - 78km road race at combined Eastern Creek Raceway - Sydney Dragway circuit

6 May - UCI Paracycling Road World Cup - 25km Individual Time Trial

8 May - Eddie Salas Mother's Day Cup (75-min + 1 lap)

14 May - NSW State Masters Road Race Championships

15 May - NSW State Masters Criterium Championships

Then in June there is the remaining three races of the four round Cervelo Masters Series.

All of course will be in my new team race kit, and the non-championship races (Cervelo & Salas races) we will be racing as a full squad, which will be uber cool. We all had a full squad practice run together a month back at the Orica Kermesse where we got two of our team up on the podium, so that was a good start.

The lads have been in fine form, with everyone getting results over the past couple of months.

And here's the link to introduce the new race team. Watch out Sopranos, you ain't got nuthin' on us!

Turbo Studio Masters Race Team

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Bon Anniversaire IV

Well another of my annual updates - four years today since my accident.

For previous editions, click here:
Bon Anniversaire III

What a year, much to talk about, some very good, some simply awful. It's a long post, so come back later if you don't have the time right now....

Perhaps I get the awful out of the way quickly. Typically I don’t make many comments about personal stuff on here beyond cycling activity, so this will be brief. But they were significant and important.

My father passed away in September. He went peacefully and while it was a sad occasion and there is never a right time, it was not so bad all things considered.

Then later in the year my dear younger cousin Dante also died, losing a very swift battle with an aggressive cancer and that was about as bad as it gets. His death really was completely and utterly shite in so many ways. Those that know, know how we all feel about it. All I know is that I am blessed to have spent all those times together with him and continue to live as I do. Enough of that. It is/was awful and will remain with us for a long time.

2010 was a pretty skinny year for my blogging, mostly because I was simply too busy and not because there isn't much to write about. There are lots of topics I have on the simmer, just need the time to get to them.

Taking my energies are four new / start up / emerging business I am involved in, and that takes a bit of doing! All of them cycling related so I'll talk some more about them. Obviously I was also training and racing too and I’ll get to that as well!

Turbocharged business

Taking a substantial chunk of my energy was the continued development of Turbo Studio, and of course my world wide coaching activities. At this time last year, Turbo Studio had only been operating two months.

Since then Turbo Studio has really blossomed and is now a benchmark for how to run these businesses. Over the Christmas break we expanded and refurbished the centre and it was just as well, with the extra capacity being taken up quickly.

Working with Joanne has been (and still is!) an absolute pleasure and I thank all those clients who have made the commitment with us to improve their cycling. Listening to all their stories of great results and personal bests is most gratifying. Jo & I are forever talking about ways to help each client improve. It inspires us. And the indoor race series was an absolute hoot.

The best thing is it’s all grounded in the sound and practical application of science to training which, as long term followers of this blog will know, is a passion of mine. And it is this application of stuff that actually works that is core to why people come, and keep coming back (along with an environment conducive to training for riders from all disciplines).

We don’t go for fads, pseudo-science or sell things based on scant evidence. Jo of course emphasises the business fundamentals of quality marketing and customer support/relations, as well as the coaching. She works so hard and with a passion and commitment to success. It’s a great team.

We also started our own outdoor road training squad, with the Turbo Studio cycling kit now a regular feature on Sydney’s Saturday morning roads. Again the focus is on good training. Far too many groups seem more interested in quantity of riders over the quality of their training, and that’s not how we do things. Group sizes are kept down to promote a higher quality of ride, greater safety, better skill drills, more enjoyment and a far better training impact. They are fun too!

We look forward to opening more Turbo Studios in the years ahead.

Power to the people

So from one new business to another – in 2010 I was appointed by SRM to be an official retailer of their power meter products here in Australia (and some limited offshore markets). That’s been going well, and while a small and specific segment of the market, it perfectly complements everything else I do. The product is first rate in the world of power meters. Let me know if you want one – I promise a good deal!


Coaching goes up a gear

Late in 2010, Ric Stern made the smart move for us both to take the coaching business up another notch, and so Ric brought on board Dave Smith (a former GB coach) as our new commercial director. We set up a new company, RST Sport and the three of us are the directors. We appointed a high quality group of coaches to join our existing team – all with strong background in the practical application of science to coaching for performance. While cycling is our mainstay, we are also working with high level sports people from many backgrounds. The depth of talent on our team is seriously impressive.

My clients this past year have been based all around the world, including Mexico, USA, Australia, France, Norway, the UK and Ireland. It's exciting and fun to work with a diverse group of clients across the globe - and they have all moved up to new levels with their own performances - we all look forward to the challenges ahead, with some big goals to knock over this year. I thank them too for their continued support.

2011 will be an exciting year for RST Sport. There is so much happening and to do.

The cutting edge

There’s one other venture I’m involved in. I can’t reveal a great deal about it other than it will be a new technology specifically designed for the accurate assessment of the aerodynamics of a bike and rider while they are riding their bike, no matter the environmental conditions. It is this latter element that makes this project seriously exciting. This is cutting edge stuff in so many ways, and again I find myself involved with some very smart people. As I can, I’ll talk more about it, but if you’ve heard of “Aerostick” then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Travels

In September and October, I made a return trip to California to spend another week with Steve P and his family, who once again so generously hosted my visit. We had some great rides in and around Sonoma County and once again I participated in Levi Leipheimer’s Granfondo. I can’t thank Steve enough for the opportunity afforded me.

After the week in Santa Rosa, I made a long road trip, first south to San Diego to meet up with a new client, a very promising junior from Mexico, and his father. After that I headed east through Arizona and New Mexico, visiting some places I’d seen before and some new sights.

I'd been to Sedona before, but thought it was worth another look:



This was on my way to Colorado Springs via New Mexico to catch up with the good Dr Andy Coggan, who was talking at the USA Cycling coaching conference which I sat in for a session and spent a little time hanging with the USAC coaching development team. Andy & I hung out for the day which was pretty cool. Andy's the skinny dude:


Then I headed back west to do some sightseeing through Utah, Nevada on my way back to Santa Rosa. Here's a few pics from the journey. You can click on any of them to see a bigger version. It's pretty spectacular scenery:


Once back in Santa Rosa, I delivered a seminar on aerodynamic field testing using a power meter, hosted by our good friends at Echelon Cycles. Among those attending the seminar was Professor Robert Chung, whose methodology was one of those I was lecturing on, so it was kinda cool to have the good professor in the audience. You sure know quick smart if you make a mistake, but I don't make too many fortunately.

We were scheduled to do an actual practical field testing exercise the next day, however the heavens opened up and so rain forced us to postpone to another day. I was headed back to Sydney the next day, so follow up was done remotely. Amazing thing this internet.

In February I got to return the visitor’s favour to one of Steve’s team mates – Peter and his partner Therese, hosting their visit to Sydney and taking them on a road trip, mainly to see some kangaroos. We saw hundreds of the buggers. Lol. That was fun.

Training & racing

Yep, did that too!

Just after my last annual report, I raced a local 2-hour enduro and it was hard. Riding as part of squad we did well on the day. As it turns out, my two-hour race power was my highest ever all time, pre- and post-amputation. I was pretty amazed but there you go. It would seem legs are over rated.

But there was a cost. My knee didn’t agree with the effort that day, and severe pain and swelling resulted in several weeks off the bike and nearly a week of being unable to use the leg for walking. Now it wasn’t all the bike racing’s fault, as that was Easter and I had a visit by a mate and his kids and we spent a long day out doing touristy things. That meant many hours on my feet, and well that just doesn’t agree with me. I seem to be able to do 6 hour hilly rides with no ill effects, but 6 hours of standing/walking is bad news.

These set backs happen to most competitive athletes and we learn to deal with them as best we can. As an amputee, well it adds a bit of extra spice to the mental challenge. Along with that I was having a few challenges with the bureaucracy of cycling and wondering whether para-cycling was worth the emotional investment.

Once the leg settled down, I began the rebuild and training went well, with one winter flu bug being the only interruption (well that and my driving holiday in the USA). But not a lot of racing to speak of for the balance of 2010. That picked up early 2011.

Performance highlights were:

- Setting all time power to weight bests for aerobic power from 4-minutes through to 2 hours.

- Winning my opening crit at Heffron (by breaking away with 3km to go for a solo victory)

- Silver medals in both the Kilo time trial and 4km individual pursuit at the paracycling national track championships

- 4th place in the State points race in a field with two world champs

- A win and a new State record time with my team at the Masters Team Pursuit Championships, repeating the same feat we attained in 2007, just a couple of months before my accident

- And just this weekend at the National paracycling road championships, a silver medal in the individual time trial (24km) and a bronze medal in the road race. I made the move in the sprint and it so very nearly paid off with a win and national championship but it was not to be, with my competitors getting me on the line. Inspecting my power file shows a PB 30-second power post amputation, which just shows I really did commit and give it all I had.

- And today, of all days, I get notice that the national selectors are recommending I get a start at the UCI Paracycling Road World Cup in May. That was my main season goal. How good is that!

There is other racing news to come (especially about my new sponsored race team), but I’ll talk about that later once it’s officially launched.

Here I am in the new race kit at the State points race:


Once again there are so many people that have helped me along the way and I am very grateful for their support. Hard not to mention Ric Stern of course, the super coach who's taken me from the lows to banging out more power than when I had two legs. Thanks Ric.

This next year will be a cracker. I can just feel it.

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little things matter

This weekend I’m on Australia’s “Sunshine Coast” in Queensland where the national paracycling road championships are being held. Sunshine Coast? It’s pretty much been raining since I got here yesterday after 15 hours of driving from Sydney.

Today was the individual road time trial. The races were run over a flat 4km section of road that was closed for the event, making an 8km out ‘n’ back course, the number of laps depending on race category. All paracycling categories, including handcycles, were competing today. Those handcycle guys and gals are pretty amazing.

My race (Mens C4) was a 24km ITT which was three laps of the flat S-shaped course. That meant five U-turns. There was a decent southerly wind blowing today (20 km/h) making for cross winds mostly, but short sections of near block head and tailwind. Here’s the course map:


24C, 1024hPa and 85% relative humidity.

And below is the power, speed and cadence trace (click to see a larger image). As you can see by looking at the speed line, the wind really had an impact.


So how did I go? Well the power was OK and about right for my current form. I pretty much just tried to keep a 3 in the hundreds column on the power display and let the legs tell me if that was about right. As is typical legs felt way too good early, plus pushing into cross-head wind, resulting in a solid start.

Average for the 35 minutes or so was 304 watts. Normalised Power 305W.

At halfway I started to struggle and power dropped a bit for the next section. I was focusing on keeping a rhythm as much as I could and use the short tailwind section for a very slight recovery, knowing that I would probably be able to find something for the final leg.
I just needed to hang in there.

Hang in there I did, and I lifted for the finale (ouch – that was hard) but it was worth it.

I took Silver, 1:13 down on the winner (Ryan Hughes) which is what I expected given the gap between us in the Individual Pursuit earlier this year. I thought about a minute or so would be about right.

But I only took silver over bronze by 1/100th of a second! That’s the equivalent of the width of one’s hand over 24km. 0.00045%. Now that’s what I call a slim margin.

Sometimes the little things matter.

Go Turbo Studio.


Road race tomorrow.

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Anaerobic Stuff - Mr Peabody's WABAC Machine

Time to get into Mr Peabody's WABAC Machine. C'mon Sherman, let's wind the clock back to 2007....


This post is another take on my February 2007 Darth Vader item. Back then I wrote, with considerable assistance from Mr Peabody - er, I mean Dr Andy Coggan, an item about Maximal Accumulated Oxygen Deficit (MAOD).

Andy introduced the concept of using power meter data from a well paced individual pursuit as a means to estimate MAOD (which ordinarily would require lab based testing). He expands on it in the book, Training & Racing with a Power Meter, pp 244-248 (2nd edition).

Just to recap, MAOD is the "gold standard" measure of an athlete's anaerobic capacity. Expressed in litres of O2, it's the difference between the energy produced aerobically and the total energy demand. In an event such as the individual pursuit, a rider's total energy output is typically ~ 70-80% via aerobic means and the balance of course via anaerobic metabolism.

So I thought I'd take the analysis method from that previous post, run it on my recent events and add another twist - the points race.

In recent posts I've mentioned a few track endurance* events I've raced:
- 4km Individual Pursuit (Aussie National Championships - C4 paracycling)
- 2km Team Pursuit (Masters 150+ State champs)
- 20km Points race (Masters 45-49 State champs)

Edit: I've since updated the list to add in the 1-kilometre time trial I raced at the Paracycling nationals the day before the 4km individual pursuit.

It's all part of my comeback to competitive cycling, as these are the events I most enjoy. Well except for the individual pursuit. That's an event impossible to enjoy. But it's fun to do some analysis of pusuiting because it reveals so many things about a rider. Physiologically, technically, aerodynamically and psychologically.

In the weeks and months before my accident in 2007, I rode the same events, the only difference being the individual pursuit was 3km, not 4km and the team pursuit was 3km then vs. 2km this year (different distances for different masters age and paracycling categories).

I've been riding these events for many years but 2007 was my best season up to that point, with a win in the Team Pursuit (in a new state record time), a bronze medal in the National Masters Points race champs and two personal best times in the 3km IP. So for me, relatively speaking, they provide very sound benchmarks for how I've bounced back since then. I'm not going to go into that here though as I've already covered that a number of times.

OK, back to Mr Peabody and the analysis. Here's the chart showing cumulative O2 deficit from my recent races:


Click on the pic to enoxygenate (apologies for the Phil Plaitism).

The picture details the cumulative O2 deficit for four rides - my individual pursuit (red line), the team pursuit (blue line), the 1-km TT, and also a roughly 5-min section from my points race last weekend (the Richie Benaud cream jacket tan line). I'll get to the points race later.

Just to explain the chart - let's take the red line for the individual pursuit. You start the event from a dead stop (your bike is held in a starting gate which releases on count down to zero) and then accelerate over about 15 to 20 seconds to a high cruising pace, which you are then attempting to maintain for the balance of the event. The red line is a measure of how much oxygen "debt" I am incurring as time passes.

I incur this O2 "debt" since my power output in a pursuit is somewhat higher than my sustainable threshold power (which can be produced almost wholly via aerobic metabolism - or in a "pay as you go" sense). Once you ride above threshold, you are tapping into your limited anaerobic work capacity - and it really is limited - meaning that such efforts are by necessity going to be short lived. Harder you go, the less time you'll last. Nothing new about that.

Not only that but once you expend your limited reserve, in order to continue you will have no choice but be forced to ride under threshold in order to recover the O2 deficit. This is why pacing your effort is so crucial in timed events, and in mass start racing why dosing out the hard efforts at the right time is so important. The cost of "blowing up" is considerable in performance terms.

It's also why improving threshold power is so crucial. When you do go into the red zone in a race, you don't incur as much O2 deficit, or can last for longer at that level. And when the pace eases up again and you dip below threshold more quickly, you recover faster meaning you are ready for the next attack before someone else is. Counterattack anyone?

How do we determine this aerobic/anaerobic contribution with a power meter? Well as per the book, it's matter of looking at O2 kinetics of a well paced pursuit:


Andy showed that we can plot, along with the actual power output from a pursuit, a line representing a rider's theoretical maximal aerobic power output based on lab tests of a rider's VO2max** and efficiency***.

Except that in my case, I don't have the latter. Never mind, since the steady state part of a well paced pursuit represents power output at VO2max, we can simply adjust those VO2max and efficiency values so that they match the steady state portion of the pursuit power file. I assumed an efficiency of 22.5% and adjusted my VO2max value until it fairly represented my steady state power output in the pursuit. It came out at 58 mL/min/kg. If you change the VO2max (or efficiency) value, it moves that maximal aerobic (red) line up and down accordingly.

OK, so that's pretty funky, I can estimate my VO2max (or at least a range given that we assume efficiency is in a range typical for trained cyclists).

But by then directly comparing the difference between the maximal aerobic power, and what power I actually produced, we can then attain an estimate of the proportion of energy output from anaerobic contribution.

In my case, it estimates about 17% of my energy was from anaerobic supply. That's a little lower than typical for a pursuit, but my race time was 5:08, which is longer than the 3.5-min to 4.5-min efforts for elite riders in 3km and 4km pursuits and so it's not entirely surprising.

It also means that my MAOD was estimated at 4.16 L. We'll tag that number for now.

OK, so how about those cumulative O2 deficit lines?

In the WABAC machine we saw the way the O2 deficit would climb at different rates when riding a team pursuit as a rider alternately takes a pull on the front (O2 deficit line increases at a faster rate) and then gets back in line and recovers (where the line either rises more slowly or can even fall if the rider is quite powerful and not overly challenged by the team's pace).

If a rider exceeds their MAOD, then there is a pretty fair chance they will crack, which in a team pursuit means they are unable to continue and pull out after their turn on the front, or as sometimes can happen they cannot even maintain the pace of the rider(s) in front and they end up creating a gap in the line, which is bad news.

So I plotted the cumulative O2 deficit line from my recent individual and team pursuits and they shows the same pattern as in 2007. The team pursuit line is much shorter of course since the event is half the distance of the individual pursuit, and in a team, so it is considerably faster.

I also plotted the same line from a section of my points race on the weekend. I chose a starting point very early in the race, it was about lap 6, with 4 to go to the first sprint. My team mate was on the front at the bottom of the track, he slowed the speed down a little in the preceding half lap and then launched an attack, I was on his wheel and went with it.

I had to go pretty hard, with peak power reaching 1184W in order to cover it (he's a world class masters sprinter but not on form right now). The idea was to see what we could get from it - either get a break happening or at least pick up some early points for later strategic benefit.

Problem was, he cracked pretty quickly and I was left with about 3 laps to the sprint line. I was committed, had a gap, so went for it. The cumulative O2 deficit line shows just how deep I went. Very deep.

Once the sprint line was passed I then had to do everything I could to ensure I stayed in the race. You can see how the cumulative O2 deficit line drops away as I reduced my power output and went on the hunt for good wheels to follow. Not long later you can see the line begin to rise again as the next sprint was approaching. I sat that one out just making sure I got through unscathed and could cover any counterattacks.

When you look at the blue line tracing my cumulative O2 deficit from the team pursuit, it reaches a maximum of 4.26 L (about 2.5% higher than from my individual pursuit) and in the points race I reached 4.46L (7% higher than in the IP). What's going on there?

Well, a few things:

- firstly, there is normal day to day variability in performance.

Given that in this analysis we are keeping VO2max and VO2 kinetics**** constant, then the performance is wholly expressed as a difference in MAOD. And since anaerobic contribution to power output is still only 25% or less of total over several minutes, then it still only means a difference in performance of ~ 20-25% of 7% or less than 2% of the total power/energy.

- the next obvious difference is group versus solo efforts, and the influence of motivation/psychology

I would never discount the role that motivation can have on performance and perhaps I am capable of pulling just that little bit more out of myself in a team or a mass start event than I can in an individual pursuit. I can't imagine how I could go any harder in the IP, but it is interesting nonetheless to see if there's any more blood to get from this stone.

- thirdly, as Andy mentioned to me, lab studies indicate that MAOD is independent of the duration of the effort, although he doesn't recall any studies looking at efforts quite as long as this (~5-min). Perhaps that is a factor as well.

So there you have it.

As for the points race, well that attack was a very big risk and a large match to burn so early on. I really needed it to either form a successful break or net 5 points in the opening sprint (3 at least given the race favourite was always going to be very hard to beat). I was overhauled on the line and ended up with 1 or 2 points (I forget exactly) and so it meant I had not gained the desired return on investment. It sure wasn't through lack of trying.

It also meant that since I had gone so deep into O2 debt, I would need every ounce of craftiness to stay in the race. Perhaps in going so hard, the chase was not so easy either and everyone else had to recover too and that was just enough to keep me alive. Thereafter I just took my opportunities to collect points as I felt able. I had to gain 3 points in the final sprint to have a chance but didn't have the legs for that last lap to contest. It was enough for a 4th place finish. Had my initial salvo netted 5 points, perhaps the result may have been different and I made the podium instead.

That's bike racin'.

Edit: Since posting this the other day I also added to the chart the data from the 1-kilometre time trial. As we can see, I reached a MAOD of 4.30L, which is consistent with giving it all and with the MAOD values attained from the other efforts. Not sure if it affected the value attained in the pursuit on the next day, but does highlight the day to day variances.

Thanks again to Andy Coggan for his inspiration, Ric Stern for getting my form to such a good stage and all those team mates and competitors and supporters who help bring the best out of me.


* We call them endurance events, since even though they are about as hard as hard can be and relatively short in duration as far as cycling events go, they are still fundamentally aerobically (with oxygen) "fueled" efforts, albeit with some sizeable contribution from our anaerobic (without oxygen) energy systems.
** VO2max is the maximal rate of oxygen uptake by the body, typically occurs when exercising very hard for several minutes, although it can be induced with efforts lasting over longer periods (VO2 slow component). Expressed as litres of O2 per minute, or in relative terms as litres of O2 per minute per kilogram of body mass.

*** the proportion of mechanical energy output delivered to the bicycle crank as a ratio of total energy metabolised by the body - trained cyclists are typically around 19-24% efficient. The balance is almost all given off as heat (which is why we get so darn hot when going hard).

**** Initial VO2 assumed at 0.5 L/min and half life for VO2 assumed to be 25-seconds.

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Point scoring

Let's race! Say, a State Points race championship - masters 45-49.


All you need are one to two dozen hard men. Toss in one current masters world champ, one former world champ, and bike bling as far as the eye can see. Carbon wheels and frames galore. One carbon leg. I'll be screwed if they ever bring in a carbon tax.

80 laps, sprint every 10 (2.5km).

Go hard. Sprint. Blow. Recover. Cover. Grovel. Sprint again. and so on. Watch your position, keep tabs on the score for yourself and others.

Finish 4th.

These races are a whole 'nuther world of pain.

Not really much of a race report because, well, I can't remember all that much they are so effing hard!

I made a very early attack and it was on for (not so) young and old for rest of the race. 18 listed starters, I think a couple of DNS. We were nudging 60km/h for most of the eight sprints. Field too good to allow a break despite many attempts.

You are on your limit, recovering from one sprint, covering counter attacks, grovelling to stay in at times, planning the set up for next sprint and having to do the maths along the way to work out who's got what points and what wheels you need to attack/cover.

Here's another pic to show off my leg and the sexy new Turbo Studio team race kit.


Peak power: 1184W
NP: 299W (it felt harder than that though)
About 25-26 minutes of purgatory.

Damn that was fun.

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Déjà vu

2007 was the last time I rode a Team Pursuit. My team won that day and set a new state record time in the masters' age category. Indeed two of the pics that line the top of this blog are from that day.

I wrote about our 2007 effort in this popular post which looked at Maximal Accumulated Oxygen Deficit using the power meter data from team mate Phil and myself.

Well as most of you know, a few months after that race I had my accident and the subsequent leg amputation.

Yesterday I rode in my first Team Pursuit championship since then. In between times I coached our squads while I made my recovery on the bike myself.

Well we won again and set a new state record time (2:21.379). Phil was also in the team and we both have power data from the event. Déjà vu.

There was one main difference this time - in 2007 we were in the "younger" age category, this time the "older" age category (three youngest riders 150+ years). I suppose another five years does that! It also means the event this time was shorter - 2000 metres compared to 3000m for the younger category.

Interestingly, the power output for each was similar.

In 2007 I averaged 397W in the final.
In 2011 I averaged 411W in the final.

Leg? What leg? More pretty convincing evidence that a lower leg amputation need not be an impediment to cycling performance.

Here's a pic of the power, speed and cadence trace from yesterday's final.


Cadence maxed out at 126rpm, and averaged ~ 119rpm during the "cruise" part of the event. I rode a 51x14 gear (nominal 98").

Here I am with Phil (left) with whom I have been riding Team Pursuit events for the last 10 years. Sneaking into the shot is John Crouchly, a good buddy and former coach of some Aussie Olympic track riders. I had the pleasure of coaching John himself helping him to a win in the State individual road time trial championships in 2009 as well as get him started into the world of training with power.

Our club had five teams riding and our good buddies Peter, David, Alan and Crouch picked up the bronze in our division with two cracking rides a couple of seconds behind our team, the all ages team placed 4th and the 2nd all ages team had a good qualifier setting the early standard. The girls also rode well to get on the podium.

What else can I say? I think I've made a pretty good comeback.

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Form = Fitness + Freshness: Take 2

A few weeks ago I posted about gaining some form after a race win in a local crit.

Here's take 2.

Yesterday (Saturday) and Friday I raced the Aussie national track cycling championships in the para cycling categories at the Dunc Gray Velodrome here in a blazing hot Sydney. There are only two events for individual para cyclists - the time trial and the individual pursuit. So I enter both. For my para category (C4) that means a 1-km time trial and a 4km individual pursuit. Ouch.

The day before that I had to go through reclassification. I was first classified in 2009. I suppose there was a slim chance my leg might have grown back since then.

Not having raced the "kilo" before, I just went at it hard but keeping a fraction in reserve on the opening lap. The kilo is raced as an individual, whereas in the pursuit you are racing on track at same time as your opponent (starting on opposite sides of track).

I finished the kilo in a 1:16. My opponent rode a 1:15. I was 1 second in front after 750m but my fade in the final lap saw my opponent overhaul my time. Happy with that. Much room for improvement from me, so something to think about for next year. A little more than a couple of week's notice of getting a ride might help...

The next day we had the individual pursuit. Here's my power trace:



















Just power and cadence showing.

Stats:
Average Power: 363W
Time: 5:08
Place: 2nd

Again I was pretty happy with that. My 5-min power/weight ratio was an all time personal best pre- and post-amputation, and the time was 4-seconds faster than previous national record. My opponent though had a fantastic race, going 4:58 and setting a huge new PB for him. Nice work Ryan! :)

CTL: 96
TSB: +8

Once again, Form = Fitness + Freshness

Next up - Team Pursuit later this month.

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Form = Fitness + Freshness

It's one of the Pithy Power Proverbs that came along with the introduction of the Performance Manager Andy Coggan introduced to so many of us in 2006.

Five years on and it still works.

Example:
In the last couple of weeks I've been bouncing around with a Chronic Training Load (CTL - "fitness") above 100 TSS/day (see link for an explanation of these terms) but had some external life stresses and work commitments (like refurbishing and expanding a growing indoor cycle training centre amongst other things) which combined saw me "crack" a little in training. Not badly, just enough to know it was time for a little recovery.

By cracking a little I mean being unable to successfully complete a scheduled hard tempo session within a desired power range a couple of times and one endurance ride that was a bit of a grovel. One bad day isn't always a sign, but 2-3 examples not far apart is something usually worth taking a closer note of.

So I shut down the session the second time it happened and had a rest day the next day. It is also very hot and humid when I get to train which likely did not help, and combined with insufficient sleep, well the signs were all there.

So an extra day's rest, combined with a few no-bike days due to coaching work commitments saw a sharpish drop in Acute (recent) Training Load (ATL) and a corresponding rise in Training Stress Balance (TSB - "freshness").

On Saturday I had my regular squad training group (which I run) and said to myself that if I feel OK, I would go race in the afternoon.

As it turns out, I did feel pretty good in the morning, so I decided to line up for a crit that afternoon (at Sydney's Heffron Park).

I win.

Which is always nice of course. A good way to start the year off.

Winning move was made when I attacked with a bit under 3km to go.

A few things to note for day of race:
- FTP: 295W - my last TT in December was @ 297W (38-minutes)
- CTL: 96 TSS/day
- TSB: +19
- NP*: 300W (50-minutes)
- AP^: 257W

Race was not overly hard, I was pretty well in control most of the time. I had a solo break mid-way but that failed due to a rear puncture (was given a replacement wheel and allowed to rejoin main group).

The final 4-minutes of the race was a new
all-time best 4-minute W/kg.

Now ordinarily I wouldn't expect to feel so good with TSB that high. Neutral to somewhat positive TSB yes, but at +19, sometimes you feel underdone or legs are a bit claggy. Not today.

Fresh and Fit. Toss smart into the mix and well, wins are there to be had.


By the way, I know it's been way too long since I've posted. It's just been a very busy 12-months. All good stuff and I hope to be able to get back to more regular posting. I have a backlog of items to write about!

A super full year of events coming up in 2011. So much happening on the coaching, training and racing front, I will endeavour to keep y'all updated!


* Normalised Power
^ Average Power

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Ascension Rates and Power to Body Mass Ratios

As many of you know, the cycling speed attained when ascending steep climbs is primarily a function of a rider's sustainable power to weight ratio. More power and/or less weight means a rider can climb faster. Pretty simple really.

But it's not the only factor to consider. For instance, wind can still play a sizable role in speed attained. And of course when climbing in a race, race tactics will play a role, with attacks, surges and pacing by team mates (or motorbikes!) all serving to alter ascension rates for a given power output.

Recently there has been some (typically annual) discussion on a few cycling forums about ascension rates of pro riders, estimated power to weight ratios and whether or not such performances are plausible sans-doping, even suggesting that some ascension rates cross over some level of "sans-doping plausibility" and should be a red flag to anti-doping authorities.

Well I'm not going to delve into all aspects of this issue other than to say that, in essence, there are so many variables that such an approach is really a pretty futile exercise.

In the end, all the pro riders that demonstrate such tremendous physical acts will already be under the eyes of anti-doping authorities, so I really don't see how such an idea really adds any value to the issue of doping in cycling.

Many issues of a physiological nature have been batted about, and there are a couple of excellent summaries of some of the science demonstrating the massive variations in such estimations in these two items by Dr Andy Coggan:
Superhuman Performance? Part I
Superhuman Performance? Part II

Nevertheless, I thought I would look at the challenge of estimating power to body mass ratios from ascent times up one of the most famous climbs in Tour de France history - Alpe d'Huez. Below is a chart summarising (click on the picture to see a larger version):


In modelling of cycling power and speed, I used the mathematical model as per the 1998 Martin et al paper:
Validation of a Mathematical Model for Road Cycling Power.

The equation in question is shown below:


For the purposes of this exercise, I have simplified the equation a little. The main assumption being that of reasonably steady state cycling and no change in kinetic energy from start to finish (which is reasonable assumption given that the difference in speed from start to finish would be negligible and over ~40-minutes is a tiny proportion of overall energy demand). If there are a lot of surges or changes of pace along the way then a little more of the overall energy demand may go into changes in kinetic energy.

Then there is the climb itself. I have used a course elevation profile which, as far as I can tell, corresponds to the timing points which have been used to time the ascension up Alpe d'Huez since 1999. Before then different measuring points were used. My data indicates a climb of 13.93km with 1085m of vertical ascent (there are a few metres of marginally negative gradient right at the top).

I divided the climb into 56 segments of 250 metres (final segment a balance), with each segment having a gradient and wind vector assigned. The modeling then applied the maths to the segmented climb.

The following additional assumptions were used for the modeling:
- Rider mass: 70kg
- Bike + gear mass: 8kg
- A coefficient of rolling resistance (Crr): 0.0045
- A coefficient of drag x effective frontal area (CdA): 0.300m^2
- Air density: 1.046kg/m^2

Importantly, I have also assumed an even application of power for the duration of the climb. Of course no rider applies power perfectly evenly up a climb, although climbs with relatively consistent gradients generally produce consistent power outputs (if you inspect power meter files, you can usually pick the climbs as the power line is smoother and speed is low).

Then what I did was to calculate the ascension times up the Alpe d'Huez course profile for various power to body mass ratios, with a 2.5 m/s tailwind (9km/h), with no wind and with a 2.5 m/s headwind.

One can then see the quite sizable role that wind can play in estimating W/kg from ascent times.

To read the chart, for instance, take a time of 40-minutes flat (40:00) on the vertical axis and see where that time intersects the diagonal lines marking the tail-, no- and head-winds. The horizontal axis then marks the corresponding W/kg required for that time.

So, for 40:00, depending on wind conditions and assuming even pacing (and other assumptions as listed in the chart), then the power to body mass ratio required would range from 5.6W/kg for a tailwind to 6.35W/kg for a headwind.

Alternatively, if you are a 5.9W/kg rider then you could attain a time anywhere from 38:10 with a 2.5 m/s tailwind through to 40:00 with no wind and 43:00 with 2.5m/s headwind (off the chart).

I then added lines to mark the ascent times for various riders I selected from this Alpe d'Huez Wikipedia reference. Note that the times from 2004 were an individual time trial, the rest are final ascents during a TdF stage race. As we can see, the estimated power to body mass ratio for Armstrong’s super quick ascent time in the 2004 Individual Time Trial falls in the 6.00-6.85W/kg range, depending on overall wind direction.

Times for other riders in earlier tours such as Pantani were not taken using the same timing points, hence I have excluded them.

Of course the course winds its way up the ascent in various directions due to the famous switchbacks, and any wind vector would naturally vary accordingly, so by putting an indicator of reasonably modest but noticeable winds, at least one can see that any given ascent time will still end up with quite a wide range of possible power to body mass ratios.

All I can say is, given that some believe there is a performance level that is beyond plausibility sans-doping (some have suggested 6.2W/kg, some less, some more) then all the climb times listed in the chart straddle such "plausibility levels" with such a large range of uncertainty that it is simply not possible to draw any firm conclusions on power to mass ratios from ascent times alone.

Keep in mind that the highest ever 1-hour power to body mass ratio known and recorded is 6.4W/kg by, as far as is understood, a non-doped rider.

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Bon Anniversaire III

Three years today since my accident.

I’m not sure sometimes if it seems like yesterday, or a lifetime ago, as the temporal distance sensation oscillates from day to day.

One thing is for sure, I am mostly looking ahead and not back. But anniversaries (good or bad) tend to be times for reflection. So it is once again with today’s post.

I did previous post-accident annual reviews in these two posts in 2008 and 2009:
Bon Anniversaire
Bon Anniversaire II

It’s been, all up, a pretty darn good year with more change and plenty of challenges. In keeping with the theme of this blog, I’ll go over my rehab and cycling related topics for the past year and leave out other personal stuff.

Rehab
My physical rehabilitation has progressed very well. I upgraded my general prosthetic in June 2009 as I had “under grown” the other one. I say “under grown” as my fellow acquired amputees would know that the residual leg (or “stump” as we call it) gradually shrinks over time, until it settles after 2-3 years. It does continue to change over the years.

Prosthetic sockets, being hard inflexible containers for your stump, eventually have to be re-made to suit your new size and shape. In between times, you adjust to it each day, and through the day, by using different size, thickness and number of socks to provide for more or less compression as comfort dictates.

One frustrating aspect was my early use of the new prosthetic didn’t go so well. My knee reacted badly and it broke open the skin on the inward side of my knee and the rubbing against tendon created significant discomfort. My knee swelled and I couldn’t get my stump into the socket. Which sucked. A lot.

Eventually it settled down and I could get back to “normality”.

The open sore / hole in the side of my knee created in June 2009 is still there today. It simply won’t heal up. I’ve tried all sorts of tricks and tips to fix it but with no real success. The only option I think is to not wear a prosthetic for as long as it takes to properly heal over – which I would estimate to be maybe three or more weeks. That’s just not really much of an option when you’re a cycling coach. But it may come to that one day.

Most of the time it’s not so bad, but occasionally it flares up and the knee swells and it hurts when I put the leg on, sometimes standing/walking can be very painful. Sometimes I can’t get into my prosthetic at all. It happened again in December 2009, and the same thing has happened this week. So far I haven’t been able to nail down a consistent trigger for it – which is something I really want to do, as if I know how to avoid it in future, then that’s what I’ll do!

Cycling Performance
Those leg troubles aside, my cycling performance improvement has been excellent. So much so that in the past six months I have actually exceeded pre-amputation power output levels over significant durations, both in terms of absolute wattages, and expressed as power to body mass ratio terms.

I did this post on Power Profiling in January, which compared my then post-amputation power profile to my pre-amputation power profile.

Here’s another chart to show my progress since I got back on the bike in June 2008. It shows the maximal 1-hour (normalised) power I attained in each 90-day period since starting riding again, right through to today. I chose normalised power as it provides a sensible comparison of my performance capacity across all types of racing and training, and represents a very good estimate of the progression in my Functional Threshold Power.


As you can see, my progression has been consistent and steady, culminating in a 1-hour race power last weekend exceeding my all time best except for just one occasion from my pre-amputation racing days (that was during the State Criterium championships in 2006 at 337W).

In fact, in that race last weekend I set my all time highest 2-hour normalised power of 315W.

I must admit, I do surprise even myself at times.

Of course, all the way through this I have had fantastic support from many people, especially from my coach Ric Stern. We are setting no limits on what's possible. Heck, when I can outperform what I did on a bike before an amputation, then what else can I do?

Nevertheless, I still have lost significant elements of my cycling capacities, most notably my sprinting and standing start abilities have been curtailed somewhat. Which just means they may require more work in order to close that gap as well.

Cycling Leg
After getting my new general purpose leg, I also worked on adding a dedicated cycling leg to my “stable”. Previously, in order to cycle, I used to screw off my walking “foot” and screw on a cycling “leg” attachment. It enabled me to ride but it was a PITA having to keep screwing them on/off, and the constant changing would not have been doing the components much good (one day I found one clamp had completely cracked through). And being very sensitive to the set up of the bike leg (lengths/angles etc), this process did have a habit of unintentionally changing the set up at times, enough to cause discomfort or pain when riding.

Getting a dedicated leg would make sure the set up was better suited for the bike, and have the ability to quickly remove one leg and put on the other, if for instance I wanted to hop off at the track and walk somewhere.

So it was back to George at the Appliance and Limb Centre for the bike leg socket design. That bit wasn't so hard as it was really a replica of my existing general purpose socket (all carbon fibre custom moulding) although that might be understating it a little. The funky bits were what we attached to it and the design of an aerodynamic outer shell.

It was all made possible with the funding raised by the local track cycling community organised by Paul Craft of RAW Track fame (and donations and help from wonderful people all over the world), who generously raised about $8000 to cover the costs. The leg was built and we designed a funky aerodynamic carbon fibre cover for it. The leg cost $7600. Add to that a new stump liner at $1000 a pop (and which wear out pretty quickly I’ve since discovered, needing several per year), and well, there goes the $8k!

Also a big thank you to John Bosevski of Cycle Underground who engineered a special adapter plate for connecting the standard prosthetic block to a standard 3-hole cycling cleat. That was based on an original version Peter Barnard made for me in his home workshop.

Steve Nemeth, CEO of Bont Shoes, supplied me with custom mouldable Bont road and track shoes, which have been great (thanks Steve). If anyone needs a size 44 left Bont cycling shoe - let me know - I have two of them spare!

That lace up track shoe is the best I've ever used. Steve has also helped with a few other bits for me. In a semi-related note, just last week I was contacted by a fellow from Canberra, who was in touch with a guy I know in Perth, who for some reason ended up with a spare right Bont shoe in my size. I don't know what happened to the left one and so he generously mailed the spare shoe to me!

Of course getting the leg sized up and fitted properly for the bike - well I was helped by none other than my good buddy and bike fit guru Steve Hogg of Sydney Cyclefit Centre. It was amazing how just the smallest tweak in the grub screws at the bottom of the leg make a large difference in my ability to pedal effectively and in (relative) comfort.

The leg has been great and has been very well used so far and the support I received was, and continues to be, amazing and I am very grateful to everyone for helping.

Racing
In April and May 2009 I competed at both the Para-cycling National and Oceania Paralympic championships, my first attempt at Para-cycling events. I picked up a silver medal in both the road race & time trial at the Nationals and two Gold medals in the same events at the Oceania Paralympic event held in Darwin.

In August I started racing back at the track during the Friday Night Winter race series, and even won my first track race since returning. It was good to be back on the boards. The previous year when I couldn’t race, I was the Chief Commissaire for the series. This time I did half the series as commissaire / half racing.

In October 2009 I raced the UCI World Masters Track Championships. I surprised myself with my 3rd fastest ever 3km individual pursuit and made the finals of both the scratch and points races. I was very happy with that, partly because in 2005 I set out with the goal of making those finals in 2007, but my accident happened in the lead up to the 2007 event and destroyed those hopes. I was also surprised because they were very hard races and there were some pretty fancied names that missed out on finals. It just showed me once again what was possible provided you keep at it, remain positive and do the work necessary.

In November I ventured back to doing an open track race carnival up at the Central Coast (always good carnival that one). It was a successful night and I won one race, took three second places and a 5th in the open miss ‘n’ out race.

My form kept building and I started to approach pre-amputation power output levels. Maybe, I thought, I could get there....

Then, bang – I go and do some time trial training efforts at a power higher than pre-amputation levels. Holy smokes!! OK, don’t stop now :D

All this was of course part of my plan to race the National Para-cycling track championships earlier this year and come home a National Champ. I ended up not even going. I’m not going to bore you with the details, just to say that bureaucratic stuffing about regarding State selection policy left me in no-man’s land for the second year running, unable to plan for the expense and time needed to participate and I had to commit to other things. My form was excellent. Shit happens they say.

The experience left a bad taste though and I struggled for motivation for a little while after that episode. But we move on. I am now somewhat ambivalent about para-cycling competition. Apart from the good encouragement I receive from other para-cyclists, I experienced a less than enthusiastic level of interest from officials in seeing more riders compete at championships; indeed it seemed as if there was active dissuasion going on. Turns out I wasn’t the only one to experience that, which was kind of good (in a bad way) as it meant I wasn’t just being paranoid.

Eventually I got myself going again, and as always the best thing for me is to pin a number on my back and go race! I just love racing so I raced some local criteriums. What grade? Well I started with the local open C-grade.

Oops, won that comfortably.

Next time out I went to B-grade....


Oops, I bridged across to a break and the three of us circulated at same pace as A-grade and left the rest of them to fight it out for nothing. OK, so I’ve been re-graded back into A-grade. LOL.

Last weekend I raced a local Masters Enduro – a 2 hour + 1 lap affair. What a corker of a race! Apart from helping a mate (& client) get into a successful 3-man break, along the way I generated my highest ever 2-hour race power and 2nd highest ever 1-hour race power. Here I am poking my tongue out for a bit of fun when I spotted photographer Ernie Smith.

OK - I nicked that pic off Ernie's website - I'll sort that later with him :-)

California/Seminar/GranFondo
In September & October 2009, I had a wonderful experience all down to the generosity of Steve Palladino and family, who invited me to stay with them in Santa Rosa.


While there I delivered a seminar on Training and Racing with a Power Meter (talking about a case study in application of a power meter to help Jayson Austin achieve his world masters hour record), did some great training rides with Steve, culminating in Levi Leipheimer’s 170km GranFondo along with the Fightin’ Boba crew. It was fantastic.

Coaching
My coaching activity took another step up through the past year, it’s now the sole source of my income and I love it. I have a great group of clients, spread all across the globe ( I currently have coaching clients located in seven countries) and I really enjoy helping them to perform even better than ever.

Some great results from riders & teams I coach, including multiple State & National championship wins and one world record. Here's a pic of Jayson on his way to a UCI world record.


I started up a new product, customised 3-month training plans, which have been very successful with sales going worldwide including the UK, Europe, Africa, Middle East, USA, Canada, New Zealand and of course all States of Australia. Lots of great feedback with people reporting excellent results and coming back for their second and third plans.

Along with Joanne Palazzetti, I have been very busy with the establishment of a new indoor training centre for cyclists and triathletes – the Turbo Studio. We commenced operation in February 2010 and so far the response has been excellent, with really good growth in client numbers - already some of our sessions are full.


People are really responding to the professionalism of the set up and having a dedicated cycle coaching resource available to guide them in the right direction and answer their various enquiries about training. Half the time is spent dispelling training myths and educating about the use of power measurement in training. It’s all evidence-based training principles and the results are speaking for themselves.

I want to thank Jo for her totally professional approach, creativeness, passion and friendship in getting this project up and running, and for asking me to come on board and just do what I do – i.e. help people get the most from training with power!!

Added to that, I began a power meter hire business. That’s also going well!

Ric Stern & I have been working on other things at RST, with Ric getting the cyclecoach.com website updated with many new features including the establishment of a new forum for all things bike related – especially about training and racing and to support all our coaching clients around the world, including those who are using our Training Plans. The members' forum is available for anyone to join.

Not stopping there – we have other projects in the pipe and expect to announce shortly the addition of new coaches to the RST crew. We have a pretty thorough selection process as we seek to maintain the highest standards in professional and scientific coaching services.

I also embarked upon something I expected to do years ago, and upgrade to the Cycling Australia Level 2 coaching accreditation (I was scheduled to do it in 2007 but my accident got in the way of that). Level 2 is the highest level of accreditation available in Australia bar those on CA staff who are required to do a Level 3.

So far I’ve done part I of the process, which was to attend the week-long CA coaching course in November & December but I still need to complete the balance of activities. It’s just been overly busy since then, especially with the setting up of a new business but I’ll get back to that as a priority over the next few months.

It’s not like I’m not doing practical coaching – it’s what I do for a living and I supervise training groups every working day, write about it constantly and so on.... :-)

So what lies ahead?
Well I expect to keep plugging away with my training and racing ambitions. My racing goals however are a little fluid at this stage and so I’ll likely do some Masters championships along with local racing for the next block. I will continue to pursue improvement in my form and power and to race regularly. Let’s see how much further I can drive my development as a rider.

Business wise there is much to look forward to this year – the Turbo Studio will keep forging ahead, I expect squad training to become part of life, power training seminars to be delivered and of course we are introducing the Winter Indoor Race Series on the Turbo Studio’s Computrainers, which should be a lot of fun. Given there’s about $5000 in prizes (mostly cash) up for grabs, I’m sure it’ll be popular.

My clients have tremendous goals to achieve and I’ll be working hard to help nail them and take them all to a new level of performance. Championships, sportives, category upgrades, commencing racing, all sorts of new goals and challenges.

RST goes from strength to strength and is growing as well, so more to come on that front, including some more new training products on the (hopefully near) horizon.

I expect to complete my Level 2 coaching accreditation as well.

At the moment I am also slated for a return to California in October for the Granfondo, so that should be another epic adventure.

OK, that was a long post, but hopefully not too dull a read. Perhaps you can see why my blogging frequency has dropped a little lately. Of course there's lots of more personal stuff that I don’t write about on this blog (that’s my business!) and there has been plenty to work with on those fronts as well. All up, it’s been another cracker of a year and I hope to make this next one even better!

Safe riding out there.

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Where the blogging heck have I been?

Collecting race winnings at Heffron Park, that's where!

In reality I've just been really busy with lots of stuff and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for a little while. There is much to write about, just not so much time to do it lately.

So what's new in the Zoo? Plenty!!

Business wise I've been busy with the opening of a new indoor/outdoor cycling training centre here in Sydney - Turbo Studio. Click the link for a peek.


We opened this month and all is going really well. Some are now finding out just how effective a focused power-based indoor training session can be. It suits riders of all abilities as all sessions are set relative to each rider's individual fitness level. That's the great thing with the Computrainer's Multirider set up. And I've been designing the sessions with Erg+ software and next week we are looking to add the real erg videos to the sessions for some extra fun.

Training and race wise, I've been going nicely since the new year ticked over and I cleared a knee injury in December. Threshold power is back to around 300W and I've done three races so far this year, two others were washed out/canceled due to the pile driving rain we've had in Sydney during February.

So it's been three crits so far, all at a local crit circuit, Heffron Park.

I won my first race on 16 January by a country mile and the next week I raced the Australia Day crit (26 Jan), where race promoter and handicapper thought I should be bumped up a couple of levels and race with the likes of Stuart "Computer" Campbell.

Not quite sure how the A grade riders get to race B grade (this is an open race) but nonetheless I hung in there. I suspect I was lucky to be allowed to start at all but that's another story ;-)

That race was ~ 45-min with NP of 319W, Average Power 294W. I was digging hard at times but it was good fun.

Winning the sprint at Heffron

On Saturday just gone, I raced up a grade at Heffron and after the usual opening flurry of attacks (one of which I calmly closed down), I saw two guys attack into the wicked northerly wind and thought to myself "they look the goods", so I took off after them. Nobody followed me.

I then spent the next half lap bridging across and then the three of us decided to work together with the bunch following at about 30 metres. We all committed and the gap began to grow, until after a hard five laps or so I think we cracked their spirit and so we settled into a grind to the finish, never really letting up the pace until the final lap or so. I initiated the sprint, kept it clean (line wise) but was overhauled about 20-metres out and settled for second place. Still getting used to my new level of sprinting. As they say, when in doubt - lead it out.

Longer race this time, ~ 52 min with NP of 319W and Average Power 302W. So fitness is coming along nicely and I look forward to the State Points race championships this weekend coming.

Also keeping me busy is preparations for the Team Pursuit championships. I've been my Club TP coach for a few years now. This year is a little different. I am actually going to race it this year. I'm really happy about that as the TP is my favourite bike race. And it would seem I definitely have the legs for it this time.

As for other training related items, I have a few things banking up to write about - one an item on Quadrant Analysis and maximal force velocity data and another on the relationship between performance in individual pursuit and power/CdA ratios. And another is to finally do the write up and pictures about my completed prosthetic racing leg.

And I hear a whisper about a wind tunnel in Sydney.....

All good stuff. 'til next time folks, safe riding!

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Power Profiling - Now and Then

Often I am asked how my cycling power ouput compares now, to before my accident and amputation.

As I progressed with my training during 2009, and as my fitness continued to improve under Ric Stern's guidance, the answer to that question kept changing, mainly as I started to close in on pre-amputation power levels.

Now that I have a full year's worth of data from 2009, I decided to take a look at my annual power profile and see how it compares to pre-amp levels.

Below is aggregate power profile data covering the past 5 years. It shows my best power to mass ratio (W/kg) for each of 4 separate durations for the years 2005 through to 2009:


The power durations shown are:
5 seconds
1 minute
5 minutes, and
95% of my 20-minute power.

Each of these power-durations represents key elements of cycling fitness, with different energy systems being the primary contributor to performance at each duration. That's why it's such a telling indicator of your overall cycling makeup, and an excellent indicator of your relative strengths and weaknesses.

This is provided of course the profile does in fact contain data from best efforts for the duration. Given it's aggregate data for whole years, then I think it's a reasonable assumption. Nevertheless, sometimes the 1-minute column can still be under stated as that usually requires dedicated efforts not often performed in training or racing.

You can read more about power profiling in this original item by Dr Andrew Coggan here:
Power Profiling


So the group of columns on the left shows my best 5-second power to mass ratio for each year from 2005 to 2009. Each group of columns moving to the right covers the other durations, with 95% of 20-minute power shown by the columns on the far right.

What matters with power profiling is the overall shape of the profile, rather than the absolute numbers. The shape in this case indicated by the lines joining the columns, which I have shown for 2006 (orange line) and for 2009 (blue line). I chose those two years as they are the two complete years representing pre-amputation and post-amputation training/racing data.

I notice a few things:
- the overall shape of each line is similar
- my short duration power has taken a large nosedive
- my longer duration power to mass ratio is actually higher than previously attained

This clearly demonstrates that it's my sprint power that has suffered the most from my lower leg amputation, yet the predominantly aerobic power durations (5-min and 20+ min) have not.

This suggests a few things to me.

One is it's an example of how we are not force (strength) limited when cycling at aerobic power levels, since even though I have lost significant leg musculature and with it strength, I have still been able to generate the longer duration power.

Another is that the lack of a lower leg muscular-skeletal system has a significant impact on sprint ability. The lower leg matters a lot more in the generation of short duration sprint power, than for longer duration aerobic power.

What can I make of this information? Well for one I no longer have the sprint I used to, yet I am as likely to be as well set up for the end of a race as I was before, since I have the engine to deliver me there. But now I lack the finishing ability. My strategy and tactics in racing may need to be modified a little as a result.

I can still work on improving my sprint of course (all track/roadie riders should) but I would say that reclaiming pre-amp sprint power levels is not going to be anywhere near as "easy" as it was for aerobic power durations, if in fact it is actually possible.

It also points to me reconsidering what events I may in fact focus on. They may change as well.

Plenty to ponder with a power profile.

What's yours look like?

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