Racing with PowerTap?? (Opinions)

[Alex Simmons]

I think all you know is that a race (assuming you don't upgrade) is unlikely to put you near your aerobic limit and that you can attack frequently without being overly concerned about tapping all your aerobic reserves. I suppose you could also make an assumption that the VI will lilely be similar and you could derive NP from AP during the ride.

Now Fergie I am not condoning the following* but perhaps setting PT to display Non-Zero Avg Power instead of Avg Power may be worth trying out. I haven't done it myself but will experiment when I get back to riding some crits (my local crit circuit has 10 corners so in a bunch there can be many sections of zero power).

* I am drawing no inference that NZAP approximates NP.

 

[fergie]

Now Fergie I am not condoning the following* but perhaps setting PT to display Non-Zero Avg Power instead of Avg Power may be worth trying out. I haven't done it myself but will experiment when I get back to riding some crits (my local crit circuit has 10 corners so in a bunch there can be many sections of zero power).

* I am drawing no inference that NZAP approximates NP.

Is that like crossing the streams bad?

I mean I can go on what I see on the power meter at the time, but I am thinking about advising other athletes how to race with the aid of power.

Hamish Ferguson

 

[RapDaddyo]

Now Fergie I am not condoning the following* but perhaps setting PT to display Non-Zero Avg Power instead of Avg Power may be worth trying out. I haven't done it myself but will experiment when I get back to riding some crits (my local crit circuit has 10 corners so in a bunch there can be many sections of zero power).

* I am drawing no inference that NZAP approximates NP.

Out of curiosity, I looked at a recent team time trial ride to see how the AP-NZ compares with NP. It was a 75 min ride with an overall NP/AP ratio of ~1.10. The mid-ride ratio was similar, at ~1.09. The AP-NZ/AP ratio rose to 1.04 by mid-ride and to 1.08 by the end of the ride. I think I might be more comfortable applying a 1.10 ratio to AP during the ride, because it's such a simple calculation. I know fergie's NP was 236W, but I can't locate AP at the moment. He could take the approximate NP/AP ratio from his race file as a proxy relationship and mentally compute a poor man's running NP. Or, whip out his slide rule and compute it exactly while he's pushing the pace.

 

[Alex Simmons]

Out of curiosity, I looked at a recent team time trial ride to see how the AP-NZ compares with NP. It was a 75 min ride with an overall NP/AP ratio of ~1.10. The mid-ride ratio was similar, at ~1.09. The AP-NZ/AP ratio rose to 1.04 by mid-ride and to 1.08 by the end of the ride. I think I might be more comfortable applying a 1.10 ratio to AP during the ride, because it's such a simple calculation. I know fergie's NP was 236W, but I can't locate AP at the moment. He could take the approximate NP/AP ratio from his race file as a proxy relationship and mentally compute a poor man's running NP. Or, whip out his slide rule and compute it exactly while he's pushing the pace.

What he really needs is a large on board flight deck showing a real time quadrant analysis. Too many dots in one corner and you're cooked buddy!
only kidding!!!

 

[fergie]

I was able to use the fast find function to identify how many matches I
burnt. Based on 120% of threshold and setting the leading edge at 294watts and the trailing edge at functional threshold of 245 and the time range from
60sec to 5min there was only one. Basically showing that my other attacks
were too hard, too high over threshold and were not sustainable unless the
peleton eased up.

Looked back at last week and there were no matches and none the week before when I made several moves. All doomed to failure. As Andy says in the book, didn't light a match, more like sent up a flare. Needed a hill or higher ave tempo to force others to deplete their aerobic energy and to burn the odd match of their own.

In fact going through all my races this year, very few matches, lots of
flares (and disappointment to boot). However going through my harder training rides and there are matches a plenty. The power meter has shown me the error in my ways. Also shows me I need to find harder courses.

Are my assumptions correct?

Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach, Novice Power Trainer