power is a racing and training tool. better than HR.

How are you with a PM a faster cyclist than if you didn't have one?

To add to the hr training:

I started riding when I was 17 and got a hrm soon after. I didn't really train with it, but used it to see how my efforts corresponded. At 18 I got a coach and did full-time structured hr training for the next three years up to a cat 1. I'd work my way through winter building from 3 x 10 mins at LT -5bpm to 3x20 minutes at LT-3bpm and then hill repeats for an hour at LT+5, so presumably working the whole lactate threshold system, yet as I mentioned before, no sustained power for anything over five minutes.

What I did, though, and at the time didn't see anything wrong with it, was basically sprint until I got my hr at the appropriate level and then just hold it there until the time was done. Doing that with a powermeter and, well, there's a precipitous decline.

This had the added problem of leaving me way overreached for long periods of time. What I've found is that my hr really drops with accumulated fatigue and while ftp might be 175 bpm when I'm rested, it might only be 165 when I'm tired, and when I'm deep in a block I might not even hit 165 until the very end of a longer interval. So trying to do it by hr all those years just left me continually pushing at something that was way harder than I should have been doing. Someone with a little common sense that wasn't blinded by a delusion of going pro would have probably figured that out pretty quickly. I just thought I needed more work.

And so this eventually led to full-blown overtraining when I tried to add 20-30 hour weeks to the mix and I had to stop riding for 5-6 months. I lost the full season. It also really destroyed my hormones or something and I put on a permanent 7-8 lbs and my hr the next season was a full 10 bpm lower across the board. Max went from 211 to 201 and threshold from 193 to 183 that next year. Really crazy.

So, yeah, I don't like hr training. Bad experience. Could be said about any training system, but hr training really seemed to lend itself to misjudgments.

Here is how to use HR to never physically burn out or [MENTION=426467]rubiksoval[/MENTION] like mis-judgments. Even if using a PM for training - use this.

Buy a Pulse Oximeter - HR and SPO2 ~ $20

Establish a baseline resting HR when fully rested and hydrated and take HR and SPO2 every morning when waking and still in bed. This will change with environment, the baseline is for your bed. Look for an SPO2 of 99 at sea level for an elite athlete. HR is personal.

Any useful training program should have the athlete returning to the baseline before any very hard effort.

Lower SPO2 is an indication of over-training and/or sickness - or age. Higher resting HR could be sickness, over-training or normal recovering from a good workout.

So if rested, stress the body. Maybe gym, sprints, PM - whatever. If HR is elevated the next day which it should be a bit if the right stress was used the day before, do base. Anyway unless building or tapering for an event that resting state should be seen before high intensity training is done again, or with a plan to return to the resting state.

If nothing else it's nice to have a pretty accurate way to keep track of kj burned so you know how much to eat. That alone justifies using a power meter.

Luddites use scales.

lol awesome :beer:

A PM will tell you the absolute stress on the body better than HR. It will tell you what you did. It is like lifting weights. That is 100#. That is a fact - you just did X watts for Y min. I have zero argument there.

What a PM does not tell you is how you feel and are you recovered and ready to do it all over again - maybe harder.
Your body's ability to rebuild is a huge factor in what should be done. A PM does not tell you that.

HR, and particularly resting HR tells that you are ready to stress yourself again.

It's sort of a false premise, since any power meter head I know has HR both. So one vs the other is really a non issue.

Which is why most folks use both, right?

ETA: Typing and thinking at the same time as Gary...

I always ride with power and HR. Always.
I took HR off my display due to it being a limiter. Looking down and seeing 190bpm during a crit or race would make me hesitate and/or back off.
I don't always use power during a race or hard ride to gauge what to do, but NOT using HR makes me faster.

For years I thought my max HR was 190ish. But that was because I wouldn't let myself get over it. Once I took it off, I hit 209 in a sprint and added 150w to my max. Almost overnight.

I always review HR and power after every ride, keeping track of what my HR was/is doing it good for understanding how my body is reacting. As i posted a few days ago, 170bpm while spinning at 140w (60%ish FTP) means I wasn't fully recovered from illness yet. If I didn't have both, I'd probably have extended my illness a few days longer.

Introduced at https://www.bikeforums.net/20066970-post5355.html was a PM for training.

Riding with and recording, or racing are not what I read as using for training.

My interpretation of using for training is that the rider pushes to meet a number on the display. It could also be staying under a number, which seems the more useful of the two.

more motivated training

I do both. I use it to monitor my efforts in races as well. My eyes barely come off it on a hill climb.

I can see that, I do it too and try to hold the number I see longer. But as you point out - I'm not a racer. I don't know what the max I can take is, or if my body is ready for that much stress. I also may stress my cardio system more than my legs, when it is my legs that need the work. And it is more motivating than seeing my HR go up.

I read into [MENTION=450618]Ttoc6[/MENTION] post - who we have not heard back from, asking if the PM is the ideal way to get faster. I was assuming some structured training program was planned and it was PM vs something else. If that is what [MENTION=450618]Ttoc6[/MENTION] meant, then I think he can do better than a PM for training. If not, and he was asking if the PM is fun as he rides his bike, then my arguments don't apply. Using a PM for a TT, or racing was a different question. General answer - If you are going to race with something, it is always good to train with it.

My response was less about the device - a PM, HR or weights, and more that the rider needs to know what they can take. I gave the morning resting HR tool use for that. Using the calendar, high HR number, or even a PM number to decide to "go heavy/hard" can either fatigue the rider (more common), or not use the opportunity (meaning they are fully rested) to stress themselves more.

Why are Red Aerolink brakes such a pain to set up/sensitive?
Fought with them for 20 minutes, no luck. Trimmed 5mm off each housing, work perfectly...

Also, mounting tires sucks. My thumbs hurt. Ended up using a bead jack. Seriously considering selling these and buying another set of tubeless wheels.

Yes, they're all tools. As far as getting stronger goes a power meter is the best tool for the job.

Well that wasn't my point.

It's all temporal.

Morning resting heart rate -or even better- heart rate variability measurements are useful for estimating past stress; and can therefore help plan future workouts.

Power is the present.

:lol:

Because they are single pivot brakes, so housing length is a factor in how straight they sit. They work well, but going back to single pivot was not a great move.

Also, be careful when tightening the cable crimp bolt. The bolt mounts are thin and can crack easily. I've had it happen on 3 different calipers.

has anyone who uses emotion rollers had problems with them making a squeaking noise? it only happens while out of the saddle and it's not associated with the resistance unit (i took that belt off and it still happened). i'm leaning towards thinking it's the bearings on one of the rollers, but I hope not. haven't yet pulled off any of the roller units but am planning to next week.

Any shot it's a tire?

Our Speedplay pedals were pretty worn out, and it was time to replace them.

I bought the replacement kit and did that for the first set, and it was fine, but it required re-using the bearings.

By my math, it cost $2 more to just buy new Chromoloy spindle pedals with cleats than to buy the rebuild kits and cleats separately. So, I bought a couple sets of the Chromoly pedals with plans to just swap the bodies onto the still good and better quality Stainless Steel spindles.

Well, the second set didn't come apart so easily. The screw holding the pedal together wouldn't budge. I ended up stripping the screw. I then tried all the tricks to get it out. I eventually drilled them out. One came out great. The other, not so much. I guess I'll just be using the Chromoly spindle versions.

So I've more or less taken a short break from the forums over the Xmas break and at the same time a break from the power meter. I came back to some great discussion points

I probably posted this topic because it's tough to stay motivated right now when I'm confined to the trainer and dark days. A week away (even if it is the middle of base season)has probably been good for me.

I think the take away I have here is to stop letting ctl and atl dictate my life in cycling and focus more on tangible metrics. Am I getting stronger? If yes, stay the course. I've had a pretty steep drop off in my metrics but I still feel like I'm as strong or at least close to where I ended last season. Last year I lived and died by these graphs, but since I'm doing more off the bike stuff, it's tough.

Might be worse when I finally get to try xc skiing next week now that there is enough snow!




On the topic of tts, I find my power drop-off on the tt bike is not as severe as I had come to expect reading online. Maybe this is error bars in my 2 pms, but it was nice to know I'm not "losing" as much as I thought I would. Wish it was warm enough to go out and do some real aero testing though!