I agree. Also the section on evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, and setting training objectives to address them (in addition to cycling goals) is very useful. I should work through that again for next season.

I use a modified version of his training plan spreadsheet to plan my season. Some people plan every workout. I don't like that level of detail because I'll stress over missing workouts, so I plan in general terms what I should to each week for the season, based on my 'A' races.

The most valuable thing I get out of training with a power meter is tracking my training load. I use GoldenCheetah, which is open source and runs on Macs, Linux and that other operating system. It will work using TRIMP to track training stress if you don't have a power meter. TRIMP uses perceived exertion to rate rides. You can use GC without a PM. I wrote the original GC Performance Monitor that tracks training stress back when I had time to contribute to it. So if it sucks you can blame me.

Chasm, you are exactly right. I have NO plan! I have not read Friel's book. I need to.

I make it a point to be transparent, EXACTLY to get the feedback that you and Chasm have just given me.

My "training" regimen, so far, has been based on my perceptions of my weaknesses. Of course, my view of my performance is bound to be different than real world. I know I suck at climbing, but is that weakness so important that I should throw all my training time and resources at it? See what I'm getting at? I get what you're telling me, totally. Totally!

I'll get Friel's book. Immediately if not sooner! I can't afford a power meter. I use the "skewed" results that Strava gives me, and that's better than nothing I suppose. I love the suggestion of GoldenCheetah, and as soon as I get this post up, I'll Google it and see what I can find. I'll go to Amazon and get Friel's book, too.

I am serious. It's time to get real.

I can't thank you guys enough!

I just downloaded and installed GC on my mac. Now I'm going through the hoops of getting the data from my Garmin Edge 305 into GC (it won't read the 305 directly, apparently). It's going to be an "Import"/"Export" exercise from Garmin Connect, it looks like. Or, that's what I've been able to discover, so far. Heavens, me and my outdated stuff (and body)!

Okay - updated - got that working. Now I have to figure out how to get GC to calculate power.

It's a very important tab. I basically check four after every ride.

Ride Summary
Ride Plot
Critical Power
PM

Thanks for your great work.

Golden Cheetah is normally used with a power meter to calculate power metrics. I don't know if it will do it without one. You can train by HR, though, and use TRIMP. Plenty of people do.

What I always think about when I read your writings is, are you doing the right kind of workouts at the right times, and are you getting enough rest?

At a very basic level, you should at least consider doing hard day/easy day 6 days a week with one day off, with a rest week after every three weeks.

Sara, shovel is giving you good advice. Take your time, read Friel, plan for the longer term. Think of it this way. You are going to be riding your bike for the next twenty years. In that context, tomorrow's crit is about learning, and training, not about results or even personal bests. You're going to be fine. It really doesn't matter if you have a bad day.

GC will process power data from a PM, but it doesn't try to calculate it the way Strava does. It may use HR for PM purposes, but I'd have to check. TrainingPeaks does for sure, and is web-based. As an example of what the Performance Management Chart tells you, my Training Stress Balance was +16.5 Saturday and I crushed it. It was -13 today and I was dropped... twice!

Chasm, those are very kind, very sage, words of wisdom. I see you understand my impatience! I wish I did, or could control it. Thank you.

I'm just too tired right now to find the right words. I'm trying to say how lucky I am to have gotten to know you fellas, and again how lucky we are as a group to have such talent, experience, intelligence, and expertise right here, in this little corner of cyberspace.

I've ordered Friel. Tomorrow I'll fiddle around some more with GC and look into using TRIMP (what is that, anyway?). AzT mentioned TrainingPeaks - I'll look at that, too.

Most importantly, rather than entering data on my calendar after the fact, I'll pre-plan a week. And, stick to it.

I'll relax about at crit tomorrow and not try to kill it (or me)! Ha!!

Chasm, have a good night!

No, kill it. Just don't kill yourself all week before it unless that's part of a plan. That's all we're saying.

I don't know what TRIMP stands for, but it's a way of measuring effort via long term HR data. It's not as good as power, but it will do, and I'm pretty sure that you can calculate important stuff like TSB from it. TSB is what the PM graph tells you. A structured training program, within the very significant and constraining demands of your job, and the ability to measure your fitness, is what is missing for you. If you can at least make a dent in those two things, your results will improve. You have everything else, the drive, the determination, the willingness to listen to others and try new things, and the base fitness. This is why we enjoy helping you.

I hope you have a great race today Sara. Look, listen and learn. Results will come, it just takes time for the body and mind to get up to speed. Try to look at race progression as a journey and not a battle. I anticipated a 4 year plan to get up to race form when starting out at 55. It came to futition on the third season.

This is Golden Cheetah's definition:

[h=1]TRIMP[/h] TRIMP is an abbreviation for TRaining IMPulse. This term is quite generic but in general this metric accounts for both training intensity and volume based on heart rate based measures. The specific implementation in GoldenCheetah is the model of Morton/Bannister (citation needed) using the coefficients given by Green et al. (citation needed):
TRIMP = time * (AvgHR-RHR)/(MaxHR-RHR)*0.64*EXP(Ksex*(AvgHr-RHR)/(MaxHR-RHR)).
Here time is the workout duration in minutes, AvgHR is the mean HR for the workout, and Ksex is set to 1.92 for male or 1.67 for female. The constants MaxHR and RHR are the athletes maximum and resting heart rates as specified in the athlete tab of the options/preferences dialog.

It's a HR based version of the Training Stress Score (TSS) used with power meters, or more accurately, TSS is a power based version of TRIMP, since TRIMP came first. As everyone is saying, once you have a measure of your training load, it can be used to determine your training stress balance (TSB), which then is used to manage your training load and predict how fresh you will be for a race.

Trainingpeaks may be easier for you to use than GC, but you need the "premium" service, which is $119/year. WKO+ is a desktop version that adds even more features, costs $129 (one time), but isn't available for the Mac.

GC got funky for me with the last firmware release for my Garmin 500 - that may have been cleaned up by now, but I primarily use trainingpeaks anyway, because it is web based and I can access it from anywhere. I still haven't figure out how to make full use of WKO+. I need a lesson from Ex.

Fellas, thank you.

I just got up from a short sleep (we were out until 11PM, then another call came at 0300 - which we turned down, but we were now UP), so I'm groggy. I'll go home, take a nap, and then read what you said in some detail - when my brain is working better!

I did see the "kill it" part. Okay!!!

TrainingPeaks paid version lets you input future workouts and predict TSB, but WKO+ only lets you record workouts you have already completed. I have both (since I have a powermeter) but w/o the power meter, I would just get T.P. paid.

Can't wait to hear your race report. I'm racing tonight too. :)

Valygrl!! Thank you for the points! And the props.

Hey, can't wait to hear your race report!

With GC you can read .fit and .tcx files off the Garmin. Mount the Garmin as a USB device and point GC at it. You don't need to upload the data to GarminConnect first.

I have not had any problems with the Garmin 500 3.0 OS and GC, but I am using the 3.0 version of GC. There are developer builds available if you don't want to build your own. Even though it's pre-release it is very stable.

GC won't calculate power from HR.

I tried that, Eric. Unless I'm doing something wrong, my Mac doesn't see the Garmin (it's not visible as a "connected device" in Finder). I'll fiddle some more with it tomorrow. I'm up against the clock right now....

One tip with the Garmins is that it's a good idea to move the files from the Garmin to a folder on your hard drive. It speeds up Garmin processes to not have old files (doesn't have to sort through the files to find new ones for upload, nor does it have to convert their format for firmware upgrades), and it protects your data (assuming you backup your hard drive). My work flow is this:

1. Daily: Upload from Garmin to Strava using the Strava website
2. Daily: Upload to TrainingPeaks.com using their utility, which is a free download
3. Daily: Make post workout notations in the uploaded TraningPeaks.com workouts
4. Weekly: Pull the workouts into WKO+ (from withing WKO+). These will then include the notes.
5. Weekly: Move (not copy) the files from the Garmin to my hard drive
6. Weekly: Email the .wko files to my coach.

When I was also keeping GC up-to-date:
7. Import .fit files into GC from the hard drive

Doesn't take as long as it looks.

GC didn't really add value for me over WKO+, and I had to go to a pre-release to get it to read the new version of the Garmin 500 files. That release would leave a DOS window open anytime the program was up, and closing it closed the program. So I stopped keeping it up to date. Probably fixed now, but I'm already awash in data.

I see I'm going have to use my XP desktop if I go to TrainingPeaks. I have BootCamp on my Mac, but I don't like using it. That's just me.

The crit tonight didn't happen - well, for me it didn't. It was originally supposed to go off at 615, which would have been fine. Then it got pushed to 645. That was NOT fine. I did three circuits of the race track and one of the crit course instead.

When I signed up for the crit, I asked what the field mix was. Webcor Team, Rabobank Team, etc, etc, etc. "Am I the only woman?" "So far..." Those guys on those teams were all huge, fit, and had steeeeeellllly gazes. I'd have been munched. So what!

I did have a PB on one of the laps of the main track. I didn't expect that!

Well - that can be chalked up as a "noodle ride".

:) oh well. Just one race for everyone, huh? I would love to ride that race track some day.

TrainingPeaks (not WKO+) runs in a web browser, you can't use whatever is on your Mac? Get the free account, start using it and make sure it works, then buy the paid one if you like it. The paid version has a LOT more features (Performance Manager chart is crucial), it's really worth it if you don't have something else you are using.

My crit was uneventful. They race the SW4s and SM5s and juniors together. only 3 other women, about 20-25 cat 5 guys, one teenage junior who stayed with the bunch and 4 tiny little kids, like 11 year olds. I stayed with the top 5-10 guys, pace was a little slow this week, so I tried to get the teenager to go on a break with me (since he was riding aggressively) but we didn't really get away. Helped chase down a few attacks, then sat in near the front. It stayed pretty slow the whole race, no one wanted to work so on the last lap the whole pack was together -- I didn't want to sprint with the guys and take the risk of crashing, so I sat up half a lap from the end and let the guys all go. The other chicks were all lapped 2 or 3 times.

Wait, PB and Noodle Ride at the same time? What?

Ha! Yes, wellll...

I grabbed the wheel of a Rabobank fella (who I am sure was doing the noodling) and let him tow me around 1/2 of the track - even up the "hill". He picked it up after turn 11 (the front straight) and I had to go into the red to stay with him then (for me it was one of those hard OTS accelerations - he just "applied pressure"). I wasn't completely warmed up, it was getting late, so I backed out of it and left the track. I had no idea I was going so well until I uploaded the data a little while later. I hadn't intended to push it at all!

Yes - I "intended" to noodle!

Valygrl, your crit sounds like it was fun. There's nothing wrong with slow. It seems you got to work on tactics, do some chasing, and hey - you sat in at the front (which you probably do anyway)!

And yes, you'd enjoy that track. You can ride it if you like! We have a "Twilight Ride" out there once a month, it's hosted by a different club each time. They start at 5PM and go to ? and you can circulate as many times around the Laguna Seca Raceway as you care to. There is a release to be signed and a $10 cover charge - inexpensive! There are always "events" tied to the rides - crits, circuit races, slow rides, coasting races, etc - all non-sanctioned "fun" races. Sea Otter circuit races are held on the track, and road races start on it. It's a nice, smooth surface, very wide, and it has lots of "terrain features".

Duh on the TrainingPeaks! AzT told me it was web based. Yes, I'm shaking my head and sighing! RTFQ....

I set up a free account on TrainingPeaks. That's quite a detailed program! I entered what data I had for today. I'll use it for a week or so and see how things develop.

I am supposed to "rest" tomorrow. I'll try to, but I just got an email from a friend who wants to "do a ride, only about two hours". Tempting!!

Did you drope the hamer on them?

It could be said that some of us here take this amateur, hobby sport too seriously at times (guilty as charged). Sticking to a plan, with an end goal in mind, drives my training and racing. Once you have a plan, "A" races, performance goals, all the good stuff, patience and restraint will become important.

But you don't. You just want to get better in your first year of racing. Go enjoy your ride with your friend. Try not to crush him/her too badly.