jmX

I dont think he meant he was ever training using average speed (altho it did kinda sound like it), but an example of where you could do it is on a trainer and using average speed for subsections of a workout. Hold Xmph on trainerY for 20 minutes, rest at 10mph, and repeat...essentially what virtual power is in any of the standard trainer speed->power conversion program is.

Avg speed on the road really can only be useful during a post mortem to see just how your bike position vs wattage performed relative to the conditions.

roby

Bah, people like me who can't afford a power meter and "train" on their daily commute (competitive commuting) can use average speed over a long period of time to quantify gains. 4 years ago ~25km/hr avg speed. Nowadays 35+. I'm pretty confident that I haven't just started getting stronger and stronger tail winds, morning and night ever since my first rides 4 years ago... but can't be 100% sure... Send me a power meter and I'll gladly take your side and say avg speed is useless and pointless... probably will some day when I can afford one

hhnngg1

Just as a counterpoint to DaveWC's 'speed is totally worthless because it's so imprecise' scenario which compares rides with huge wind changes, here are my rides of an identical 50 mile loop (5500 ft of climbing) with pretty similar conditions aside from mildly warming temps from Jan to now, same RPE. FOr these rides I did not target a particular power - I don't target power on long weekend rides, only for structured weekday training but I try and ride as hard as I realistically can for the whole time without bonking out or dramatically slowing at the end.

Date / avg speed
1/13 14.6mph (probably a slight underball since this was my first return to 50milers after a few months)
2/13 14.9
2/13 15.4
2/13 16.0 (probably my peak last year)
3/13 16.2
3/13 16.5
4/13 17.0 (peaked for an April half ironman)
5/13 17.0 (I'll probably get a hair slower soon since I'm post-race and not training as hard)


Power showed the exact same trend, increasing with each ride. There was not a single date where power went up and average speed went down. Always together in tandem. Race results in HIM distance (56 mile ride segment) also dramatically improved, from about 12th/80 in age group, to 3rd/65 in age group in the more recent race (really was 2nd, but I lost 30 seconds clipping into my bike after the timing mat.) I don't think you can point at my average speed over a 6 month period and say the results were mostly random. They're clearly not.


I also am fairly confident that I could have gotten the exact same results training completely without a powermeter, and just using with Virtualpower with Trainerroad and doing long rides without powermeter on weekends. The only difference between that and my current setup is that I use the powermeter for indoor training with Trainerroad, so it makes it easier to compare indoor/outdoor efforts, but that's only for my mental interest, as I'm not targeting power at all on long weekend rides, and Trainerroad just requires you train at % of whatever your tested virtualpower or real power was. (My virtualpower is 50 watts higher than powermeter power for my Cycleops Fluid2, but the workouts feel identical with both power and virtualpower.)

Bob Dopolina 

On the surface the points in your earlier post have some merit; It is a very poor metric that can be used in a very general way for non-specific goals for those not terribly interested in maximizing their training.

Got it...except for the 100% legit part. You lost me there.

So if your training plan is ride more and ride hard why bother with a metric at all? I would say your Cat6 training plan would yield results equally as credible without it. Why not just judge fitness based on feeling? I feel fitter so I must be? Or maybe even desire. I want to be fitter so I will be.

If we factor in margin of error the "Feeling" and "Want" based training methods are probably about as effective as the "Ride more, ride hard average speed" method and you'd save $8.00US not having to buy a computer at all.

100% legit.

hhnngg1

And contrary to what the elitist cyclists think, you do not NEED a powermeter to train well. Ask any of the cyclists who were from the pre-powermeter era. I don't think you can call their training and results not-legit. The guys who are crushing you at the hammerfest rides will crush you with or without a powermeter, both in training and racing. Apparently some people think you're not training hard because you don't spend all your time riding based on %FTP and tracking NP and TSS like a scientist.

gregf83 

The cyclists from the pre-powermeter era also trained with power, they just didn't have a convenient powermeter on their handlebars. Instead they would time themselves on hill climbs and do repeats on hills. The riders who were winning took advantage of the latest technology and if powermeters were available they would have certainly been using them to optimize their training.

hhnngg1

Umm, that's exactly how I said one would train well without a powermeter as quote above?

That's a LOT closer to average speed training (ok, avg speed per interval) than it is to power based training. And still legit.

(I know fully well that if powermeters existed, pros back in the day would have used them, but that's not my point - the point was that you can train really, really well without a powermeter. The concept that you MUST have a powermeter to do 'real' training is total bunk as is the notion that there is no possible way to gauge your performance without a powermeter.)

Bob Dopolina 

Incorrect.

They just understand that ave spd is useless.

I raced for decades and won races without a PM. Back then it was HR. Even before that there were still structured intervals (like hill repeats) that did the trick. None of the training I did, and at no time while I was earning my National Coaching Certification did we talk about ave spd.

The closest we ever came was when talking about splits for a TT (in a competitive situation) but that wasn't really ave spd as it was a time goal. That may seem like semantics but its not.

I think I have personally asked you at least a half a dozen times to show me any kind of training program you could write using ave spd as your metric. How can you set it as a goal? How do you accurately monitor it over a ride when a few slight delays will through off your ave spd even if you are riding at a higher intensity over the course of the ride than previously?

Show me a base phase based on ave spd that doesn't require the rider to ride the EXACT SAME COURSE every day. How about a build phase? Or a taper?

Nothing to date.

gregf83 

You're changing your story now. It's perfectly legitimate to train without power and there are reasonable ways to do this with HR or PE or timing yourself up a hill.

What you don't seem to be understanding is that timing yourself up a hill or riding at a constant speed on a trainer is highly correlated to power hence a reasonable substitute. Average speed, on the other hand, isn't useful for training since it is only very weakly correlated to power. Sure if you do a 50 mile loop your times will go down with increasing power but you aren't training with speed or power in that case, you're just riding based on perceived exertion and measuring your speed after the fact. Your speed isn't providing any useful feedback while training.

Bob Dopolina 

You can have my ave spd when you pry it from my slow, olde hands!

DaveWC

I'm not assuming anything. The discussion is about the value of avg speed as a training tool. I say it's worthless. Obviously if you don't want to train, the value of it as a training tool doesn't matter to you. But if you do try to train to improve I don't see how you'd use avg speed to train. jmX gave the best answer imo, you're just moving goal posts.

I said that avg speed as imprecise? Really? Actually I said it was very accurate, just worthless. Conditions of the road change. Often drastically. Especially if you ride different courses. Avg speed is worthless if you ride in a real world scenario where temp, wind, elevation, traffic, traffic lights affect your ride. To some degree you agree with me or you wouldn't have bought a power meter.

dalava

I think we all agree, in this day and age, if you are actually training for something, use average speed as the only metric is idiotic.

Average speed, however, is not meaningless in itself.

ephin

I couldn't resist. Average speed is not useless. In fact, average speed is ALL that matters, in a race. The person on the podium is the one with the highest average speed – period. This person may not be the one who produced the most watts or the one with the highest power to weight ratio. Even if you eliminate team tactics and other race strategies (such as “the race of truth” time trials) the winner is still the one with the highest avg speed. For those who care to read, a little, I will tell you of my evolution in the sport and why I couldn’t resist commenting.

I got into cycling almost 7 years ago. At first, my goal was to lose weight and get in better shape. The weight loss was easy to track. The fitness increase, not quite as easy to track (read not as objectively tracked). I used average speed (ie time to cover the same commute distance - as most of my rides then were commutes) and perceived level of exertion as my primary gauges of fitness. The faster I went and the easier it seemed were, to me, pretty good indicators of increasing fitness. However, I realized there were limitations to this - the biggest of which was changing wind and traffic conditions (I could compensate some for the latter by programming my bike computer to not count time stopped at lights / below 3mph. However, even this wasn't perfect as there were some lights/intersections when I'd slow down to time the light / traffic situation as opposed to stopping.).

Motivated by getting more and more into cycling and a desire to take my fitness to the next level (ie "training"), I splurged on a power meter 3 years ago. I’d been reading more and more on everything cycling and I thought this a wise investment. With one, I could more precisely track my actual power output and that surely would be a better gauge of improving fitness than what I had been doing. For a while, I was all about the power numbers. Trying to achieve higher and higher 20min efforts and max power efforts. This definitely added a dimension to my riding and gave me something to shoot for on many rides (ie can I beat my old record). However, it didn't take long for me to discover that this, too, had its limitations. For example, I remember one day when I had planned to ride to my usual 20min stretch of road to see if I could beat my record. However, that particular day, I wasn't feeling very well physically. As a working, family man, I don't get too many chances to do additional rides (above commutes, ie, and my power meter is not on my commuting bike), so I figured I'd do it anyway rather than bag it. What do you know, I posted my best wattage yet. It didn’t take long before the novelty of the power meter wore off. It was getting harder and harder to “beat my records” and the motivation to even try was waning. The power meter was becoming little more than an expensive accessory. I continued to commute, however, determined to not regain that 35lbs I had lost.

After a bit of a lull, I eventually was motivated again to “take my cycling to the next level”. I decided I’d try some of this group riding thing I’d been reading so much about. I’ll never forget those first few group rides. Feeling intimidated by all these guys who looked like SERIOUS cyclists and had bikes easily 3x-10x more expensive than mine, the musical mechanical sounds of spinning chains and humming carbon wheels, the fear of overlapping wheels or causing a pileup.... ah, good memories. Anyway, I adapted / progressed quite nicely (IMO). I got more and more comfortable holding a wheel. I eventually progressed to taking pulls. Even got to the point of splintering off with the hammerfest group and taking some final sprints. This group riding was definitely taking my riding to the next level. It also opened up a whole bunch of new training areas to focus on (such as “conserving” energy - pacing). Funny thing happened with my power numbers. I wan’t necessarily posting better average power numbers, but I saw some trends in gradually increasing normalized power numbers and surging ability. I found myself hitting some high wattage numbers and not even realizing it until afterwards. I was definitely liking this group riding. I sought out an even faster group to ride with (the local racing team’s Tuesday criterium training ride). This had the steepest learning curve yet. For the first time, I was getting spit out the back and sometimes getting yelled at! I would disappear temporarily a few times but would eventually lick my wounds and return. I can proudly (for me, anyway) say that I now can keep up / hold my own on those practice crit rides. Not bad, considering, I’m one of the oldest guys there (I’m almost 51yo) and some of these guys ride on college racing teams.

Strava also changed and improved the way I ride. Like Stan on South Park, I was reluctant to get sucked into this social networking thing called Strava. I finally caved and gave it a try. As anyone who uses Strava knows, average speed is “KOM” (ie the one with the highest avg speed for a segment gets the coveted KOM title, not the person with the highest power). I now found myself paying much more attention to avg speed and less so to power. As a consequence, I paid more attention to “aero” factors and positioning and again to pacing. Strava is great because once you’ve used it a while, you become familiar with where segments are on various roads where you ride and you’ve got all these incentives to accomplish Strava achievements on any given ride. Again, avg speed is KOM – not power. By using Strava, I’ve continued to be motivated to improve and work towards bagging more and more KOMs. When you see that you’re not far off the time of some riders you know to be very strong, you’re really motivated to try to beat their time. Probably the area I’ve improved most due to Strava is “time trialing” like efforts. In the past, I considered this a weakness of mine (as I’m not that big and they say time trialing favors the bigger, stronger riders). This thinking was also very convenient for me as I much prefer short efforts like sprints/surges and shorter hills (which I treat like sprints/surges) than a dreaded long, steady, sufferfest efforts like time trials. Thanks to Strava, I’ve slowly but surely been tweaking my aero positioning, pacing, and mental strength (ie ability to suffer through a longer TT like effort) and have bagged a few TT like KOMs in my area. As a result of Strava, I’ve definitely become a stronger rider when group riding. I can take longer pulls AND I can deal with headwinds better (since I’ve tweaked my aero positioning).

One other thing I finally did this year (don’t laugh). I finally read a couple books on training and training with a power meter. I’ve added (probably safer to say I’m attempting to add) some periodization strategies to my training and I’m paying attention to things like core strength, rest/recovery, and nutrition much more than previously. While my VO2 max / FTP seems to be steadily decreasing each year (which, from what I hear, is to be expected after age 40), I’ve never been more competitive (read faster) nor more satisfied with my progress. Despite that, my max power continues to improve for some reason. Maybe I’m a natural sprinter. In any event, I’m slowly but surely learning (and achieving) that there’s a lot more to being the best cyclist I can be than just posting bigger and bigger power numbers. I’ll gladly trade lower power numbers for more KOMS / town line sprint victories. I feel (and if you can get past the baldness and extra skin) and look fitter than I ever have. Yeah cycling. Avg speed rules!

gregf83 

Perhaps where you live, but in all the races I've been in it's the one who crosses the finish line first. If it's close they use a photo of the finish line. Avg speed is neither measured nor used to determine the winner. If it's a large race the riders at the back cover more distance. If it's a crit or circuit race not everyone does the same number of laps.
[/pedant]

Seattle Forrest

People are dreaming up ways to terraform Mars. Surely, there must be some way to build a hill in Canada!

DaveWC

While I was riding today I was trying to think how someone would use avg speed for training. I mean seriously, I can see that you might record or track your avg speed as a reminder of your best ride, but beyond that what value does it have and how could you use it for training? Here's my riding from a typical week:

Mon - recovery ride
Tue - short intervals - about 20 one minute intervals followed by a quick ride home at whatever speed I've got left
Wed - endurance ride - pick a pace that challenges me on that day & maintain it for the ride
Thu - longer intervals - 5, 10 or 20 minute intervals totalling 30-40 minutes
Fri - recovery ride
Sat - often I go to a relative's place that's 100 kms away. Sometimes the wind is with me, sometimes against. My speed fluctuates wildly as a result
Sun - same ride in the reverse direction, sometimes the wind has changed & I'll get it in my face both ways, sometimes it's with me, or whatever. The speed is all over the place on one way rides but the power is consistent.

So I don't know how I would ever be able to evaluate any of those rides (possibly Wed) from an avg speed pov. I don't know how I'd structure those rides using avg speed. So I don't see how you could train using avg speed. I figure without an HR or PM I'd just go on RPE and do the same workouts, but avg speed wouldn't enter into any aspect of the training.

Seattle Forrest

You must have got lost on your way to the racing forum.

Bob Dopolina 

No clue.

Tell me how to TRAIN using ave spd. Show me a TRAINING PLAN using ave spd.

I have asked this question of those touting ave spd as some kind of magic training shortcut and no-one has answered it yet.

For it to even be slightly meaningful the rider needs to ride the SAME course under the SAME conditions every time. Unless you are on a track this is not possible and therefore the metric is mostly useless.

ephin

Wow, tough crowd. I've heard roadies can be snooty

Bob Dopolina 

Incorrect.

Not snooty; Elitist, dickhead arseholes.

LowCel 

Incorrect. We are elitist, dichead arseholes that don't care about average speed.

Bob Dopolina 

I stand corrected.

LowCel 

o