What improvements?
Obviously if you slow down your cadence your heart rate is going to be lower. That is not necessarily better.

Its' the Trump school of thought ....that we're given a specific number of heart beats and once we use them up we die;)

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Doesn’t anyone read my posts or all the testing we recently posted? Anyhow, it isn’t obvious reducing cadence reduces HR if at the same time one increases ones power. Dave has increased his power about 10% with this change with a slightly lower HR. Tell me you wouldn’t take that change!

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

"You" shouldn't be allowed to post, Frank.

And Dave didn't increase his power by 10% by changing cadence or crank length. The fact that you two believe that is why nobody is taking any of this seriously.

The longer these posts go on, the more ridiculous this all becomes. I can't stop watching. This is some of the most bullshit testing. This stuff should be on some David Avacado Wolfe meme.

What I would be curious to know is the lactate levels in his blood if those decreased or not and how that would affect his famed run. My suspicion is that yes he can push a higher power however it is probably costing him more in that his lactate levels would increase and probably hurt his run.

If you haven’t noticed I am not posting. Dave is simply reposting my thoughts to him (since the protocol is mine and I understand it better than anyone) and being honest in letting you all know those are my thoughts and not his.

That having been said I am curious as to how you would interpret the Martis data regarding whether there has been any real power change or not since starting this effort and if so how to explain it. How should that data be interpreted?

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I agree it would be nice to have lactate numbers also but, like oxygen consumption, Dave does not have that ability. My guess is few would believe them anyhow unless they fit in with their bias. I am curious as to why you think his lactate levels would be elevated. While it is true he is at a higher power it is also true his average HR is LOWER. Dave was also concerned that a lower cadence on the bike would adversely affect his run. However, he is not seeing that effect so far in his training runs so he is gaining confidence this will not be the case. My own belief is his run will be affected most by how much energy is left in the tank after the bike and not by what cadence got him to T2. We will find out this spring I guess.

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

For me, this testing just keeps getting more interesting.

For the folks who think lower RPM will impact running, fair question, and a fair concern I have. But, as I have said talking to me bike stud friends, if I can improve my bike by 3 minutes, and lose 2 minutes on the run, having a net 1 minute faster race would be well worth it!!!!

The real test with all these changes for me is the Martis/Brockway IMLT loop I made in 2013. Since I have over 4 years of data riding this very very tough 14.23 mile course, I can look at where I have been, and where I was. Before these changes, I was at like 1:05 ish and getting slower. I just had no idea what was going on other than I was getting older and I guess that is just the way it was going to be.

I have ridden this test ride now twice in 3 days, since I mentally really want to see what is going on. Plus, since it is so hard, and folks say doing tough hill repeats is good training, I am probably now going to ride this a few times a week, since I can get in my hill work with my 100% safe, repeatable indoor training rides.

As you can see from the spreadsheet, I just had the 2 fastest rides that I have ever had!! And I just had the fastest ever this morning, and I was pushing 150mm cranks with my seat still be too low, but it as high as I can make it now, and keeping a focus on trying to push hard at 70 rpm anytime I could on flats or going up. (The 18% stuff I am out of the seat pushing like 45 rpm)

So going from rides with my 200mm setup and higher RPM at 1:07, to now 2 months later just doing a 55:36 on 150mm cranks, I am just blown away. And to have faster times even though I am 4 years older at 60, well, folks can say what they want, but boy am I excited to see if these results translate into faster race times starting in 2 months. If not, at least I tried new stuff based on data. If I do, well, .. :)

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I would love to have folks who have a computrainer or velotron that want to ride my martis test ride and give me feedback on their time, and if they think this ride
is hard. Maybe I am just a wuss.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Hi frank, haven’t chatted since you were kicked off the CN forums...that was fun :)

It is much more likely that a better fit and locking the cranks is resulting in better power numbers. Dave had a shit fit and riding those ridiculous unlocked cranks is a massive energy suck. Hint, they require effort around 360deg and don’t act as a counterweight ;-)

Also, it isn’t clear what level of intensity Dave is riding. He always said he never pushes in training, only LSD work. So, it’s confusing why he couldn’t ride 57min on these in past years (assuming his fitness is equal, as you are also assuming). He also switched back to 175 cranks with higher pedal speed and no ill effects, so I think your pedal speed claims are relatively unfounded.

Finally, without any fitness testing or actual race data, this is all sorta pointless. I would be shocked if Dave has an FTP of 230, that would make these efforts at 95%+ and probably higher intensity than he races. Just so many random variables, like a new seat today??? If these are actually max efforts, it’s curious that his HR is so low. I’d look at doing some proper tests for max hr and threshold power to rule out uncertainty in that area. Of course, would also be much better if Dave had regular fitness testing to illuminate any possible changes in ‘efficiency’ vs basic fitness changes.

Overall, your ‘protocol’ and massive bias is rather pathetic and pointless. You’ve ‘learned’ what everyone already knows and are trying to use pseudo science and fancy words to sell snake oil...can’t teach an old dog new tricks I guess.

You guage how hard an effort is based on your current fitness level and the metrics of the ride...% of max HR, % of FTP, RPE, % of vo2max, etc. It doesn’t matter what the course profile is. It could be a flat TT with a tailwind and you still collapse from exhaustion at the end.

Do you understand anything about training and all these metrics you and frank are ‘analyzing’???

You may be onto something, but data is still limited.

The problem is that you only have one data point with 175mm cranks since you started, which means that you have to use old data, and you aren't in the same physical condition as you were a year ago. You may be better, may be worse, may be the same, but that still needs to be controlled for.

looking at R-squares going back to 2016- 0.5 correlation between average rpm (which is an actual rpm, not a guess) and "pulse power", which I'm assuming is your method of normalizing power vs effort? .5 correlation between crank length and pulse power, and .6 between pedal speed and pulse power.

However, if you isolate a specific crank length and similar timeframe (during which your fitness presumably didn't change much), then the correlation disappears. r square between pedal speed and only pulse power drops to 0.2 for 175mm cranks from Oct 30 2016 to Jan 22 2017. for 150's its only 0.02 - i.e. no correlation whatsoever....

My GUESS is that the improvements in power at a particular HR are due primarily to fitness, not crank length or pedal speed, but keep on keepin' on. You may have something, you may not...

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The problem with your data is that it has no indication of effort level. It doesn't appear that you rode all these Martis courses all-out or at least at the same effort level.

A summary of your data:

2013 Avg time: 58:18
2017 Avg time: 57:13

2017 Nov 9 time: 1:00:41 HR 122
2017 Nov 29 time: 55:36 HR 137

Both improvements are likely just due to your excitement over testing. The recent fast time on the 29th was done at a much higher HR than Nov 9. Did your efficiency go down or did you just ride harder this morning.

Bottom line is there is little objective information to be gleaned from your test data.

But as Andrew Coggan says 'testing is training and training is testing' so keep going.

One other point - If you're riding parts of the course at 45RPM you clearly have some speed to gain just by changing your gearing. 45RPM is too low to be climbing for any length of time.

Pulse power R squares of the Marti's rides from September '17 to Nov 29, 2017.

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Didn't attach the file, but I did have time to run some stats on the data series of the descending RPM tests - looking at HR, pedal speed, RPM crank length. "pulse power" wasn't calculated since power is constant

I found that R square of HR to pedal speed is 0.45 (within a range of 70-90 rpms, since you aren't realistically going to be racing at 110rpms plus), although we don't have actual rpms, just estimates. HR vs crank length its just 0.16 and vs rpm its 0.25.

If you include all rpms the correlation of HR to pedal speed increases to .74 (quite a strong correlation), but HR vs crank length decreases even further to 0.12.

Which kinda speaks to what everyone is saying. As long as you can pedal the thing, i.e. aren't getting blocked at the top of the pedal stroke, crank length itself doesn't matter, it's a fit tool.

What your testing is pointing to is to figure out what crank length will work for you in the aero position and then just use that, and pedal at an appropriate RPM.

What happens on your test loop if you don't see RPM's and just go with whatever feels comfortable.?

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It is much more likely that a better fit and locking the cranks is resulting in better power numbers. Dave had a shit fit and riding those ridiculous unlocked cranks is a massive energy suck. Hint, they require effort around 360deg and don’t act as a counterweight ;-)

Also, it isn’t clear what level of intensity Dave is riding. He always said he never pushes in training, only LSD work. So, it’s confusing why he couldn’t ride 57min on these in past years (assuming his fitness is equal, as you are also assuming). He also switched back to 175 cranks with higher pedal speed and no ill effects, so I think your pedal speed claims are relatively unfounded.

Finally, without any fitness testing or actual race data, this is all sorta pointless. I would be shocked if Dave has an FTP of 230, that would make these efforts at 95%+ and probably higher intensity than he races. Just so many random variables, like a new seat today???

Overall, your ‘protocol’ and massive bias is rather pathetic and pointless. You’ve ‘learned’ what everyone already knows and are trying to use pseudo science and fancy words to sell snake oil...can’t teach an old dog new tricks I guess.”

Discussing controversial topics is always fun to me (keeps the mind agile) but apparently not to everyone. It used to be called debate and could be kept civil. Not anymore I guess.

I really don’t believe the “unlocked” PC’s are the energy suck you think they are. They are, of course, when people first get on them but after they adapt there should be no difference because they have learned to pedal the entire circle whether locked or unlocked. Luttrell also suggests the opposite of what you believe. Dave has been on the PC’s now for perhaps 15 years. He should be well adapted, much more than those in the Luttrell study. What you describe simply isn’t the experience of most.

I guess you could attribute his 10% power improvement from last year to this to a better fit but this just doesn’t wash with me. I would be surprised if anyone has ever demonstrated (in a study) power changes as much as 1% from a better fit. Yet, you want to attribute a 10% improvement to this change? Can you point us to any work in this area demonstrating this is reliably possible? One more point here. His Martis test, which is where these power improvements are being measured, is a hill fest so is done mostly out of the aero position so “fit” should be much less of a issue here. If you believe it is please point me to where it has been shown that fit can make that much of a difference.

Why does one need fitness testing to recognize improvement? If one doesn’t do formal fitness testing is it impossible to know if one is better or not? While it might be useful if we had historical fitness testing we don’t. The fact that there is no previous fitness testing (his race results suggest he is in top shape however) means it is impossible to go back and get some for comparison to where he is now. So, this lack makes it easy for you to poo poo these results. But, Dave has tons of historical data (I posted about 200 Martis ride results) and HR is a pretty good metric for effort so these recent changes seem real. If Dave were on anything other than a Velotron one could question calibration but he isn’t so that is off the table as an explanation.

Anyhow, my protocol is what it is. Dave has posted what we have done and his results. He and I are happy with what we have learned so far and excited to see what happens when he translates this information to actual racing. You (and everyone else) are welcome to ignore this because, well because…. it is me and Dave doing it!!! Indeed, that does seem like a good reason to ignore this. Or, if this is important, you might find yourself behind those who don’t ignore it. Pay your money and make your choices.

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Yep, I train all year long. I try not to get out of shape all year long. I race pretty much all year long. The only thing I stop is swimming for 5 months, which shows in my slow swim times.

From Frank Day


I am a little confused by your conclusions after your analysis. Pulse power is my method of evaluating efficiency at the output we are testing at, not normalizing power vs effort. Anyhow, you are finding a pretty good correlation between pulse power and pedal speed but not when looking at a specific crank length in a small time frame. Not sure what that means but the whole idea of this effort is that crank length doesn’t matter, only pedal speed does, at least when sitting upright. Your analysis would seem to support that idea and support the results of Martin. If that is the case then why are you then saying all this work means nothing and your guess is the improvement seen is due to fitness changes. One other thing that goes against your assessment is, I think, Dave trains differently than most. He seems to take zero time off, doing pretty much the same thing every day of the year. It would seem his fitness never changes significantly. Dave can comment on this better than I but that is my impression.

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I am using a 34/32 on the 18.6% grade. I do not think 45 is that bad since this grade is the exception, not the norm. What do you spin a 18.6% grade at?

The effort on the Nov 9th was when I had no idea what was going to happen with Martis since I expected just the same bad numbers. I did not push things since I was learning how to handle the testing course with a different bike setup. Since then, I have done a much job attacking the hills, both, up and down. And so far is sure feels a lot better pushing on the flatter stuff at 70ish rpm since I can see my power numbers being much higher, with less fatigue, vs spinning at higher RPM.

Again, I am seeing real, controller, repeatable numbers. Power, HR, RPM, etc. And I repeat over and over again so getting many data points. Why, when I have seen NO one try to do the same stuff, do folks go negative when they have NO real idea, as I did before this testing, on what changes impacted my biking in what ways.

From Frank Day


You are attributing this improvement to his excitement over testing? A test he has done about 200 times over 4 years? Since testing on shorter cranks he has, essentially, had no “bad” results. His worse result was Nov 9 and that was his first test on short cranks and my guess he was being tentative not knowing what to expect. After that first one there was a big jump and he continues to improve as he gains familiarity with the feel. Anyhow, the results are the results and people will interpret the reasons differently. Yours though doesn’t make much sense to me.


Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

First, I want to thank you for doing this work, something I do not have the knowledge nor tools to do myself.

I am not sure what can be learned from this. 6 data points with a very tiny spread means the daily variation in performance will have a huge effect on results. Plus we know that power is an independent variable regarding measured efficiency so that first test, with the markedly lower power is skewing everything. Also, I think that first day is an outlier because, as I said earlier, I think he approached that ride differently than the others. I would like to see that day eliminated from your analysis as both the highest and lowest PP have essentially the same pedal speed. That first result is messing everything up. If you rerun the result I would expect a R^2 correlation to pedal speed to be 0.5 or so, not bad for 5 data points. More useful, I think would be to also include the data from last year so substantial differences in pulse power can be evaluated. Didn’t you already do that and see a much better correlation, like 0.6? But, even more useful, would be if you only included the older tests that were around 220 watts so the power variable was having a smaller influence on the results.

One thing your analysis does demonstrate is that power is another important metric in the efficiency equation. Makes my choosing to do my analysis at a set and constant power look smart me thinks.

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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I am a little confuse. All of Dave’s ascending and descending tests were done at a fixed power of 200 watts. That should make pulse power more relevant, not less, since the independent variable of power is not influencing the result.

Further, I agree, that crank length is pretty much irrelevant when riding upright (which is how all that early testing was done) as long as pedal speed is controlled. Your analysis supports that. However, your data strongly supports the proposition I started with that pedal speed matters with a correlation of 0.74. The problem this is a triathlon forum and no one races in the upright position. This testing was done only to get baseline data in order to better judge what we got after going to doing aero testing which we have just started. When we do the aero testing my guess is that crank length will begin to matter.

Regarding what testing point to determne best crank length will depend upon the aero testing, which we have just started. Crank length has little impact on results when riding upright, as the early testing has shown. However, we suspect it will have an impact when going aero. My choice would be the longest crank that has the least impact on his power when aero as that should also perform well when upright.

Frank Day

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Why don't you do some testing of PC mode vs non-PC mode and show us that it makes no difference? We already know that Dave can't sustain higher pedal speeds in PC mode, so I'd wager a guess that he isn't really that well adapted to riding uncoupled cranks.

To answer your other questions, I wouldn't attribute 10% power change to bike fit, just like I wouldn't attribute it to a shift of a few % in pedal speed. Look at the recent 175mm test, not much difference in pedal speed, but lots of difference in pulse power compared to previous tests. Like I've said in my previous posts, there is so much being changed and so little data to contribute to attributing cause to anything. With no fitness benchmarks, it makes it hard to rule out simple fitness changes or aging changes to the test results. Changes in bike fit, changes in bike components, an unknown effort level for this 'test' (one question that Dave is either directly avoiding or has absolutely no clue how to answer), etc etc.

PS...you were kicked off CN for your uncivil behavior, arrogant 'sigh' comments on every post, baiting and generally being a douche...so you can save the lecture and soap box time.

Tell Frank it's called excel...takes about 2min to get the values. Makes me wonder how rigorous the testing and analysis process is if he doesn't even understand basic concepts like this.

I just wanted to thank you kind souls for keeping this thread going. It's a Festivus for the rest of us.

around 75rpm or so- up to mid 80's