my ftp is around 282 so I set my alarm at 300. I am happy to be up to FTP, but don't want to spend much time above FTP even on steep hills in an Ironman. It beeps and reminds you. Just make sure you silence it on training rides or all your road buddies will be saying, WHat is that sound!!! because they push me way above FTP.

Best Bike Split will actually produce a Garmin power file that will (based on the course, your inputs/config, etc) alert you throughout the course of the power target for that section . I used this for a HIM at the start of the season, and it was quite helpful, even with alarms ever 5 minutes or so on a very, very hilly course (Black Bear). The free membership lets you get a few of these downloads to try out the function.

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Cheers,
Sam

If you are pacing anywhere from 60%-70% of FTP you are in Zone 2. I would set the upper limit of intensity in Zone 4 which would also be your match burning zone.

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"Just don’t abandon everything you’ve ever learned because of something someone said on the internet." - Eric McGinnis

Is that the one where it gives you intervals? For my 56 mile course, it has 88 intervals ranging from :09 seconds to 11:34. That would drive me crazy.

I just took a look at BBS - I'd love to generate this for IMFLA, but they just changed the course... Damn..

I think that for IMFLA there is so little change elevation wise that you could use the usual percent FTP rules without too much problem. I find BBC really helpful for hilly or technical courses.

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Cheers,
Sam

Working on it now. Here's the RideWithGPS route.

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/10322660


For some reason when importing into BBS I'm getting "Elevation Data is too low." I've tried both elevation methods.

My problem is opposite. My training is all hilly and technical, holding an FTP target is going to be a challenge.

I ran the predictor for a race I've already I've done and it was only 2 minutes off on an Iron distance.

Still would be curious to see how it performs IRL.

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---Patrick

IMMT2014 IMFLA2015
IMMT703-2012/2014 IMFLA703-2013

Ok should be there now. Public course IMFL 2015.

On the discussion of hills vs flats I've started using a screen on my Garmin showing only Power and Lap NP. I try to keep my Lap NP consistent throughout the ride. I took out the zero's in data averaging simply because the only time I'm not pedaling is on a downhill. With the zero's left in it was dropping / skewing my NP downward so that I was having to ride harder to keep my NP up. After taking them out my predictions vs BBS have been almost spot on regardless of elevation, wind, etc. Pretty amazing.

We have noticed this lately we are working on a bandaid fix. We get a few -9999 elevations from RideWith I think if they don't have elevation data it's putting that in as a placeholder.

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Founder: BestBikeSplit
Amazonian

For whatever reason running it through http://www.bikemap.net to generate a new GPX file seemed to solve the problem.

The way that I've done flat courses during the last few years is I auto-lap my Garmin every 5 miles.

I have power and average lap power displayed on the screen and I strive to keep the lap average near my goal. Since it resets every 5 miles the lap average is relatively recent.

For Hilly courses like Triple T I keep an eye on the power going up hills (try not to exceed CP), coast when going faster than 30mph on the downhills and ride a little lower than 80% on the flats.

That's awesome dude. Do you work with BBS?

New course saves me 2 minutes. lol :)

I'll drop another 4 if I can lose 10 pounds before the race, and even faster still if I shoot for 78% intensity. haha.

Great tool!

In theory what BBS does is good. At IMMT it was way off for me and became very annoying - I was using the 'certified' bike course. The 'ride' ended at 103 miles with a congratulatory message - not quite!

For a HIM the upper limit has been 110% on the steepest grades and for IM trying not to exceed FTP.

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Nope. Just a huge fan of a great tool.

I agree sometimes the power course files work awesome other times not as well. We don't have access to the logic Garmin uses for it's courses but tend to see more issues with courses with lots of out and back and or multiple loops. We are trying to get some better information on how the internals work on their course logic (as well as hoping for a Data Field to keep Goal Power on screen as opposed to a notification). We also looked at letting user define the number of intervals you want (weighted average by closest power targets) so that you don't get 88 messages but maybe just choose 10 and have it selected the most appropriate ones. This is definitely a feature I'm trying to make better ;)

As far as Max power goes sometimes you have to go over FTP but you can also adjust that to 100% if you would like. The max power restriction will trump the minimum climb speed setting (most of the time). It's a trade off between what we have as a minimum climb speed (eventually will be dictated by gear ratio) where you won't fall over. Once we add race analysis we will start to help fine tune these settings based on previous races to help with things we don't currently expose to the user as settings (gradient (both + and -) and speed where athletes come out of aero for example).

We are trying to get there!

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Founder: BestBikeSplit
Amazonian