Somebody recently brought to my attention this paragraph in Fitzgerald’s book:
“A number of years ago Stephen McGregor, an exercise scientist at Eastern Michigan University, co-developed a set of mathematical tools to quantify the physiological stress imposed by swimming, cycling, and running workouts. One of these tools, called Chronic Training Load (CTL), is a rolling average of an athlete’s training stress, including duration and intensity of workouts, over the previous several weeks. Thousands of endurance athletes around the world, including many world-class athletes, track their CTL with McGregor’s software.”
The sad part is, the publisher is VeloPress, which published our book…
I found it strange that the racing weight calculator doesn’t differentiate between endurance sports. It suggests a racing weight for me of 132 lb. whether I’m a distance runner, swimmer, or triathlete.
From Run with Power, also by VeloPress, “Now we can begin to measure economy and efficiency, two essential training concepts that will greatly improve your training. Briefly, economy is a measure of oxygen usage—how many meters of distance you are getting from each milliliter of oxygen. Efficiency is a measure of how much speed you are getting for the watts you are producing.” sigh
No, but they employ them, and in my experience VeloPress has some good ones (Renee Jardine in particular). That misattribution, however, is something that apparently fell through the cracks.
Assume for a moment that most people in the forum don’t know the specifics of who you are and what you have done but know that you are an accomplished scientist…What exactly is wrong with that paragraph?
My work was plagiarized by a WSJ article 12 years ago. I did an interview with a writer on over-exposure to certain mortality risks for a couple of insurance companies; he passed but sent the notes to another writer who published a front page article with zero attribution. I was pissed. Wait. I am still pissed!
Assume for a moment that most people in the forum don’t know the specifics of who you are and what you have done but know that you are an accomplished scientist…What exactly is wrong with that paragraph?
You mean aside from the fact that I am the one who developed the PMC approach it describes, and Hunter Allen and Kevin Williams are the ones who developed the software that is mentioned? Absolutely nothing at all.
Rather than being pissed, though, I am more disappointed/amused. But, as I told Steve, I blame the mistake on Al Gore for inventing the internet.
Next you’re going to tell us you developed normalized power, TSS, power profiling, quadrant analysis, the Performance Manager, the WKO4 power-duration model, auto-phenotyping, elevation-corrected power, and GPR, GPA, KI, and MEPF metrics to describe pedaling. Did I miss anything?
Next you’re going to tell us you developed normalized power, TSS, power profiling, quadrant analysis, the Performance Manager, the WKO4 power-duration model, auto-phenotyping, elevation-corrected power, and GPR, GPA, KI, and MEPF metrics to describe pedaling. Did I miss anything?
The misattribution should be hung on Fitzgerald, who for a journalist by training has a pretty bad history of misattribution, short quoting and pick and choose for his “references”. So I am not surprised. On another note from this book, much of the premise is garbage anyways. He seems to think he is an expert on nutrition (with a weekend nutrition cert) and sport psychology, oddly both of those things generally require advanced degrees to be an expert. Much of his premises are a joke and his Race weight calculator will always tell you to lose more weight no matter what variables you change. Additionally, there is NO metric to nail down someone’s “race weight” I’ve kept a pretty solid database on athlete weights an performances and it is not a linear model. So Fitzgerald is not so much for the real science thing.
What this book does do though, is trigger athletes with eating disorders, make suggestions about unhealthy habits to those who do not have ED’s but are looking for any way healthy or not to improve. Its pretty much crap. So a misattribution is a “are you friggin kidding me” that pretty much anyone who pays attention knows are Andy’s models and academic/practical work means Fitzgerald sat through a talk where Steve presented this stuff (most likely from Coggan and Allen referenced work) and didn’t know it was not McGregor’s work. So pretty much par for the course from Fitzgerald.
Finally someone who agrees with me on this. I always thought this book was a bunch of “no-shit” ideas churned up into arbitrary rules and theories. Ive listened to interviews with Fitzgerald and he comes off as a contrarian know it all. I am surprised more issues like this aren’t raised concerning his work.
Next you’re going to tell us you developed normalized power, TSS, power profiling, quadrant analysis, the Performance Manager, the WKO4 power-duration model, auto-phenotyping, elevation-corrected power, and GPR, GPA, KI, and MEPF metrics to describe pedaling. Did I miss anything?
I will say that Vigil specified those “ilevels” in Road to the Top, as did Canova a bit in his marathon training manual with Rosa. hence the reason, as a runner, I had planned Canova style under-over workouts with AeT-low 80%, AeT-mid 82%, AeT high 84%, AT-low 87% and AT high 92% of maxHR. But, I like Coggan’s chart better - never really liked the Z1-Z6/Z7 charts as they just weren’t specific enough.
Never been a fan of Fitzgerald, BUT Ironwar is a great book - he researched the shit out of that book! The book could have benefited by the omission of his attempt to talk about running mechanics and economy, though his talk of the central governor theory was accurate enough and added substance. Other than that, he should stay away from self-help books, from what I’ve seen.
I will say that Vigil specified those “ilevels” in Road to the Top, as did Canova a bit in his marathon training manual with Rosa.
No, he (they) did not. The iLevels are based on specific, cogently-chosen points on the curve fitted by the WKO4 power-duration model. People have long individualized their training based on their personal bests at various distances/durations, but it’s not the same thing.
