A little while ago, I wrote something for a new friend who like the idea of a power meter, but couldn’t afford one. So I wrote up my observations about riding and racing with a PM that would help just about anyone. After the recent discussions on Powermeters, I figured some of you might find this useful.
Tips for riding and racing (based off observations from a power meter)
Stay in the saddle. Riding out of the saddle creates big power spikes. Think of it as a glass of water. You want to pour the water out in one steady stream over the length of the course. You can do this pretty well on a flat course; it’s much more difficult with hills. Getting out of the saddle pours out a lot of water and will hurt you later when you run out of juice. This is a good argument for using lower gears so that you can sit and spin. Except when you are coasting and resting your sore backside, it should stay on the seat. Ride easy at the beginning of long bike legs (anything longer than 40K). A power meter will show you that when you are fresh, perceived exertion can’t be trusted. You can easily put out a very high output and it will seem effortless. Even wearing a heart rate monitor won’t help, because you will still be going too hard for the corresponding heart rate. If you don’t pay attention, you can burn a lot of energy early on and fade badly by the end. It won’t help your run much either. If you do use a heart rate monitor, remember to set yourself different limits throughout the ride. Early on it might be 10 beats lower than what you normally average at race speed. Once you are a quarter of the way into your race distance, your heart rate will have climbed and then stabilized to your normal race heart rate. Don’t waste your energy trying to ride faster beyond about 25 miles per hour. Unless you average 25 mph on your ride splits, it doesn’t make any sense to ride hard on downhills, and that’s the only time you will be riding faster than 25 mph. Watching the power meter shows that it takes big increases in wattage to make small speed improvements when you pass 25 mph, so use that time to rest your legs and bring your heart rate down. This is also another pretty good argument for lower gearing. Not too many people really need a 52-55 tooth chainring. Using a 110mm bolt circle (now called compact) crankset allows you to have a 34 up front. Combine that with a 23 or 25 and you have a pretty low gear. Save your energy for going up where it will make a lot more difference.
These seem kind of simple, but those are the biggest takeaways from riding with a meter.
Chad
P.S.
A good addition to the above info combines nos. 1 and 3 into a strategy for riding hills efficiently. As you approach a hill you should maintain your nice high rpm you were using on the flat. Don’t try to maintain speed because then you will be cranking out too much power. Keep your hands on the shift levers and keep shifting until you run out of low gears or you settle in at 80-95 rpm. You should not feel like you are working hard at the bottom. Keep an even effort up through the middle of the climb/hill and as you start to crest just keep clicking to higher and higher gears until you are rolling down the other side. Once you are up past 25mph just keep spinning to keep your legs going but avoid working to hard on the downhills. This will set you up for a much more evenly paced ride and just as important, a good run afterwards.
By riding this way I nearly always pass people in the last quarter of the hill or as I roll over the top with momentum. Generally I see people bomb down the backside of hills, pedaling like crazy; get up out of the saddle for the first third of the hill; sit down, shift and then ride out of the saddle again until they sit again close to the summit. They pass me easily in the first third of the hill, lose ground when they sit the first time and then when they sit later on they have no momentum towards the top and I roll by them.
Mainly very good advise however point 1. does not always make sense.
A combination of sitting and standing works very well depending on the conditions and rider. In most instances sitting is better but there are times when it makes sense to stand. Short rollers being one of them. Standing on the flats after extended periods of sitting also makes sense to recruit different muscles and stretch.
Watching or riding with really good riders you will see that most stand on occasion whether they are power meter users or not.
In most instances sitting is better but there are times when it makes sense to stand. Short rollers being one of them. Standing on the flats after extended periods of sitting also makes sense to recruit different muscles and stretch.
The only reason it would make sense to stand on rollers is if you needed to maintain speed to stick with a group of riders. My suggestions were only aimed at people riding solo in training or a race, assuming they are not drafting. Group riding is an entirely different dynamic.
Any time you stand, some of your energy is now going to suspend your frame in the air, not make you go forward, so from an efficiency standpoint I don’t believe there is ever time you “need” to stand. It also allows your legs full extension and power, but there is always a cost.
Standing is not to blame for spikes in power. The culprit is the brain that has not been properly calibrated and lacks awareness of how to properly use that grand tool it was given, the body. How to calibrate it? Stand for very long periods until one gets a good feel for how long they can go at different relative perceived efforts. I believe that getting out of the saddle is in fact a more efficient way to make power. Whether or not it’s a more efficient way to propel oneself depends upon the grade one is on. If it is such an incline that the cyclist is reduced to a speed where aerodynamics are not a factor (generally in the 7%+ range for me), then I’d recommend standing. You might say that “anytime you stand, some of your energy is now going to suspend your frame in the air, not make you go forward” while I’d say that any time you stand, the weight of your body is helping to push the pedal down and make you go forward. It might be that it takes somebody with great kinesthetic awareness to climb out of the saddle with a high level of efficiency, but those somebodies are out there and I don’t think you should discount their existence.
Another thought…relative perceived effort is and always will have the potential to be a greater guide to the cyclist than any powermeter, however, the powermeter can be used to make sense of and master one’s different levels of RPE substantially faster than using no powermeter at all.
One reason to stand here and there in a race is that it lets you stretch out your legs and back. Standing towards the end of an uphill is the best time since you are riding slowest then with the least wind resistance.
bah - the best way to climb is standing, stomping all out in slightly too high a gear with Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of” blasting through your brainpod.
I think Power meters would be nice to use and could be very informative if the time is taken to understand the numbers.
I also think Sojourner has an excellent handle on this. Being a bigger than normal cyclist, I usually have the power to stay seated up almost any hill. However, if I want to open a gap, or close one, standing for 15-30 seconds sure works for me. I just get in a big enough gear that I feel like I am sort of bouncing on the pedals when I’m standing, and I keep it up until I feel some strain in my quads. Then I sit down and immediately shift to at least one easier gear and spin as fast as I feel I can do comfortably, which relieves the strain in my quads within 30 seconds to a minute. When that happens, I’m good to stand again for a bit. Rinse, repeat. I’ve surprised myself that I can almost stay with the true climbers when using this technique, as long as hill not too long. I easily catch them on the downhill or flat at the top. Of course, on a steep roller, I can often open a gap on the true climbers because our speed is so much higher so aerodynamics plays a much bigger part, and I’m a good bit stronger than them so my mini-sprints uphill really take it out of them. If I watched a power meter reading, I’m not sure I’d improve my group riding, but I might improve my solo riding…who knows?
This is why I like biking better than running…so many more variables and ways to play your strengths, it gives you a shot at actually keeping up with people that may be in better condition than you.
Anything that makes you enjoy the experience more is probably a positive, whether the choice is to add something to your regimen, or to take it away.
i agree on most of these. as for the downhill observation. after you crest a hill and get up to speed on the down hill, don’t even bother to “slow pedal”. i just tuck as low as i can (chin on the handle bars, ass on the top tube) but even if you don’t like to do that you will be faster getting in a good tuck then spinning your legs. i think you might want to spin if it’s a very long down hill.
Quite true. It takes a little practice, but we can all learn to stand and hold very modest power levels. I like standing every few minutes on a long climb.
Khai, you need new tunes. try this for real climbing music http://death.fm
I have a few other links for good climbing music. Rage against the Machine, more like a white noise machine to help you relax. Come to the dark side brother.
This is why I like biking better than running…so many more variables and ways to play your strengths, it gives you a shot at actually keeping up with people that may be in better condition than you.
I tried to “sit and spin” once while running - didn’t work too well and I got a cramp instead.
I know there are always exceptions as others have pointed out. But what I think Chad is getting at is there is a best way to ride a TT or tri or du AND still allow you to have a good run. That is a fairly steady powerout output from the time you start to the time you stop, without hard accelerations uphill or on flats and without chasing that extra 2mph down a hill because you just got gapped by 300m going uphill. The quickest way to fry your legs is to go hard then slow then hard then slow over and over. Utilizing the powermeter allows you to go steady and continue and continue.
“The only reason it would make sense to stand on rollers is if you needed to maintain speed to stick with a group of riders”
Or to maintain speed thereby giving you a faster bike split.
“Any time you stand, some of your energy is now going to suspend your frame in the air”
No the bike is always in contact with the ground…levitation is not required when riding.
The winner is not the person with the prettiest power profile. Avoiding spikes at all costs does not always make sense. At times pushing a little to maintain momentum is worth the effort. Not too much but if you are an experienced power user you know what that point is.
If you are advocating never getting out of the saddle in a TT or IM then I would say you are wrong. If that was the best way to ride then the pros in the TDF TT’s would keep their butts on the seat. They don’t. It’s a combination of sitting and limited standing. This also applies to the top elites in IM who are also power meter users. They all stand when it’s appropriate.
cdw:
Once you are up past 25mph just keep spinning to keep your legs going but avoid working to hard on the downhills
mperlberg:
don’t even bother to “slow pedal”.
To slow pedal helps recovery/flushing whatever lactic acid you might have produced in the uphill and stay loose. This might have been what cdw meant (I am no mind reader).
This said, above 40 mph… I focus on the road ahead and avoid any movement/spinning.
a best way to ride a . . . du AND still allow you to have a good run
Chad would not tell you this, but I will. He won his AG at the Duathlon National Championship in June and finished 9th overall. I think he’s got a good handle on what works.
susanherself wrote: He won his AG at the Duathlon National Championship in June and finished 9th overall. I think he’s got a good handle on what works.
Sure, he has a good handle on what works. At least for him. At least on that day. I’m often finding that what used to work for me doesn’t on some days, and what never worked for me before DID work on some days.
I think he is repeating the common point of view of a version of glycogen-sparing-technique being the best strategy to follow in a time trial, especially if there is a run to follow. Few would argue that he is incorrect.
However, the athlete must make decisions during a race that rival “supercomputer” computations, taking into consideration how the athlete’s body is responding on that given day, on a given hill, at a given point in a race, and guessing the energy requirements for the remainder of the race. With enough experience, a non-powermetered athlete might make better decisions on his best instantaneous power requirements, than a powermeter-watching athlete might make. With enough experience with the powermeter, I’d wager that there would be instances where remaining in a certain ZONE resulted in unexpected results (such as successfully remaining in a certain ZONE, but having a poor run anyway; or exceeding the prescribed ZONE but having an unexpected good run), and the athlete may be led back to the human brain and it’s supercomputational abilities as the best determinant of appropriate power output at any given instant.
Accurate information is critical in optimizing performance, that’s part of the science of performance. How you glean the information, digest it, and utilize it…well, that’s part of the art of performance, because the science isn’t well developed enough at this point to take all the variables into account. Due to the power of our brain, we are more than just innervated and nourished muscles hooked up to points on a skeleton. Science has a long way to go to accurately describe the brain’s effects on performance. Until then, I guess we’ll have to keep actually holding the races to determine the best performer in the race.
Can the numbers from a Powermeter be useful? Sure, just don’t be a slave to the numbers. It is a number…sometimes useful, sometimes not so useful.
Yeah, I know what Chad accomplished. I helped him with his training for that race. He has plenty of talent and upside potential still. Even if he loves to do more miles more of the time.
Some additional observations of mine for those new to power: I’ve seen some new users struggle to correlate PE to HR to Power/Watts as each of these data points can have changing meaning relative to one another. Terrain can alter an athlete’s ability to produce watts with position changes on the bike and in the saddle (relative to flat and aero). Some athletes train hills more than extended flat rides and have difficulty generating the power they had hoped for over 5-6hrs on mostly flat to rolling IM courses.
To start, I would train with established HR efforts or PE while simply observing watts at given identifiable efforts. Riders may opt to use PE and HR to identify power zones. With familiarity, TTing can help ID power zones. I think race simulation efforts, successfully repeated, will reveal the most accurate data for IM purposes. Race data with a successful run leg being most accurate.
If PE is low, HR is normal or high and watts are high, watts can be used as a governor (out of T1 and early in the bike leg of a race).
If HR remains low during strong efforts, while PE feels correct and wattage is expected, an athlete may be carrying a bit of fatigue.
If watts stay low and HR is normal/low while PE is normal to higher, an athlete may be overeached and need rest.
I suggest cyclists new to a power meter try to avoid riding to a pre-conceived notion or desired watts. Begin by correlating your power to existing reliable data points and move on from there.
I was not suggesting that my tips were the end-all and be-all for multi-sport racing, but I suspect that many people could benefit from changing their riding style based off what I suggested. Nearly every race I do there are quite a few riders who pass me early, only to fade badly at the end of the bike leg. That doesn’t take into account what some of the others do on the run.
The powermeter is not all-knowing and I give an example to show that I agree with much of your point.
At Powerman North Carolina I worked out what I guessed was a reasonable hr/power ceiling for a 53K effort. I ran my first 8K under control and started riding according to plan. A lot of people passed me early on and it took a lot of dicipline to take it easy. Then at about 10K, my buddy Brian Fancher passed me on the bike. Knowing he started two minutes back I wasn’t going to let him go. He was riding with a PowerTap and we were both riding the endless rolling hills in the same manner, so we were playing leapfrog with other riders who were doing a lot of out of the saddle hammering, only to have us pass them on the summit of the hill. At about 30K I was still feeling really good and realized this might have been one of the those rare days when everything comes together and you have a great day. So I bagged the meter and started to hammer the last 20K. I passed a lot people who had gone by me earlier; partly from my increase in speed and partly because they were fading. (After flying home and downloading the info, I found that I had put out something like 305 watts for the last 30 minutes of the ride, a number that exceeded my best 30 minute stand-alone effort in any tests I had taken so far that year).
To top it off I jumped off the bike and ran the 6th fastest second run split of the race. Four pros and Billy Edwards ran faster than me. Looking at the race afterwards, I ran my second run 2-5 minutes faster than the rest of my age group, but rode 5-10 minutes slower. My total average power for the day was within a few watts of my effort the previous week for twice the distance.
The best lesson I learned that day was this–If you are going to fly across the country and spend a lot of money to race, don’t leave anything out on the course. Fortunately, it was a timely lesson that I applied at the short-course duathlon nationals.
However, I will still contend that riding in the manner I suggested will normally lead to better results on most days. Especially when your races start to go beyond 2-3 hours. The longer your race, the more tapered and rested you are, the more you it helps to have something besides percieved effort to hold you back early in the race.
