2017/18 Training

Lama's 5 x 4 TT Intervals - Shane Miller

Shane miller is a professional cyclist and journalist he writes for the likes of  Zwift and TACX. He has a video https://youtu.be/Apnwg1TAsIU that is the basis of my focus for this training plan.

Googling "Lama": It is a competitive 100K route in England around lake Lama. However he is pictured with Lamas so it could be that connection. His signature is GP Llama. It was possibly some of these reasons Shane constructed this training regime. I have decided to adopt this as my winter ftp builder.

My current ftp is 200W or 2.63W/Kg. It is not bad for my age (67) but improvement is what my road cycling is all about. Shane put together his regime presumably for competing in a Lama event so it should be good enough for me. I would like to come out of the winter this season at 3W/Kg or 228W or a 14% improvement. For my declared ftp (200) here is the suggested starting point. P1 - P5 are the yellow and Orange blobs on the screenshot diagram below.

Start point for me.
Intervals	% ftp in W	W	W/Kg
P1	106	212	2.79
P2	108	216	2.84
P3	110	220	2.89
P4	112	224	2.95
P5	114	228	3.00

I am a little concerned with my heart rate so I initially back off a couple of percent at the beginning to ease myself into the regime. Here is the original screenshot from the video.

All set I then conducted my first training ride on Zwift. The scenery is just the same for a normal ride except the trainer is in ERG mode. It apparently stands for Ergo Mode. Ergo mode adjusts the trainer resistance for a given cadence to match your target power chosen (The yellow, orange and grey power bars). It is like a servo system where you (the human) are the motor and Zwift is the rest of the control system. See ERG mode Some people don't like being controlled by a computer so it is not for everyone. You can switch off ERG mode on the workout from Zwift.

The results are shown above are my second attempt and are 1% down on my start point. The power curve shows how ERG mode maintains the target power during the 4 min interval. Also you should note the heart rate climbs to 164 bpm at the end of the session so I am obviously not pushing it beyond reasonable for my age.

Best fit MHR (Maximum Heart Rate) formula

 After years of searching for an arithmetic formula that's more accurate, the authors of this article (see link) have developed the "best-fit" formula and believe it to be the most accurate to date. You can use this formula in conjunction with the sub-max tests (see link) to determine your more accurate maximum. When you average all of these sub-max and arithmetic formula's together, you'll be close to your true maximum heart rate. Here's the formula:

210 minus 50% of your age minus 5% of your body weight (pounds) + 4 if male and 0 if female = Estimated MHR.

In my case 210 - 33.5 (50% of 67) - 8.36 (5% of 167) +4 = 172bpm.

After telling Strava my calculated Maximum Heart Rate (MHR). Strava sets a limit at  >166 for a red line Z4 giving me a small margin of warning when going into the danger zone Z5.

Start

 

Suffer Score

The Strava Suffer Score is an analysis of your heart rate data. By tracking your heart rate through your workout and its level relative to your maximum heart rate, Strava attach a value to show exactly how hard you worked. The more time you spend going full gas and the longer your activity, the higher the score. In this case it was 54

Points in the Red

Points in the Red is the portion of your Suffer Score that you earned in your Zone 4 and Zone 5 heart rate zones. Points in the Red shows you the intensity of your workout – if your Suffer Score and Points in the Red are the same, you were hammering the entire time! In this case the points in the Red was only 18.

Cadence

 My cadence for the workout is very low at about 66, it would be better if I increased this in future as it is more efficient, however in ERG mode I find this very difficult, just a case of getting used to ERG mode.  I choose today the London Red Hill course, and even set some records, but this is not the object of the session. I have chosen a hilly course so at least you think you are achieving something during the ride when the load is high.

Conclusions

The training ride does what it says on the tin. It definitely pushes me especially at P5. I have a hill near where I live that takes me 4m:46s to the top called Kingscavel brae. Thanks to Strava I recorded 250W average power  on my last PB time. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of my heart rate when I did this as I had no strap on. If I want to improve on that hill I need to expand my horizons in the training session. To this effect I have constructed a spread sheet increasing the difficulty by 1% each time. Before doing a session I will fiddle with the numbers to try and achieve at least what I do on Kingscavel brae. Hopefully this will train my Cardio system to stay within the Z4 range while I eventually put out my 14% more effort (228W for 20 mins) and give me a bit more margin for the climb at (250W) for 4 minutes.

Introducing the TACX Neo

Time for an upgrade

I have spent roughly a year with the TACX Vortex doing over 1000 miles, shortly after purchasing it I had a bad accident and subsequently used it for recovery from my injuries (see earlier posts). The Vortex was my introduction to interactive trainers and I found a few things about it less than ideal:

* Does not simulate the freewheeling (energy storage effect) of a real bike on the road, if you stop pedalling it stops although the Zwift avatar does keep going your knees and legs know better. It does not smooth out the or absorb the power strokes. I am not convinced, long term, this type of trainer is good for you.
* It does make a bit of a racket completely unlike the outdoor experience. I have a separate room in a bungalow so it is not much of an issue for me.
* It is extremely sensitive to tyre pressure. Unlike a road bike when the tyre pressure is down the thing just slips on the tiny roller and you have to get off and start again after inflating the tyre. To find out the correct pressure you have to calibrate it and remember the ideal pressure. Pressure in a tyre is temperature sensitive.
* You need a training tyre or it will shred a road tyre. You cannot take the bike out on the road with a training tyre, but I only use my old steel racer for training anyway I guess.

For the above reasons I decided to buy a TACX Neo, about two levels above a Vortex costing the best part of £1000.

As you can see it has a rather futuristic design and folds away quite neatly. However watch your back while moving it as it is quite heavy.

Cassettes

One of the reasons I chose the Neo is that it is direct drive, so I was looking forward to missing out all the faf with tyre pressures. Direct drive means you need to load the Neo with a compatible cartridge however and bolt it down hard.

Before I started down this road I emailed numerous suppliers and checked on the compatibility of my training bike with Campagnolo 9 speed drive train and the TACX EDCO freewheel adapter. EDCO is an freewheel adapter that takes Shimano, Sram and some Campagnolo Cassettes. None of the suppliers  gave me a definitive answer on compatibility except Wiggle. Unfortunately that information subsequently (after purchase) turned out to be wrong.

TACX says "The Shimano/Sram 9, 10 and 11 speed will fit all NEO's. 8 speed Campagnolo will not fit. Click here for more information." In the section labelled Suitable cassettes it says Campagnolo 9 speed Centaur 4 splines is compatible unfortunately after much correspondence with Wiggle I could not find a supplier that could supply one. Wiggle supplied the wrong cassette with 8 splines in the first place and eventually returned my money (and let me keep the cassette). Here is my solution using bits of a Shimano and Campagnolo Cassette: https://youtu.be/TNSCLAzjrt4. It was my first venture into bike cassettes and they hold no fear for me now.

I believe you can make various adapters spacers for 8 speed cassettes if it is Shimano compatible.

After  installing  the cassette I had to change the chain and jockey wheels which were worn.  I did not want to compromise my new cassette with an old chain.

First Impressions

Once I got the drive sorted out it was time try it all out. The software did what it said on the tin "plug and play" no issues what so ever, all I had to do was tell Zwift what trainer I was using today as it kept the Vortex as a selection, and off we went. I did expect to get "Road feel" out of the box, however10 minutes on Google/TACX support told me the firmware needed to be updated. It is updated from an app on your phone and again this was trouble free and sure enough the "Road feel" appeared with a selection button on Zfift to turn it off. I did not particularly like the road feel as it made more noise and kind of negates having a Neo in the first place. The firmware came with other upgrades to features I had not found fault with yet.

I have done three sessions of about 18miles each and I have to say I am pleased with my purchase so far and the effort to get going was very worth while. It makes a bit more noise than I expected, it kind of introduces itself above 2.2W/Kg and low cadence. It appears there is a resonance between the motor load unit in the Neo and the Campagnolo drive train. It is not a particularly bad noise (more like a rumble) but unexpected given the marketing blurb for the Neo. I am fairly sure it is not a fault. Perhaps when I get to 3W/Kg it will be ??? Perhaps it is telling me to increase my cadence. I find if I ride outside for months without using the trainer my cadence steadily goes down.

The future

The reason I bought the trainer is to improve my ftp (functional threshold power). I joined a road club a year or so ago and they all appear to get fitter and fitter every time we go out. I want to use the winter to improve. I satred out at an ftp of 1.7 when I joined the club and I am now up to 2.7 I would like take that to 3 or greater. I achieved that previous improvement in my ftp with the Vortex. It also helps with the Scottish weather in that I don't care too much if I can't get a cycle outside now I have a more realistic trainer. As you get older the issue is muscle wastage I want to stave off the effect as long as possible.

I would also like to do a few races on Zwift, one day I may get the courage to do a real race.

The TACX films look quite interesting, however they need a i7 compatible lap top.

The results so far 12-03-17

I have had the trainer now since mid November 2016 a total of at least four months. The story is complicated as in December just after Xmas disaster struck. I had a major accident on my outdoor bike resulting in a partially collapsed lung and multiple broken ribs. I was facing two months of recovery before taking to my bike outdoors again. However having just purchased the trainer it gave me an ideal opportunity to accelerate my return to fitness.

Zwift reports it's results directly back to Strava exactly similar to the reporting of Garmin results for outdoor activities.

The key concept to keep in mind to track a recovery situation is ftp (Functional Threshold Performance). ftp is nothing complicated, it is basically the amount of energy you generate over a 20 minutes period. Currently I generate about 194W and my weight is 78Kg so my ftp is usually around 2.5W/Kg.  Zwift reports ftp to Strava however you need the Premium package to dispaly the results in terms of graphs alternately just take an image off the Zwift results page and note the numbers down.

The following graph shows my recovery. Less than two weeks after my accident I was able drag myself on to my trainer. The X axis is days (as I did 30 days continuous every morning for an hour).  The Y axis is ftp as previously described. The red line is ftp as calculated by Zwift and the blue line is the average (normalised for terrain) normally reported by Strava without the Premium reporting package.

 

 

 I hope you can see from the results I improved my ftp from 1.24 to 2.5 an improvement of 2x in performance over 4 weeks. The purple line is my average ftp before the accident.

 

The graph above is when I started mixing trainer and outdoor activities. The interesting stats from Strava of average power can vary quite widely but howevr the Strava computed ftp is much more consistent. I offer no explanation for this as Strava don't explain the exact method. The lesson here is if you want to track your progress out doors the the Premium results are necessary.