Lactate Threshold. What is it and why does it matter? In this post I’ll seek to answer these two questions with the hopes of clarifying a somewhat confusing topic. Warning: A slight bit of science and data wonkery ahead.
It’s that time of year when hot weather begins to drastically change your experience on the bike. Targets easily nailed while riding in mild 65-degree weather feel completely different at 95. While the body is masterful at regulating skin blood flow and sweat rate to control your core temperature [1], high heat environments present an immense challenge to the endurance athlete.
Toward the finish of yesterday’s first stage of the Amgen Tour of California riders were dropping like flies while they melted in 100° temperatures around Escondido. Phil and Paul continued to bring attention to how hot weather was dragging down some of the strongest contenders in the stage. Reference was made to the cooler temperatures in Europe and the lack of riding in the heat for most of the peloton.
Roughly 3 years ago I made the decision to go back to school to pursue my Masters Degree in Exercise Science/Physiology. Around that time cycling had begun seeping deeper and deeper into my bloodstream. Cycling seems to have a similar impact on just about everyone it encounters.
Read More “4 Things Graduate School Taught Me About Coaching”
Group Rides: everyone seems to have an opinion regarding their inherent value. Some say group rides are bad and should be avoided at all costs. Others wouldn’t miss them for the world, showing up like clockwork every Tuesday or Thursday night, primed and ready to take out their frustration over being emasculated by an office cubicle for the last 8 hours.
I’ll probably end up spending my entire life uncovering all the nuances that pull me toward the sport of cycling, but at the core of my love affair with cycling is the element of total honesty. Lining up for a race and measuring yourself against your peers is like asking advice from a trusted friend that you know will always “tell it like it is”.
You roll up to the start of your local crit or Tuesday night world championship and everybody and their mother has a power meter. Every season it’s gotten worse. What started a few years ago with a few dudes talking “wattage this and wattage that” has turned into every nitwit discussing their FTP, critical power, and 5 second max. Every time you hear these dummies talk you want to smash your face into your color coordinated stem cap.
Back in the golden days everyone used to talk about the sweet smell of tubular glue and the finer points of road rash debridement, now all anybody talks about is strain gauges, normalized power, and the delayed release of Garmin’s Vector pedals.
You start to feel a few pangs of guilt for not “taking your training seriously enough to invest in a power meter” but at the same time you enjoy the satisfaction that comes from spanking other riders that have a power meter, a feeling that you would of course have to relinquish if you purchased one for yourself.
You’ve heard all the great reasons for training with power but are still unconvinced of the power meter’s magical ability to transform you into a leg ripper and race winner. What you need is an authoritative document that lets you off the hook; one that gives you compelling, empirical evidence supporting your decision to NOT purchase a power meter. This blog post might be just what you’ve been waiting for. Without further ado…
So there you have it, the top 5 reasons NOT to buy a power meter. Save your money, divert more of your paycheck to your 401k, and rest easy knowing that you made the right decision
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The holiday season has come and gone and you’re looking to justify the extravagant purchase of a power meter. You’re trying to convince yourself that it’s a good idea to spend more on your crankset than you did on your first car. If that’s the case I’ve compiled this handy list to push you over the edge and help you plunge into the abyss of training with a power meter. As if cycling wasn’t expensive enough, here are the top 5 reasons to drop even more money on a power meter..
The modern cycling power meter is a direct descendant of the old school cycling ergometer previously found almost exclusively in exercise physiology laboratories. If you stop by the Sacramento State Human Performance Lab you can give one of these old birds a spin. In order to calculate the wattage of a rider the laboratory assistant estimates the RPM’s, records the mass in the weight basket at the front of the bike, then uses a formula taking into account the resistance on the flywheel to arrive at the power being produced on the bike. Did you catch all that? That’s what a power meter used to be. Today’s modern power meters are mobile, weather proof, crash resistant, exercise physiology laboratories imbedded in your bike that wirelessly transmit real time power numbers to your cycling computer for immediate feedback and post ride analysis. That is completely awesome.
The beauty of training with a power meter is the objectivity through which it displays and records your progress on the bike. One thing is clear, you’re either getting stronger and faster on the bike or you’re not. If you’re paying for coaching a power meter can serve as an insurance policy to assess the effectiveness of your training plan. If you’re putting together your own training plan the evidence of your progress (or lack thereof) is equally clear.
If you’ve got a limited amount of time to train, no tool has a bigger impact on your training than a power meter. Whether you’re shredding indoors on a trainer or blasting out a quick workout during your lunch break, a power meter helps to bring focus to every minute you spend on the bike.
Racing with a power meter not only gives you an unbiased account of every second of a race, it also allows you to address previously unanswerable questions such as;
“Was that race really hard or did I just have a bad day”?
“What power output do I need to attain in order to stay with the leaders on that climb”?
“Do I have a better chance of winning in a break or a bunch sprint”?
Questions previously left up to conjecture can now be answered with objectivity and precision. You now have the data to pinpoint exactly where you need to improve in order to be more competitive on the bike.
The best reason to purchase a power meter is that it makes training and racing more fun. Immediate feedback while you’re riding coupled with post ride analysis make it possible to capture personal bests and other training milestones. This in turn makes training more fun while strengthening your motivation to get faster and stronger on the bike.
So there you have it. My top 5 reasons to break out the plastic and throw down on a power meter. Check back for my next post where I’ll outline the top 5 reasons to NOT buy a power meter.
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With my Masters Thesis almost wrapped up it’s time to recommit myself to doing some regular writing on my blog. Before I get started for this year here are a couple themes I wanted to establish before my thoughts begin cascading from the interwebs.
If any of the above sounds interesting I think you’ll enjoy the content up ahead. Stay tuned for my next post on the top 5 reasons to buy a power meter, followed shortly thereafter by the top 5 reasons NOT to buy a power meter.
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These days cyclists have a ton of options from which to choose a qualified and professional coach. Do a quick search through USA Cycling and you’ll find the number of “certified” cycling coaches has exploded in the past five years. Whichever coach you decide to employ here are several attributes that I believe are crucial:
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