Changes in Power for "Normal Folk"

Hello to all the cyclists and triathletes out there!

Spring is finally here, for those that live in Calgary! This blog is going to discuss power improvements and training.

At TCR Sport Lab, we are constantly testing and training people with power. As you know, power is the new kid on the block with measurement devices becoming more affordable and popular. We have been tracking several athletes as case studies over the winter. All of the athletes want to improve with hopes of riding faster this race season.

Below is a case study of a mountain bike athlete who is training for his 7th TransRockies stage race this August. The athlete considers himself an "average age grouper" and recently had a new baby. His goals are to have his best TR ever and improve on his climbing ability.

We started his training program in January with some Critical Power (CP) testing. 4 short tests done over 2 days: 10km TT, 4km TT, 2km TT and 1 km on a stationary bicycle ergometer. Critical power is a term that refers to cyclists anaerobic cycling ability and lactate tolerance. Many people are familiar with Anaerobic or Lactate Threshold as training marker which is best tested in a lab with a lactate monitor or metabolic cart (VO2). Critical power is essentially a workload just above a person's lactate threshold and can be done without a lab. We chose this test because the athlete lived in Vancouver and did not have access to a lab for testing.

From January to May, the cyclist had a 5 Watt increase in his critical power from 279 watts to 284 watts. See the graph. As you can see, a cyclist with 279 watts of power is pretty good to start, but he was still able to top off his "cranking power" for those short hills.

Any type of improvement is always good. A couple of points that are interesting:

Most of the cyclist's improvements came on the short distances as this was our goal.

• 3 watts on 10km
• 12 watts on 4km
• 12 watts on 2km
• 10 watts on 1 km

To be honest, this is pretty good for a guy that has done TR for 6 years! It is not like we are working with a guy who was new to cycling.

What does this mean? Adding 5-10 watts of power to short hills would allow you to keep your heart rate about 5-10 beats lower and enable you stay out of the granny gear more often on those crazy TR climbs.

Professional riders would kill to add 10 watts to their performance on short TTs!

When you start working with power, 5-10 watts changes over 4 months is a pretty good improvement with experienced athletes. In addition, if you are a person with a new baby who has had some crazy episodes of the flu and sleep deprivation, 5 watts on your CP is great!

The next step in this cyclists training program is to develop the his ability to ride those long TR days by increasing his volume. He is on his way to a great TransRockies #7.