srm « TriathlonMike

Well the good news is that I have been keeping up with my training so far this year. My swimming seems to be getting nearer the end of last season’s levels and I am feeling “easier” in the water. What I mean is that I am feeling less like a sinking ship. I can tell that my catch is not as efficient as it was as my times are not quite what they were, even for short 50/100m bursts. Maybe it is just overall fitness levels that are lacking, but I think it’s mainly swim technique. I guess it’s time to get some more lessons booked in.

Yesterday I did a 20 minute “time-trial” on the Computrainer. My coaches use this to estimate my FTP based on 95% of the 20minute time-trial average power. I have decided to use the “Computrainer 10 mile time trial” course for these tests. At the moment I am not completing the 10 miles in 20 minutes so it’s safe to use until my cycling increases! I did notice a 4w difference between the SRM and Computrainer figures which I don’t normally see – I’m guessing a mis-calibration of the Computrainer as after the time-trial I re-did the Computrainer calibration for the warm-down and the figures were more in alignment. Hurray for SRM and boo to Computrainer… 🙂

As an aside, I’ve noticed a number of the searches from Google hitting my blog looking for the course profiles of the races I’ve completed. I’m not sure of the best way to provide these, but am considering an upload of a GPX for the race courses for interested people. If anyone has ideas on this, please drop me a comment.

So Christmas has passed and 2009 is only a handful of days away. My first major race (a 70.3 distance race) of 2009 is less than five months away. Not too bad one might say – however I will need to actually be training for more than a 70.3 at that time of the year. Initially this race was scheduled for early May, however due to a clash with the Barcelona F1 race it was delayed by two weeks. Sigh.

So my bike has been fitted with an SRM power meter. I plan on using power based zones for my training sessions leading up to Ironman Austria. I hope that this will be better than simply relying on heart rate based zones. The SRM is great in that it hooks up to the Garmin 705 using ANT+ wireless technology. I am yet to get out and about with the SRM and get some “outside” figures but have done some sessions on the trainer. I am starting to get an idea of my mean maximal power. I have attached a graph from WKO+ showing the power curve from a handful of efforts on the indoor trainer. Not very impressive at all. It’s a starting point though and I look forward to it improving over the coming months.

I hope some outdoor sessions will improve this, especially in the 1-10 second region. Looking at the W/kg table in WKO+ (based from Training and Racing with a Power Meter by Allen and Coggan ISBN13: 978-1931382793) is interesting and shows I have a long way to go to becoming a competitive cyclist. One consolation is that the table is for competitive cyclists and not triathletes. OK OK, grasping at straws but you get the picture. Training and Racing with a Power Meter is a superb book and covers power meter usage in great detail.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am still recovering from a bought of flu and am taking it easy right now. Hopefully next week I will kick into action again and start the training ball rolling once more. Hopefully 2009 will be a great year and one in which I am not dogged by colds, flu or any other injuries!

TriathlonMike

Tag Archives: srm

Good start to the year so far!

Challenge Barcelona in less than 5 months!