Personally I'm in favour of developing a metric that describes the time spent in a post-workout daze vs the time spent riding. 

Jules said:

Personally I'm in favour of developing a metric that describes the time spent in a post-workout daze vs the time spent riding. 

Does anyone know how Garmin calculates "Recovery Time" on some of the edge computers? I get the feeling its highly based on speed, as everytime i race i get a 60+ hr recovery time...which is, well...absurdly wrong

JohnOlsson said:

Does anyone know how Garmin calculates "Recovery Time" on some of the edge computers? I get the feeling its highly based on speed, as everytime i race i get a 60+ hr recovery time...which is, well...absurdly wrong

John - please don't dispel the myth. I'm still in my recovery time from last season.

Is there anyway I can get on the Training Peaks plan...like now?

JohnOlsson said:

Jules said:

Personally I'm in favour of developing a metric that describes the time spent in a post-workout daze vs the time spent riding. 

Does anyone know how Garmin calculates "Recovery Time" on some of the edge computers? I get the feeling its highly based on speed, as everytime i race i get a 60+ hr recovery time...which is, well...absurdly wrong

It is useless. Forget that and use the useful metrics.

@twoyacks

Please check your yahoo inbox, sorry for the delay.

-Sean

eloy said:

JohnOlsson said:

Jules said:

Personally I'm in favour of developing a metric that describes the time spent in a post-workout daze vs the time spent riding. 

Does anyone know how Garmin calculates "Recovery Time" on some of the edge computers? I get the feeling its highly based on speed, as everytime i race i get a 60+ hr recovery time...which is, well...absurdly wrong

It is useless. Forget that and use the useful metrics.

This. Recovery time is a worthless metric. 

Jules said:

Personally I'm in favour of developing a metric that describes the time spent in a post-workout daze vs the time spent riding. 

What about the intensity of the daze? Kind of (Intensity Factor * Time)/ (Daze Factor * Time)

Dan Reiners said:

Jules said:

Personally I'm in favour of developing a metric that describes the time spent in a post-workout daze vs the time spent riding. 

What about the intensity of the daze? Kind of (Intensity Factor * Time)/ (Daze Factor * Time)

You mean like, "too shelled to take off more than one shoe" vs "sitting with an empty chocolate milk glass ignoring your wife?"

Apparently....just joining the WK04 coaching program adds power...the second they took my money...the watts went up !!!
https://www.strava.com/activities/958142310

Nice seeing you out there this morning, @Bruce van-Schalkwyk  (and whoever else that was that gave a passing wave).

Between having an even busier than usual few weeks, followed by a seriously nasty flu, I'm coming back from a pretty big (3 weeks or so) lapse in training. On the positive side, there are three major things motivating me to get cranking:

1. summer! doing all training in the park instead of indoors
2. new bike (soon)
3. first power meter (soon) so I can apply what I learned indoors this winter
3. while I'm training myself, I'm also training my new puppy Ziggy. He's a really good boy, and it looks like our morning routine is going to be me getting up early, stealthily getting into kit and out the door while he's still snoozing in his crate, and then doing his morning walk the instant I get home.

Really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and seeing the PP AM crew on the regs. 

anybody seen this?
http://www.bkool.com/en-US/turbo-trainer/bkool-smart-go?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=en&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=may_gousa_audience

Hey All,

I thought I'd share this for some perspective. I've been racking up some higher cumulative training load since we moved out here but I'm not seeing my "former" self appear just yet in terms of short term (under 60 minute) power. I did a little digging in Training Peaks for some perspective (context is everything, right @TimCusick ) and this is what I found


Through 2014 I managed some pretty good training but after kid #3 who is just about three and a half now) things got a lot harder for me in terms of finding time to train.

I just finished a 650+ tss week and wondered when was the last time I'd endured something like that. It looks like it was in the february's of years past. So if I consider myself in a "synthetic" february of years past, only with a much better base I can rest a lot easer about what I can and cannot do today.

Hope this ramble proves useful for some of you.

Sounds to me like you're getting ready for cross season.

With @Jules comments above in my head, I saw an email from CTS.  Usually, I trash theirs without looking, but every so often, I click to the article.  This one is food for thought, as the key idea is based on anecdotal evidence.

http://trainright.com/mental-toughness-aging-athletes-performance-decline

mugwump said:

With @Jules comments above in my head, I saw an email from CTS.  Usually, I trash theirs without looking, but every so often, I click to the article.  This one is food for thought, as the key idea is based on anecdotal evidence.

http://trainright.com/mental-toughness-aging-athletes-performance-decline

Funny, I saw that one too and thought about it for all of a two minutes. It's not that I'm getting softer, just that I have different priorities. When the time allows I can still punish myself pretty hard.

Let's talk stretching. 

My experience in the past few weeks has run against conventional wisdom around stretching, and I wanted to see if anyone else seen something similar. Two things have been consistent in the past year of riding bikes a lot: stretching & knee pain. (Before I go any further: I know a proper bike fit goes a long way towards taking care of knee pain, and I'm getting a fit later this month).

In the 6 weeks after breaking my collarbone, I largely stopped stretching, and quickly got rid of knee pain that was starting to become troublesome. The lack of pain carried into two pretty high volume weeks (~750 TSS), both of which I went through without stretching. 

After this weekend's pair of long rides I was feeling pretty tight in the legs, and had a thorough stretch / foam roll session (which felt amazing) on Sunday evening. Here's where I get confused: last night at Floyd that familiar knee pain started to pop up again. I was plenty warmed up from riding to the course, and hadn't changed anything in the preceding two days, besides stretching. 

I'm well aware that this could just be a coincidence, but I feel like there is more here. Anyone have any wisdom to share on this?

@SebastianVidal are you sure you're foam rolling and stretching correctly? Are you doing dynamic or static stretches? Sometimes static stretches, if the muscles are not warmed up can do more harm then good. I had the same thing going on with my IT band in my left leg a few years ago when my trainer told me I needed to stop doing static stretches. 

@SebastianVidal you should see a physical therapist that works with cyclists and also get that official bike fitting. An orthopedist once told me that I should stop any workout if there is bone pain. That being said, I am not a doctor. I work in finance. So feel free to toss my advice out the window. 

GregStreiff said:

@SebastianVidal you should see a physical therapist that works with cyclists and also get that official bike fitting. An orthopedist once told me that I should stop any workout if there is bone pain. That being said, I am not a doctor. I work in finance. So feel free to toss my advice out the window. 

What does bone pain feel like?

@SebastianVidal, perhaps its the added vibration brought on by uneven road surfaces?

@SebastianVidal Stretches are really easy to do wrong, if you're concerned that you have mechanical wear on your joints and ligaments then it would be smart to see a PT, you can't replace this stuff (yet). I've also heard that foam rollers can be a bit dodgy. The attached cyclist specific guide worked really well for me, but I wouldn't mess around, I'd get looked at by a PT who works with cyclists/triathletes.

Per Greg's advice, I'd also take a good hard look at your bike and fit—a broken rail on your saddle, cleats slightly off, favoring a leg—there's so many variables. One easy first step is to get a 360 video of you on the bike pedaling, it's usually readily apparent if something is off. Check your average cadence too. 

Lastly, consider cross-training to avoid bone density issues. I play tennis.

I often read posts in email. Delivered that way, you can't see embedded images. I clicked through to the forum hoping to see a photo of John playing tennis. Disappointed! (I play, too.)

can I humble brag about my weekly TSS too?

Ultimately, while I assume it is completely possible you are doing them wrong. The most important takeaway is simple: Do what works for you at the time. 

Also important, what works for you now, might be or not what works for you later in the season, and what works for others, might or not work for you.

If you feel like stretching might not be helping, by all means, go with the flow. If later in the season it feels like you should be stretching, go for it.

And of course, whatever you do, you want to look sharp, form matters. 

Thanks for the knowledge, all. I have a bike fit scheduled for next week, so that should take care of any fit-related issues. 

I hadn't even considered that I may be stretching wrong - for some reason it was more of a binary yes/no thing in my mind. I'll check out those resources and consider finding a good PT if I'm still having issues after the fit. 

And did not mean to humble brag haha - my TSS is more indicative of a low FTP and lack of self control than anything else.

Reminds me of an old doctor joke:

Patient, "Dr. it hurts when I <thing>"
Doctor, "Don't do <thing>."

Seriously though, John's on point. It's very easy to stretch wrong and hurt yourself.

Yacks has chronic knee pain...chondomalacia....patella tendonitus.  Comes and goes with amount of riding.  Mostly flares when I do too much intensity.  This makes it hard for me to really train hard for races.  What's worked for me was an ACME bike fit..different pedals...higher cadence...more recovery rides and less high intensity stuff...ice packs after rides and ibuprofin.  I figure the races are the place for my hard workouts. 

@SebastianVidal

I don't know if I linked to this article before or not, but I like the routine as it seems easy.  http://reviews.mtbr.com/how-to-stretching-for-cyclists

Interesting abstract. TLDR: nothing beats a maniacal inner drive.

There is a bunch written about how "10k hours" is a nifty headline without too much substance. Neat that someone did a meta study on it.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-017-0740-0?wt_mc=Affiliate.CommissionJunction.Authors.3.EPR1089.DeepLink&amp;utm_medium=affiliate&amp;utm_source=commission_junction_authors&amp;utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID3987228&amp;utm_content=deeplink