Learning to get the best out of the powertap

A couple of months ago I got a Power Tap wheel from Pedals Plus. I felt the best way for me to optimise my training and to be able to test squad members occasionally was to have a power measuring device which could be swapped from bike to bike.

I have trained with a power measuring device for several years. This has been in the form of a Cateye mag trainer. This has been great to keep a record of my training progress and I have been able to put athletes onto it for testing.

My need was to be able to measure power output on the road. In training rides and time trials, to establish the optimum training levels for stationery intervals or hill repeats.

Some things can be learned far better by doing, rather than by reading about it. While I have had several athletes with power meters on training programs, I am learning more by actually using the device myself .

One of the first things to become apparent is the gradual drop off in power if a good feeding plan is not followed. The drop is not so much in the amount of power needed to climb a hill, but in the average between the hills. Another important point is the erratic power figures produced when concentration falters as a result of low blood sugar levels. It seems as concentration drops, pedalling efficiency is lost, showing up as large rises and drops in power on a flat road.

Another interesting observation is, when rolling from one hill, through a dip and kicking to keep momentum going over the next hill, how high the power figures go. At the same time, heart rate figures hardly change. An example is a jump in power output from 200wt to 500wt for a short burst of maybe 10-15sec, causes a rise in HR of only 4 beats. Now an athlete who is not measuring power output can do this many times in an “aerobic” workout without knowing how much he is “taking out of the bank”. Every spike in power like this turns on the fast twitch muscle fibres, which are not the fibres targeted in an aerobic workout.

There are a limited number of times a triathlete can  do this in a race before it affects his run detrimentally. An athlete in training can easily dip into this anerobic area many times in a session without affecting his average heart rate much at all. Instead of the workout being aerobic, it is in fact an anerobic interval session, which appears to be aerobic on the heart rate monitor. Is it any wonder these athletes “run out of legs” at 130km in an Ironman bike? They have not build the necessary endurance to keep going for over four hours. Their endurance workouts were interval sessions.

It is a fact that when athletes are developing, they can do just about anything and still get better. But they often reach a point where they do lots of work and just don’t get anybetter. It’s unfortunate that this often occurs when they think they have gotten all they can from a coach, and decide to train themselves from there on. Many times to stall in their progress.

It’s usually at this point when the real value of a coach starts to show. When the coach can give the athlete what he needs, rather than what he wants. We all know it’s great fun to ride hard and smash our mates over a few hills. But if faster Ironman races is the goal. That’s both bike and run times. It might be necessary to spread the effort out a little more smoothly.

Training with a real plan for improvement, and measuring your power output with a device like the Power Tap, can deliver the improvement which is so elusive after the honeymoon period of training.