The Illusive Limiter...

There were certain races this past season where I was satisfied with a midpack result (I say "satisfied" because it was all I felt I had that day). I went into the event well trained (or so I thought) and yet was unable to perform for a result. When I reviewed my power file after the race, I noticed that the power output was not out of the ordinary... well within my threshold. I would then study the hard efforts during the race... searching for a match and trying to decide whether I had burned too many too quickly (as most everyone knows, the "match" is loosely described as an extreme effort... you only have so many of those in your box... once you burn them all, you get dropped.) On these particular events in question, I had a hard time defining what efforts left me tired at the end... too tired to make a winning move. The "intervals within the race" should have been well within what I was trained to do. I was left to decide that I just didnt have it that day... it wasnt in the cards... I just had bad legs... whatever...

As a guy that likes data and likes analysis and likes to think that I have some control over outcomes on the bike and likes to think that training specifically for events can provide success in those events... I didnt really like the "well I had bad legs" excuse.

So I was reading some stuff the other day... Friel to be exact. He was asking questions to help you decide what your weaknesses and what you need to train hard to overcome. One particular question caught my eye and got me thinking. Where do you find yourself in the pack on a climb (defined as longer than 5 minutes)? His shortened answer was that if you cant climb then force might be your limiter. Now the easy answer for me is off the back... of course this depends on what pack we are talking about, but still. The more specific answer is that if I can find a gear where my cadence is comfortable (95 rpm) then I climb OK... if I am lower than that... not so much. But could force be my limiter?

I started to think about my training. I am a spinner and I know it. I have power, but I harness and distribute that power quickly over the cranks. In a TT, my average cadence is between 95 and 100 rpm... always. If I am struggling during a TT, I can check my cadence and I will always realized that I have dropped into the 80s... speed up my legs and immediatley my power and speed increase. I have always rationalized that as long as I had gearing to find that ideal cadence that my body yearned for when putting out powerful efforts, I really never needed to worry out forceful, low cadence efforts. Lets face it... high force, high cadence is sprinting... I am not doing standing starts or anything else that would require high force, low cadence.

All this brought me back around to racing... is there a possiblity that racing requires those high force, low cadence efforts and I have never noticed it? If it did, could I look at my data and figure out where those efforts were or how many there were?

Enter Quadrant Analysis. A spreadsheet tool designed by Andy Coggan (to whom I give credit for the chart below... well, credit for design... I will unfortunately take credit for the power data... or does God take credit for that (for giving me the questionable genetics in the first place... I digress...). This "software" was developed to breakdown rides into quadrants of effort. Quad 1 (upper right) shows high force, high cadence efforts... Quad 2 shows high force, low cadence efforts... Quad 3 shows low force, low cadence efforts... Quad 4 shows low force, high cadence. So for me in a race (this statement is obviously oversimplified but is probably true at the extremities), 1 is sprinting... 2 is mashing/grinding (think Stoney here)... 3 is chilling... 4 is spinning.

The blue dots show every individual effort from the race. The red line represents my threshold wattage... if a point is higher on the graph than the red line... it was over 280 Watts... below it would be less. So, all blue dots above the red line in Quad 2 (upper left) would represent efforts that are above 280 Watts and below my ideal cadence of 95 rpms. The further from the y axis (pretty much) the slower my legs were moving. This explains some... see next post for more information...