[Reed]

Reed on December 16, 2020 at 1:25 pm · in reply to: Questions about training with power #48306

I took a few more measurements to try and get a better handle on what easy & hard wattages are for me. No substantially different info, but some helpful added data points.

• Baseline blood lactate, taken just now during an afternoon at my standing desk: 0.8mmol/L
• After a good 20-30 minute warmup: 1.5mmol/L
• After 15 minutes @ 150 watts: 2.8mmol/L
• After 90 seconds @ 300 watts: 5.9mmol/L

TrainingPeaks link: http://tpks.ws/HJ6AYALMQ4LEZTI4FEYTRMETSU

Looks to me like (as discussed above) I should keep my easy work well under 150 watts. 30-30s are pretty fun on the erg, and absent more info via a AnT time trial aiming for 300+ watts is probably a good target for those.

[Reed]

Reed on December 15, 2020 at 6:59 am · in reply to: Am I training at work? #48268

You are accumulating fatigue, but probably not in a way that builds fitness. There are plenty of examples of successful structured training while balancing a physical day job. Steve House has written about working as a guide while training (and how ignoring the fatigue of the day job can lead to overtraining). Ed Viesturs worked full days of light construction, swinging a framing hammer, before going out for his weekday 8-mile run. He used that fitness to climb 8,000m peaks without oxygen. You might find that focusing on building a stronger aerobic base, with more Zone 1 work and some strength training, might make both your weekend activities and day job easier.

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Reed on December 11, 2020 at 11:32 am · in reply to: Potential for kayaking to undermine training #48146

TrainingPeaks was originally built for triathlon training, and the training stress score (TSS) and other metrics are in part intended to allow for normalizing that type of multisport tracking. It won’t necessarily tell you how fit you are for one vs. the other, but it can help to surface high levels of acute fatigue that might influence your planning. You could also tweak the decay rate of calculated fatigue if you split the tracking into individual sports – look at the Acute Training Load constant in the performance management chart settings.

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Reed on December 11, 2020 at 11:22 am · in reply to: Nose breathing #48145

It’s OK to breathe however you need to breathe. 🙂 If your nose is stuffy or you have a deviated septum or whatever, you might feel more comfortable breathing through your mouth even at a physiologically easy pace. Or as Scott said, you might be able to breath easily through your nose even though you’re above aerobic threshold.

[Reed]

Reed on December 11, 2020 at 11:04 am · in reply to: MaxS: advice on straight vs trap bar #48144

Nothing wrong with a trap bar, but a standard bar could be more versatile. Seth makes a good point about lunges etc. being harder with a trap bar. And for a block of strength training, you might find that a circuit approach isn’t necessary.

Powerlifting training usually would break a workout up into something like 3 sets 5 reps squat, 3 sets 5 reps bench, 1 set 5 reps deadlift, in that order. Rest ~3 minutes between sets. The goal is to train the nervous system and mainly use ATP / creatine phosphate, not aerobic energy production, so that rest is important. Taking the plates off between exercises is easy enough.

You can of course do those sets / reps / resting with a trap bar.

Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength is a great book. Thanks for the link to Tony Gentilcore – I’ve learned a lot from Eric Cressey’s writings and videos (Tony worked with Eric).

[Reed]

Reed on December 9, 2020 at 2:16 pm · in reply to: AnT change with increase AeT? #48086

The discussion seems very focused on your heart rate at aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. Those are great signposts. They change, but your aerobic threshold before and after a two-day backpacking trip isn’t going to have changed. Maybe target tracking these on a quarterly or twice-yearly basis. And, the more critical metric is speed at AeT.

If you’re getting in 6 hours of sub-aerobic-threshold training each week, that’s great! You should be able to improve for several years, if you’ve never done any structured training. You might also find other bottlenecks / low-hanging fruit in areas like strength training, mobility, diet, etc.

There’s a quotation related to Buddhism: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” I think the opposite might be true for endurance training. As I learn more, there are more nuances and factors to consider. (Then again, I hesitate to characterize myself as anything other than a novice endurance athlete even if I’ve read a few books.)

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Reed on December 3, 2020 at 9:17 am · in reply to: AeT guesstimate from these tests? #47758

I don’t know much about running power meters, but from what I’ve read they are indirect measures of output. Less reliable than a bike or rowing power meter. On flat ground, pace is probably a better metric.

It sounds as though the wind affected your first test, to the point that it’s not going to give you good data on your aerobic threshold. So, if you throw out that test, you have two data points suggesting that you can hold a 145bpm, 5:10/min pace at or below aerobic threshold. I assume that’s 5 minutes per kilometer, not per mile. 🙂

150bpm for your AeT sounds like a reasonable assessment. If you want to be conservative, set the top of your Zone 1 at something like 135bpm, and accumulate time in Z1.

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Reed on November 30, 2020 at 12:28 pm · in reply to: Questions about training with power #46740

Looks like the forum’s spam filter doesn’t like links. I’d found a link to Scott Semple’s comment [1] and had a link to the 2k test I mentioned. [2]

[1] https://uphillathlete.com/forums/topic/flat-aet-test-help-with-data/#post-41599
[2] http://tpks.ws/4MQXW5CQPRTXBTI4FEYTRMETSU

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Reed on November 30, 2020 at 7:52 am · in reply to: Questions about training with power #47630

Looks like I ended up creating multiple threads – mea culpa. https://uphillathlete.com/forums/topic/questions-about-training-with-power-4/

I am curious about what you’re describing, Scott. I’m sure that technique and efficiently play a role as well.

A few weeks in, I have enough workout data to make a few observations. If anyone else is experimenting with indoor power-based equipment, maybe it’s useful to you. The discrepancy between TrainingPeaks hrTSS and power TSS is much greater at easier paces, and I think it’s because TrainingPeaks is calculating TSS base on my AnT wattage. It seems like it might be ignoring power zones for the purposes of calculating TSS. Whereas for heart rate zones, time in Z1 vs time in Z3 will be counted as 0.6 intensity factor vs. 0.9 intensity factor.

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Reed on November 12, 2020 at 11:36 am · in reply to: Questions about training with power #46739

Hey Garret! Yes, I remember reading Scott’s comment related to that. I’m not sure that I understood it, though.

There are a couple of other data points that I have:

• 4mmol/L lactate test indicated an AnT of 179bpm at 213w.
• I did a 2K test (2,000m row) in ~7:20. Average heart rate 191bpm, max 202 bpm, average power 253w.
• I have not been rowing much at all lately. And, I haven’t been training very high volumes in general. So movement economy might be a factor, and as Scott J. mentioned cardiac drift from fatigue (from being untrained relative to the demands of the workout).

It’ll be interesting to re-do this test in a few months. My AeT watts per kilo is around 1.8, AnT ~2.7w/kg. That puts me, based data from Nolte’s book Rowing Faster, at somewhere around a competitive high school rower or maybe a bottom-tier university rower. Increasing hours, >80% below AeT and 5-15% above AnT, remains my guiding set of metrics.

By the way, in Coggan’s book, there was a line that caught my eye: “Level 3: Tempo. Many a coach has referred to this level as a cyclist’s no-man’s-land. […] If all you have is 3 hours a week to ride, drill it in the upper range of Level 3 and get ini a great workout.” (3rd edition pg. 61) I find the FTP, CPV, AEPF, quadrant analysis, and so on interesting. But am left wondering if it’s like a cyclist with 22% body fat hyper focusing on the weight savings of a titanium derailleur. 🙂

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Reed on November 10, 2020 at 1:13 pm · in reply to: Questions about training with power #46691

I did a heart rate drift test, to help assess the validity of the numbers I got via the blood lactate test I did a couple of weeks ago. (That lactate test suggested that my aerobic threshold for rowing is at ~148 watts, 165bpm heart rate.) After warming up for 15 minutes, I did a 60-minute workout targeting 150 watts at a 20 stroke-per-minute rate (cadence). I kept the wattage flat, but my heart rate rose and I also found myself upping the rate to 22spm or 24spm by the end.

Here’s the TrainingPeaks workout link.

My observations:

• TrainingPeaks calculates Pw:Hr to be 7.13%.
• Pulling the erg data into Excel, I found slightly different numbers. Average power for first half 151.1 watts, second half 150.5 watts. Average heart rate 168.4 and 179.7 respectively. So I calculate a heart rate drift of 6.73%. I’m not sure why TP’s math is different from mine. Maybe some numbers were changed slightly during data import (TrainingPeaks won’t accept the data from the RP3 rower, but Rowsandall.com does and syncs it to TrainingPeaks…) Or more likely, I’m taking an average of the per-stroke data points, and TrainingPeaks is looking at the timestamps and interpolating the area under the curve.
• TrainingPeaks calculates a power-based TSS of 57 for that total 1h18m workout, but a 99 hrTSS. I’m not really concerned about the numbers, but am curious why there’s such a difference. I think I’ve configured the TrainingPeaks rowing heart rate zones & rowing power zones appropriately. But, the 4mmol/L heart rate that I recorded the other day was ~180bpm, which was the average for the last half of this workout.

Seems like my 151 watt target for AeT was a little bit high, although in the right ballpark. As I mentioned earlier, I’m training 4-5 hours a week, so this test was a decently hard workout for me. Not sure if that would affect the interpretation of the test.

-Reed

[Reed]

Reed on November 9, 2020 at 5:37 am · in reply to: Questions about training with power #46652

Thank you, Scott – I’ll do some experiments and see what I learn. I haven’t done either a heart rate drift test nor a “field” AnT test on the erg yet. It’ll be interesting to see how those data points match up, or don’t, with my 2mmol / 4mmol numbers.

[Reed]

Reed on November 5, 2020 at 9:07 pm · in reply to: Lactate test – AeT seems too high #46561

My reading of that graph is that the lactate concentration at 144bpm is about 1.3mmol/L, and at 150bpm is about 1.5mmol/L. The starting point and labeling of the graph axes is a bit confusing. The jump that Scott saw as 0.5mmolL is, I think, actually only 0.2mmol/L.

That Swiss report is a great document – there’s also a French version, for those who speak French but not German. Check out the graph on page 28. The aerobic threshold is defined there as the point after which lactate rises by 0.4mmol/L. In your case, that looks like it’s about 171bpm (the rise in lactate from 171bpm to 174bpm looks to be about 0.4mmol/L).

Don’t think too much about your heart rate numbers being high or low – the absolute numbers are pretty variable from person to person. My AeT running heart rate is about 183bpm, anecdotally – similar to yours.

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Reed on September 29, 2020 at 9:40 am · in reply to: book-review & open questions – whats the authors perspective? #45509

Seems to me that the quotation below gets to the core of that author’s concerns / objections. Sports scientists are great at finding underlying mechanisms and evidence for why certain adaptations occur or why certain stimuli are beneficial. Coaches tend to be much more interested on figuring out whether something works, not why it works.

Concern number one is that the authors provide no reference for this data so that the efficacy of the testing could be checked. One has no idea if these data were ever peer-reviewed by experts or if the data are published. Using unpublished data is not appropriate for supporting generalized conclusions published in a book. Concern number two centers around the relevance of cross sectional data on individuals to any generalized advice. Without an understanding of many other factors (some confounding) that will influence the results shown, these data really have no scientific basis. They are cherry-picked graphs used to support a point being made in the text- something that is not acceptable. Use of representative peer-reviewed data from published references is the only acceptable alternative and even this type of data can be very deficient in this field of study. Without longitudinal data as well as data on individual enzymatic profiles (profiles which are temporal) there is no ability to put any generalized interpretation on what is presented. This is not to say that the arguments presented by the authors cannot be supported, just that they do not provide the appropriate references to peer-reviewed publications- an unfortunate oversight.

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Reed on September 22, 2020 at 1:53 pm · in reply to: How sharp a boundary is the AeT? #45281

I view it as a model – and “all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” Thinking of the aerobic and anaerobic threshold as on / off switches might lead to false precision, yet there are real physiological differences that lead to the establishment of those thresholds. You’re right, precision isn’t that critical, especially if you take a conservative approach by logging lots of time well below AeT. Make the easy days easy, and the hard days hard.

I recently came across a diagram and definition from the Swiss Olympic federation that I found useful. [1] Below AeT, from lying down to walking to easy running, your lactate levels are pretty flat. Once your lactate rises 0.4mmol/L above baseline, you’re above your AeT. See graph attached. I’ve also seen a rise of 1mmol/L above baseline as a definition for AeT.

Baseline lactate levels that I’ve measured on myself have tended to be in the 0.8mmol/L to 1.3mmol/L range. I’m not sure what that looks like across populations. The AeT lactate figure that I’ve used has been a nice round 2.0mmol/L.

[1] In French, page 28 of https://www.swissolympic.ch/dam/jcr:6ea9b202-857b-4561-81de-bbc799b6b690/Diagnostic_de_performance_manual_160201_FR.pdf

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