First you might want to ask, how serious am I related to training and bike events. Like all of life there are almost unlimited levels of commitment to what we decide to do. Rather than get bogged down by all those possibilities, let’s narrow the focus to someone who rides regularly, at least 2000 to 3000 or more miles per year, does rides alone and with like-minded riders, has, wants to or might be interested in racing a bike and wants to train and learn how to advance their skills and performances.
Usually that means the rider has equipment to use and understands some of the metrics and devices used to track performance. They have a few seasons of riding and training of some sort behind them. They are looking to improve their enjoyment and performance on a bike. Hopefully that narrows the discussion to what devices are helpful and the metrics that those devices can support.
Equipment that supports understanding how to improve performance can range from, historically, a stopwatch, a clock, a speedometer of some sort, speed and cadence sensors, then came heart rate monitors that led to more sophisticated understanding, power meters came along and the art of understanding took another big leap. More, even more sophisticated devices are in play as well.
Some smart people in the training world started to build processes to understand how to train with all this new data being generated. Training and performance advanced significantly. Currently there are terms like TSS, FTP, CTL, ATL, TSB, NP and a whole batch of additional letters associated with the training process. I’ve talked about a lot of those in a previous blog post here if you want a refresher. https://pjwracingadventures.com/rat-racer-coaching/the-metrics-lets-see-the-list/
With all the added terms comes some confusion, yeah, me too. It can be overwhelming. Especially when I hear “all I want is to go faster, harder, longer, be on a podium, feel better after a big, long, hard ride, I don’t care about all these terms. As a coach though, I want to understand the terms and try and get athletes to buy into and understand the process better.
I know it is easy to fall back on past metrics used to help identify what “better” is. One of those is speed. Speed however is a somewhat ambiguous term to use as a training metric. Speed is inanimate, it is fun to experience and a very basic judge of increased performance but is a function of a lot of variables. Speed can’t be trained. You can train a rider to the experience of faster speeds but I can’t call speed on the phone and discuss the possibility of riding at 30 kph versus 40 kph. I can call an athlete and discuss how building a stronger inner motor can influence speed (Heart Rate and FTP changes). I can talk about how improving aerodynamics can increase the chance of going faster. I can start a strategy discussion about how staying in the draft. How to save energy until the right moment where I can use a trained physiology to increase speed and be faster than another racer at a key moment in an event.
Speed is dependent on the direction of wind, the speed of wind, the amount of draft, the aerodynamics of the bike and rider, the performance of the “motor” inside the rider. Speed, to me, equals another Golden Triangle. The three points are, at the bottom, Training Intensity, Training Duration, at the top is Rest/Recovery. Those three metrics combined create FTP (the horse power of the body) Speed then becomes a byproduct. Train Duration, Intensity then Rest you get more FTP and then train aspects like Skill + Aerodynamics and then experience to get speed. It is the three metrics, intensity, duration, rest that is trainable not speed. There are ways to analyze those metrics over time to build the bigger, stronger and ultimately faster rider. Hopefully, with the right training plan, the motor becomes more powerful and reliable. It is the art of a coach and training to match the time the motor is at its best at a critical time.
This view doesn’t negate the “fun factor” of speed. Most riders enjoy the thrill of speed. Talk to most riders and they will know how long it takes to ride a familiar route and will talk about how fast they felt doing a route quicker than the last time. If there is a group event, most riders will talk about how long the event took compared to others or a previous attempt. Some specific events on a velodrome have quickest times posted but those times are a result of a trained athlete using TSS, FTP, NP, CTL, ATL, TSB and other metrics to analyze and perfect the athlete’s internal “motor”.
Ultimately, I think it is valuable for an athlete to understand the trainable metrics and speak fluently using goals for the trainable metrics rather than speak in terms of metrics like speed that are affected by so many unmanageable forces. Speaking in the terms of what really influences performance means an athlete will focus on adjusting and improving those metrics. If a rider was more like a Bonneville Speed Racer or a Top Fuel Funny car, time and speed are the only critical metric for a win. However, speed again is dependent on who built the most dependable (HR) and powerful (FTP) motor that was time tested on a dynamometer and then perfected through trial and refinement. Speed being the product not the process of development.