Power Profiling -- good stuff

In another thread, Andy Coggan pointed toward his article "Power
Profiling" at www.cyclingpeaks.com containing an Excel table of W/kg
for different duration efforts and a range of performance levels going
from world champions down to untrained athletes. IMHO, this is really
good stuff for anyone who wants to be at all analytical or objective
about his/her training and performance. That said, I have a number of
questions and comments for Andy or any other of the power gurus and
advocates. (Warning: this may turn out to be a long post so either
move on now, or go read his article if you haven't already.)

First, it seems like the way you bracketed the groups is natural, and
in my admittedly subjective experience and observation, the overlap is
reasonable. By that I mean, for example, the "lower half" of the cat
1's is comparable to the "upper half" of the 2's, etc., at least to
first order. I'm curious how confident you are in the values in the
table between "World Champ" and "Untrained". I ask for two reasons.
For one, my own profile doesn't fit the way I would expect. And
second, the values in the table progress linearly (as you move through
ability levels) and the brackets cover a constant, wide range. As we
all know, assume a relationship is linear if we don't have enough data
or insights that say it should be otherwise!

In particular, I'm wondering if you might be a little bit low with the
"5 min" and "20 min" W/kg values, at least in the Div. III pro through
cat 3 range, and perhaps a little high for the "5 s" and "1 min"
values. For example, I am pretty confident that the best cat 1
climbers can put out more than 5.19 W/kg over a 20-minute effort.

My own profile, at age 42, is as follows:

Duration: W/kg:
----------------------
20 minute: 4.7
5 minute: 5.1
1 minute: 8.1
5 second: 13-15

My values were about 10% higher when I last raced seriously, about 12
years ago. I did win a couple of P12 road races then, but I was
certainly not at the level that the table indicates for the 20-minute
level. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I could sprint better than the average
cat 4, which is where the table puts me for the 5-second test.

BTW, please don't think I'm nit-picking the article and the table. I
think the information is great and really useful. I just think you
might like hearing about some other data points!

Another question or two...

It would be fascinating to see some real profiles for a variety of
ability levels and specialties (and all-arounders). Does anyone have
some profiles they can share? My profile shows decent lactate
tolerance and VO2Max but pretty weak short-term power. I'm curious, is
there really anyone that is well-trained and has a flat profile?

Also, W/kg is clearly a good indicator of climbing performance. But
for time trialing, it isn't that strongly related is it? In my case,
my 20-minute W/kg suggest I should be in the cat 1-2 range which I
think is reasonable for climbing, but, trust me, it's way off for time
trialing. In your experience, should someone be able to work on their
aero position, etc. so that their climbing and tt'ing are comparable,
at least relative to other riders in the same category? In other
words, is body mass a good indicator for the aerodynamic drag one
should be able to achieve? I wouldn't think so, but the power-profile
article and table sort of suggest that one's climbing and tt'ing can
be similarly categorized based on mass alone.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your great information and insights.

Mark Fennell

It would seem a bit more useful if there was some sort of correlation
between poewr output and some other measurement such as TT speed.

"Mark Fennell" wrote in message
m...
In another thread, Andy Coggan pointed toward his article "Power
Profiling" at www.cyclingpeaks.com containing an Excel table of W/kg
for different duration efforts and a range of performance levels
going
from world champions down to untrained athletes. IMHO, this is
really
good stuff for anyone who wants to be at all analytical or objective
about his/her training and performance. That said, I have a number
of
questions and comments for Andy or any other of the power gurus and
advocates. (Warning: this may turn out to be a long post so either
move on now, or go read his article if you haven't already.)

First, it seems like the way you bracketed the groups is natural,
and
in my admittedly subjective experience and observation, the overlap
is
reasonable. By that I mean, for example, the "lower half" of the cat
1's is comparable to the "upper half" of the 2's, etc., at least to
first order. I'm curious how confident you are in the values in the
table between "World Champ" and "Untrained". I ask for two reasons.
For one, my own profile doesn't fit the way I would expect. And
second, the values in the table progress linearly (as you move
through
ability levels) and the brackets cover a constant, wide range. As we
all know, assume a relationship is linear if we don't have enough
data
or insights that say it should be otherwise!

In particular, I'm wondering if you might be a little bit low with
the
"5 min" and "20 min" W/kg values, at least in the Div. III pro
through
cat 3 range, and perhaps a little high for the "5 s" and "1 min"
values. For example, I am pretty confident that the best cat 1
climbers can put out more than 5.19 W/kg over a 20-minute effort.

My own profile, at age 42, is as follows:

Duration: W/kg:
----------------------
20 minute: 4.7
5 minute: 5.1
1 minute: 8.1
5 second: 13-15

My values were about 10% higher when I last raced seriously, about
12
years ago. I did win a couple of P12 road races then, but I was
certainly not at the level that the table indicates for the
20-minute
level. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I could sprint better than the average
cat 4, which is where the table puts me for the 5-second test.

BTW, please don't think I'm nit-picking the article and the table. I
think the information is great and really useful. I just think you
might like hearing about some other data points!

Another question or two...

It would be fascinating to see some real profiles for a variety of
ability levels and specialties (and all-arounders). Does anyone have
some profiles they can share? My profile shows decent lactate
tolerance and VO2Max but pretty weak short-term power. I'm curious,
is
there really anyone that is well-trained and has a flat profile?

Also, W/kg is clearly a good indicator of climbing performance. But
for time trialing, it isn't that strongly related is it? In my case,
my 20-minute W/kg suggest I should be in the cat 1-2 range which I
think is reasonable for climbing, but, trust me, it's way off for
time
trialing. In your experience, should someone be able to work on
their
aero position, etc. so that their climbing and tt'ing are
comparable,
at least relative to other riders in the same category? In other
words, is body mass a good indicator for the aerodynamic drag one
should be able to achieve? I wouldn't think so, but the
power-profile
article and table sort of suggest that one's climbing and tt'ing can
be similarly categorized based on mass alone.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your great information and
insights.

Mark Fennell

In article , Tom
Kunich wrote:

It would seem a bit more useful if there was some sort of correlation
between poewr output and some other measurement such as TT speed.

But TT speed has only two variables (other than wind, road surface,
hills), power output for the time period, and aerodynamic drag. Aero
drag should be closely related to rider weight/size so if you know
weight and power somebody like Andy could reasonably calculate your TT
time and shoe size.

-WG

warren wrote:
In article , Tom
Kunich wrote:

It would seem a bit more useful if there was some sort of correlation
between poewr output and some other measurement such as TT speed.

But TT speed has only two variables (other than wind, road surface,
hills), power output for the time period, and aerodynamic drag. Aero
drag should be closely related to rider weight/size so if you know
weight and power somebody like Andy could reasonably calculate your TT
time and shoe size.

Not quite. The "A" part of CdA varies roughly with the 2/3 power of mass,
but the "Cd" part doesn't. Because of the way these things scale, W/kg is
a good indicator of climbing ability, but total W is a good indicator of
TT ability.

Mark Fennell wrote:


... IMHO, this is really good stuff for anyone
who wants to be at all analytical or objective
about his/her training and performance....

Finally. A thread where Chang will have nothing to contribute.

"Mark Fennell" wrote in message
m...

It would be fascinating to see some real profiles for a variety of
ability levels and specialties (and all-arounders). Does anyone have
some profiles they can share? My profile shows decent lactate
tolerance and VO2Max but pretty weak short-term power. I'm curious, is
there really anyone that is well-trained and has a flat profile?

Also, W/kg is clearly a good indicator of climbing performance. But
for time trialing, it isn't that strongly related is it?
In my case,
my 20-minute W/kg suggest I should be in the cat 1-2 range which I
think is reasonable for climbing, but, trust me, it's way off for time
trialing. In your experience, should someone be able to work on their
aero position, etc. so that their climbing and tt'ing are comparable,
at least relative to other riders in the same category?


If you work on your aero position, you should be able to get much better
than riders in your category.

The reason is that getting more aero is not easy to quantify, unless one has
access to a wind tunnel. People will spend $5 per gram shaving weight off
their bike, yet not spend any time at all improving their time trial
position, where the relative benefits are much higher.

IIRC, if the drag coefficient for riding on the hoods is 100, then getting
in the drops is ~80% of that, getting a full aero setup is ~65-70%, etc.
Riders like Colby Pearce or Chris Boardman could get down to ~50% or lower.

The proportional savings are far greater than shaving a pound or two off
your bike, especially when one considers that the weight of the rider must
be factored into the proportional savings of the system as a whole.

In other
words, is body mass a good indicator for the aerodynamic drag one
should be able to achieve? I wouldn't think so,

You are correct, body mass is not a good indicator.

but the power-profile
article and table sort of suggest that one's climbing and tt'ing can
be similarly categorized based on mass alone.


That may be true if one generalizes, but in specific cases (like Boardman or
Pearce) it is not true. My last year racing, I went ahead and worked on the
TT position after ignoring it for 10 years. I was still pretty crappy at it,
but I could tell the value it had by taking it out on group rides. It's
pretty amazing what a difference it makes. If I were to ever race again, I'd
spend a lot of time trying to get more aero with a normal road setup.

I don't know if you watched the pro1/2 Socal races after your races (I'm
assuming you're master), but notice how Paolinetti was always forearms on
the handlebar in breakaways, even through turns? He had that figured out.

"Mark Fennell" wrote in message
m...

In particular, I'm wondering if you might be a little bit low with the
"5 min" and "20 min" W/kg values, at least in the Div. III pro through
cat 3 range, and perhaps a little high for the "5 s" and "1 min"
values. For example, I am pretty confident that the best cat 1
climbers can put out more than 5.19 W/kg over a 20-minute effort.

Hmm - my best sprint peak power (I don't know about holding it for 5s) is
about 5 "vertical squares" below that of my 20 min value. But I always knew
I couldn't sprint :-). Wish it wasn't so critical.

Jeff

On 18 Aug 2003 18:44:32 -0700, Mark Fennell wrote:
It would be fascinating to see some real profiles for a variety of
ability levels and specialties (and all-arounders).

Check the rowing world, they've been doing it for years. They do tests
on the Concept2 rowing machine, and, ideally, the power output should
be distributed thus:

Test Hwt men Lwt women
10" 123% 118%
1' 115% 112%
2 km 100% 100%
6 km 93% 95%
1 h ? 90%

(The numbers for Lwt men and hwt women are in between these. For hwt
men, 2k takes about 6' and 6k about 19'30". Lwt women 7'15" and
23'00". "Heavyweight" really means "open class"; typically those men
are 1m95 and 90 kg. Lightweight women cannot weigh more than 59 kg and
are around 1m70.)

In rowing, the goal is always to deliver a maximum performance on 2
km, that's why that score is a reference at 100%. If some of your
percentages fall behind, you should spend (extra) time training that
particular zone. Ultimately, that will benefit the 2k score.

"Mark Fennell" wrote in message
m...
In another thread, Andy Coggan pointed toward his article "Power
Profiling" at www.cyclingpeaks.com containing an Excel table of W/kg
for different duration efforts and a range of performance levels going
from world champions down to untrained athletes. IMHO, this is really
good stuff for anyone who wants to be at all analytical or objective
about his/her training and performance. That said, I have a number of
questions and comments for Andy or any other of the power gurus and
advocates. (Warning: this may turn out to be a long post so either
move on now, or go read his article if you haven't already.)

First, it seems like the way you bracketed the groups is natural, and
in my admittedly subjective experience and observation, the overlap is
reasonable. By that I mean, for example, the "lower half" of the cat
1's is comparable to the "upper half" of the 2's, etc., at least to
first order. I'm curious how confident you are in the values in the
table between "World Champ" and "Untrained". I ask for two reasons.
For one, my own profile doesn't fit the way I would expect. And
second, the values in the table progress linearly (as you move through
ability levels) and the brackets cover a constant, wide range. As we
all know, assume a relationship is linear if we don't have enough data
or insights that say it should be otherwise!

As the accompanying article indicates, I fixed the upper and lower ends of
each range based on known power outputs of world champions/world record
holders and untrained individuals, respectively. The values in between were
spread equally (i.e., linear relationship assumed), simply because at
present there's not enough data to justify doing otherwise. Remember, the
purpose of the tables is to compare relative ability across different
exercise durations reflecting different physiological characteristics, not
to attempt to assign or describe riders of different categories (strip the
category guidelines from the tables, and they would be just as useful). This
is why I didn't assume a normal distribution and spread the values that
way - that might (or might not - no one at present has the data to say for
sure) better reflect reality, but has the disadvantage of squeezing
everything together toward the middle, making anyone who isn't well above or
well below average appear to be an "all rounder".

In particular, I'm wondering if you might be a little bit low with the
"5 min" and "20 min" W/kg values, at least in the Div. III pro through
cat 3 range, and perhaps a little high for the "5 s" and "1 min"
values. For example, I am pretty confident that the best cat 1
climbers can put out more than 5.19 W/kg over a 20-minute effort.

My own profile, at age 42, is as follows:

Duration: W/kg:
----------------------
20 minute: 4.7
5 minute: 5.1
1 minute: 8.1
5 second: 13-15

My values were about 10% higher when I last raced seriously, about 12
years ago. I did win a couple of P12 road races then, but I was
certainly not at the level that the table indicates for the 20-minute
level. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I could sprint better than the average
cat 4, which is where the table puts me for the 5-second test.

Better than the average cat 4 *match sprinter*, as that notion implies for
somebody with that relative ability to compared to, e.g., Sean Eadie? Again,
as described in the accompanying article, by basing things on the
performance of specialists (match sprinters for 5 s), the scales tend to be
skewed from a road racers perspective. To state it another way: compared to
a true sprinter, most people racing on the road *do* have relatively low
neuromuscular power. However, I don't think one really can or should try to
develop discipline-specific tables. First, too many people cross over to
different disciplines, thus making it difficult to develop valid standards,
esp. since the only point proposing discipline-specific tables would be to
improve the category guidelines - which aren't the point of the tables in
the first place. Second, discipline-specific tables would deviate from the
logic that was used to develop the tables in the first place.

BTW, please don't think I'm nit-picking the article and the table. I
think the information is great and really useful. I just think you
might like hearing about some other data points!

Another question or two...

It would be fascinating to see some real profiles for a variety of
ability levels and specialties (and all-arounders). Does anyone have
some profiles they can share? My profile shows decent lactate
tolerance and VO2Max but pretty weak short-term power. I'm curious, is
there really anyone that is well-trained and has a flat profile?

Also, W/kg is clearly a good indicator of climbing performance. But
for time trialing, it isn't that strongly related is it? In my case,
my 20-minute W/kg suggest I should be in the cat 1-2 range which I
think is reasonable for climbing, but, trust me, it's way off for time
trialing. In your experience, should someone be able to work on their
aero position, etc. so that their climbing and tt'ing are comparable,
at least relative to other riders in the same category? In other
words, is body mass a good indicator for the aerodynamic drag one
should be able to achieve? I wouldn't think so, but the power-profile
article and table sort of suggest that one's climbing and tt'ing can
be similarly categorized based on mass alone.

This has been addressed in other posts...I'll only add the reminder (once
again) that the point of the tables is to help evaluate somebody's relative
strengths and weaknesses, not predict their performance.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your great information and insights.

You're welcome.

BTW, there is a ~700 member mailing list at
www.topica.com/lists/wattage/read devoted to discussion of training with
power meters, etc....based on the interest you've expressed here, you might
want to give it a read.

Andy Coggan

Andy Coggan wrote:
"Robert Chung" wrote
Not quite. The "A" part of CdA varies roughly with the 2/3 power of
mass, but the "Cd" part doesn't. Because of the way these things
scale, W/kg is a good indicator of climbing ability, but total W is a
good indicator of TT ability.

Except that Heil et al. have concluded that Cd also varies inversely
with weight (with an exponent of -0.45). The overall result is then as
Warren indicates, i.e., even though mass per se has little effect on
the power requirement to travel at a fixed velocity on a completely
flat road, W/kg is still likely to be a better predictor of TT
performance than W alone.

Cd varies inversely with mass? Hmmm, I didn't know that. Anyway, if A
varies (roughly) with m^.67 and Cd varies (roughly) with m^(-.45), then
CdA would vary roughly with m^(.2). A 25% difference in mass gives a 2%
difference in CdA?