(Road Racing and) Time Trialing and Training Thread - Week Ending 7/19/20

Bored working from home today

Curious if anyone has ever played around with "Critical Velocity" and D' for assessing fitness? Critical velocity is supposed to be a sustainable pace and D' is your capability for running above critical velocity in distance.

Calculated by fitting a line to race time on x axis and race distance on y axis for 800-10k races. Critical velocity is the slope of the line and then D' is the y intercept.

2013 2018 2019

800 1:57 2:03 --

1mi 4:26 4:31 4:38

5k 16:26 16:29 16:49

8k -- 27:49 27:27

10k -- 36:34 36:07

CV 5:35 6:00 5:59

D' 275m 399m 440m

I was surprised that every year had a strong linear correlation with distance and time (R2 greater than 0.99). Also surprised that between 2018-19 CV was essentially the same but I supposedly had better ability to hard in 2019.

Obviously confounded by different distances in calculation each year, fitness at different points of year, weather, terrain, race tactics, etc.

pewow wrote:

Bored working from home today

Curious if anyone has ever played around with "Critical Velocity" and D' for assessing fitness? Critical velocity is supposed to be a sustainable pace and D' is your capability for running above critical velocity in distance.

Calculated by fitting a line to race time on x axis and race distance on y axis for 800-10k races. Critical velocity is the slope of the line and then D' is the y intercept.

2013 2018 2019

800 1:57 2:03 --

1mi 4:26 4:31 4:38

5k 16:26 16:29 16:49

8k -- 27:49 27:27

10k -- 36:34 36:07

CV 5:35 6:00 5:59

D' 275m 399m 440m

I was surprised that every year had a strong linear correlation with distance and time (R2 greater than 0.99). Also surprised that between 2018-19 CV was essentially the same but I supposedly had better ability to hard in 2019.

Obviously confounded by different distances in calculation each year, fitness at different points of year, weather, terrain, race tactics, etc.

Interesting video on the subject here from a researcher that I recommend:

I train with Power and work at Stryd, so I'm familiar with training and racing at certain percentages of your Critical Power. Critical Power (CP) is the same thought as CV, but can be translated over different surfaces and conditions.

Running: 18 miles

I went to Spokane WA to visit a family member. Spent the week wakeboarding and tossing our kids in the lake. Mixed in with a little running.

I spaced out the previous week, but I hopped the local HS fence and did my July 4 1600m TT in a painful 5:18. Splits of 73, 78, 83, 84.

PT gave me the green light to start increasing mileage and intensity. It's been several weeks since the last flare-up, so I get the impression he thinks I'm healed. I've been here before (long stretches between flares), so I'm still expecting another random one at some point. Who knows. Maybe lots of side planks are all I needed to heal up after all.

jewbacca - Glad to hear the positive news. I know how you feel about having "been here before."

forcerunner wrote:

I train with Power and work at Stryd, so I'm familiar with training and racing at certain percentages of your Critical Power. Critical Power (CP) is the same thought as CV, but can be translated over different surfaces and conditions.

This was an interesting video... explained very well. Appreciate the share.

Hey HHH,

Do you know what your HRmax is? Ballpark figure?

npurdy1112 wrote:

Viking: Sounds like your friend was pretty consistent, bet it helped both of you being out there doing a workout. Thats a long cool down! What is your opinion on the stryd running stress score and their running stress balance?

I really like the Stryd running stress score because I think it tells me more than just looking at pure mileage numbers. It's basically is a combination of grade+wind adjusted pace relative to estimated threshold over time duration. Pretty sweet.

I'm not sure exactly how the running stress balance works. I think it looks at your current stress score and compares it to what you've done in the past as a measure of if you are increasing or decreasing your overall load. Mine has been tending to stay in the maintenance zone with a few days jumping over into the productive zone.

Are you talking to me or the actual HHH? Sometimes people are referencing me as HHH but we are indeed two independent individuals.

forcerunner - That's a really interesting video about the power duration curve and W' being like an internal battery. Fascinating!

Coach Jeff - I really like your HR approach because it uses %MaxHR instead of some arbitrary age based equation (MAF). In hindsight, I wish I would have done more of a proper MaxHR test before tackling the Hadd method but I think I had it estimated kind of close. I found the day to day training method he prescribed Joe to be too difficult for me given the fitness I had at the time. But then again, Joe was a former elite (or sub elite however you differentiate the two) so I'm sure he had much less of an issue with it. I think what I found difficult was that there was at least 2, sometimes 3 sessions a week of 60 minutes of high aerobic running with one of those sessions part of the long run. And the long runs were not short (I believe the ones without tempo were up to 3 hours?).

BHViking wrote:

I'm not sure exactly how the running stress balance works. I think it looks at your current stress score and compares it to what you've done in the past as a measure of if you are increasing or decreasing your overall load. Mine has been tending to stay in the maintenance zone with a few days jumping over into the productive zone.

It takes your short term 7-day weighted average (acute stress) versus your 42-day weighted average (chronic stress) and shows the difference. Adding more short term stress will make the balance more negative. I use it to make sure I'm not adding too much too soon, or to understand if my training has leveled off in terms of overall intensity.

BHViking wrote:

I really like the Stryd running stress score because I think it tells me more than just looking at pure mileage numbers. It's basically is a combination of grade+wind adjusted pace relative to estimated threshold over time duration. Pretty sweet.

I'm not sure exactly how the running stress balance works. I think it looks at your current stress score and compares it to what you've done in the past as a measure of if you are increasing or decreasing your overall load. Mine has been tending to stay in the maintenance zone with a few days jumping over into the productive zone.

Thanks for responding. I have been using stryd all year and its nice to have the extra data fields to compare runs. I was just curious because like you lately my scores have been mostly in the "maintenance" range too. Guess that means we are good at balancing our easy to hard days? haha

Npurdy - The railroad tie workout is 5 sets of Deadlifts into upright row w a railroad tie w rope handles on it... and superet w Squats .. Its a pretty good full body workout. I dont own a weight set so my set up is very Rocky like .. buckets of sand .. a 54lb kettle .. a few weight plates that i put on top of the sand .. and lots of pushups etc ... It works. Resistance is Resistance

Man, that was a major can-kicking this morning. Held on for 10 miles...82 + 73 in bright sun when I rolled in. This weather is getting to me, and it has slowed me.

Hang on, my friends, maybe there will be a break soon...

npurdy1112 wrote:

Thanks for responding. I have been using stryd all year and its nice to have the extra data fields to compare runs. I was just curious because like you lately my scores have been mostly in the "maintenance" range too. Guess that means we are good at balancing our easy to hard days? haha

Haha, maybe so. Either that or we aren't doing anything to increase our training intensity that much big picture.

Forcerunner - thanks for the explanation of the stress balance. I was just thinking about the video that you posted a little regarding critical power and W'. I wonder how that relates to longer runs in which you never exceed critical power? For example, I'm pretty much guaranteed to hit a fatigue point when running over 2 hours. I noticed that I hit it pretty consistently around 1:50 but I just looked back and ran pretty close to the same power up until that point. In the same distance long run at a lower power output I ran all the way out to 2:30 without feeling fatigue. I think that some extension of W' which is mentioned in the video below critical power could explain that! It could also help me predict how hard to run long runs of varying duration in order to guarantee that the last 10 minutes or so are challenged by fatigue without overdoing it.

highhoppingworm wrote:

Are you talking to me or the actual HHH? Sometimes people are referencing me as HHH but we are indeed two independent individuals.

Forgot about the triple-h ambiguity principle!

yeah, I was looking at your 5x1 on Strava and I was curious, that's all.

BHViking: I found your comment to be very interesting. I'm having the exactly the opposite experience.

First, though, the 3 high-aerobic days were only very early in Joe's training... after the first few weeks the long run was just a long run. I did NOT feel the need to do that. I went from 2 high aerobic days (one "regular" and one as a part of my longest run on Sunday) to the more conventional Tue-Fri high aerobic days and a regular long run on Sundays.

Although I had experienced the "difficult" that you mentioned in past cycles, this time I feel absolutely great all the time. I think that's because I am truly always under my lactate threshold. I think I had been trying to press too quickly and so the "high aerobic" runs were actually becoming "low anaerobic." Possibly. But even still I made great progress. I think I am making progress this time around as well. I have a 2400 test on Friday of this week; we'll see how it compares to the one 6 weeks ago.

Not much to contribute once again this week. More PT (well ART) for the leg and it's seemingly on the mend but I'm still taking a very cautious approach. Maybe got 10 miles in last week. Increased the lifting frequency and hitting the pool more now to try and stave off the Covid 15 while I'm not running decent mileage. Might as well buy a bike again and jump back into triathlon after all this.

Coach Jeff ROC wrote:

highhoppingworm wrote:

Are you talking to me or the actual HHH? Sometimes people are referencing me as HHH but we are indeed two independent individuals.

Forgot about the triple-h ambiguity principle!

yeah, I was looking at your 5x1 on Strava and I was curious, that's all.

Ahhh. I am not 100% but I’m going to guess I run high. Probably in the 210-215 range. My wrist says I have been as high as 205 during the dog day’s of summer last year and I certainly don’t think I have maxed out.