How do I calculate my ramp rate?

meepmeep

I now have 41 days of data from my power meter so in anticipation of having a properly seeded PMC tomorrow how do I calculate what my ramp rate has been week on week since I started using it.

The next bit of fun is then is to figure an appropriate ramp going forward especially now that I'm starting to add in more Level 4 stuff.

Bronzie

If using WKO+, just hovver your mouse over the blue line (Chronic Training Load) on the PMC graph and it'll show the calculated value on any date along the line. Find the CTL value at weekly intervals along the line and the ramp rate is the weekly increase in CTL (expressed as TSS/day/week).

You can approximate with the following formula:
= Last Week's CTL + ((( Current Week's TSS / 7 ) - Last Week's CTL ) / 6 )
but the actual PMC calculation of CTL is a bit more involved.

meepmeep

I do have WKO.

27/2 - 29 (estimated - had very little riding done in Feb hence the low starting CTL).
06/3 - 38.5 +9.5
13/3 - 49 +10.5
20/3 - 56 +7
27/3 - 60.1 +4.1 - took an easy week
03/4 - 59.5 -0.6 - life got in the road - couldn't get out much at all.
09/4 - 58.7 so far but illness* got in the road - today first proper ride this week.

*vomitting bug that went round everyone so not training related illness I'm pretty sure.

I hear people talking about having CTL around 100. I'm miles of that however when I get back to my normal training I'm sure this will continue to rise so what's causes it to plateau. Haven't go that sorted in my head.

jibberjim

meepmeep wrote:

I hear people talking about having CTL around 100. I'm miles of that however when I get back to my normal training I'm sure this will continue to rise so what's causes it to plateau. Haven't go that sorted in my head.

What causes it to plateau is that once you have 100 TSS per day, it's really f'ing hard to rise it any further, you'll either need more time, or you'll need to spend more and more of your time harder. It's really hard to maintain a high CTL.

Another reason with the WKO PMC is that the FTP is commonly over-estimated early in a period, and underestimated later in a period - commonly people extrapolate from short durations like 20minute or a 10 mile TT, but as you get more trained with the higher CTL reflecting this generally the ratio you can hold from this short duration to the hour also changes. This over and then under estimation has the effect of reducing the TSS a ride will score as you go later.

meepmeep

jibberjim wrote:

meepmeep wrote:

I hear people talking about having CTL around 100. I'm miles of that however when I get back to my normal training I'm sure this will continue to rise so what's causes it to plateau. Haven't go that sorted in my head.

What causes it to plateau is that once you have 100 TSS per day, it's really f'ing hard to rise it any further, you'll either need more time, or you'll need to spend more and more of your time harder. It's really hard to maintain a high CTL.

Another reason with the WKO PMC is that the FTP is commonly over-estimated early in a period, and underestimated later in a period - commonly people extrapolate from short durations like 20minute or a 10 mile TT, but as you get more trained with the higher CTL reflecting this generally the ratio you can hold from this short duration to the hour also changes. This over and then under estimation has the effect of reducing the TSS a ride will score as you go later.

OK so basically there isn't enough of intensity, duration or mix of intensity & duration at the minute to get me 700TSS per week. Currently I average around the 500-600. So as my training progresses and I can do more then this will naturally raise until a point where I can't really increase any of these 2 things without having to severly cut back on the other meaning TSS doesn't rise in total.

Obviously the question of what the mix between intensity and duration there is then becomes much more important as riding around at hours to get a high TSS will do little for building my FTP which is what I'm trying to do but I also needed the base miles as Jan/Feb were pretty much washouts for me. For that reason I've largely been doing Level 3 rides of 2.5 - 4 hours @ 0.84 to 0.91 IF. I've started doing intervals at about 98%+ FTP but its amazing just how much more harder mentally they are to do than Level 3 stuff. I think it is just a mental thing and once myself used to dealing with what they demand of me then I'll just be able to knuckle down more on them. They aren't all entirely sucessful now.

I calculated my FTP at the start and then 2 weeks ago. I had a 15 point rise which I was pleased with considering no real Level 4 work at all however I starting from a very low base so there was only one way it could go.

I'm using 1 hour NP as my routes are lumpy and I don't have a turbo so no real option.

I haven't done the other tests in racing and training with a power meter as I'm doing sportives so figured working on FTP was going to be most benefit to me and don't really care if I have other weaknesses @ Level 5 and above as they will not help me get up hills and in any case the sharp hills I get on my training routes mean I get a certain amount of work in these zones in any case even if completely unintentionally.

amaferanga

Buy a cheap turbo.

jibberjim

meepmeep wrote:

I calculated my FTP at the start and then 2 weeks ago. I had a 15 point rise which I was pleased with considering no real Level 4 work at all however I starting from a very low base so there was only one way it could go.

When you're seeing such rapid gains, the TSS is particularly tough to identify since your FTP which anchors the score changes significantly rapidly.

meepmeep wrote:

I'm using 1 hour NP as my routes are lumpy and I don't have a turbo so no real option.

That's probably not too bad, as long as the VI isn't too high (above 1.05 say)

Keep training, don't get too hung up on the exact numbers until you have more experience of your own body, what one person can do and repeat and what another is pretty different. Also TSS scores themselves can differ quite a lot depending on how you collect the data, none are necessarily wrong, but they do produce slightly different numbers, so you need to get to know yourself.

meepmeep

amaferanga wrote:

Buy a cheap turbo.

It's on the agenda but I've spent rather a lot recently and to be honest I will probably resist until after the clocks go back again unless I find I can't get my 2x20's a bit more consistent but I've only really started so still feeling my way with it all.

meepmeep

jibberjim wrote:

meepmeep wrote:

I calculated my FTP at the start and then 2 weeks ago. I had a 15 point rise which I was pleased with considering no real Level 4 work at all however I starting from a very low base so there was only one way it could go.

When you're seeing such rapid gains, the TSS is particularly tough to identify since your FTP which anchors the score changes significantly rapidly.

meepmeep wrote:

I'm using 1 hour NP as my routes are lumpy and I don't have a turbo so no real option.

That's probably not too bad, as long as the VI isn't too high (above 1.05 say)

Keep training, don't get too hung up on the exact numbers until you have more experience of your own body, what one person can do and repeat and what another is pretty different. Also TSS scores themselves can differ quite a lot depending on how you collect the data, none are necessarily wrong, but they do produce slightly different numbers, so you need to get to know yourself.

Oh well that's my 1 hour NP tests out the window then. First was 1.10 and the second 1.08 so not really valid. I'd not seen any VI guidelines on them before so I just went out and rode them as hard as could for an hour without finding my power at the end of the ride had dropped off a lot. It's probably the freewheeling down the really lumpy bits that contributed a lot to it (6%). I suspect if all those 0 were even 50 watts that it would make a good contribution to getting it <1.06.

My one and only set of 2x20's which had a VI <= 1.02 put my FTP roughly in the ballpark of what I thought it was anyway so I don't think I'm a million miles out anyway. I will have to do a new 1 hour test focusing more closely on not freewheeling or at least keeping it to an absolute minimum and of course pacing it a bit better.

jibberjim

meepmeep wrote:

I suspect if all those 0 were even 50 watts that it would make a good contribution to getting it <1.06.

For sure, you don't need to reject the test entirely as a test, just that because of the high VI, it's reliability as a measure of FTP that relates to steadier state efforts is not necessarily so good - it may be that it works well for you, but you could confirm that with some other testing to make sure. In the end how you test doesn't matter so much so long as it's consistent.

The risk of High VI efforts is that they often don't reflect what you can do consistently all that well.

meepmeep wrote:

I will have to do a new 1 hour test focusing more closely on not freewheeling or at least keeping it to an absolute minimum and of course pacing it a bit better.

I actually use AP from a rolling 1 hour ride, which likely understates what I could actually sustain for an hour, but as long as it's consistent, and you can recognise how that can change your TSS scores, it doesn't matter so much.

Alex_Simmons/RST

Just on NP v AP, for 1-hour maximal /very hard efforts, I find FTP is always closer to NP than AP, no matter the VI.

Even for rare "NP buster" rides, NP will still be closer to FTP than AP.

As for ramp rates, once you have got past first few months and have a reasonable CTL established (i.e. it is pretty close to reality as well as not being very low), then if you are sustaining >8 TSS/day/week growth in CTL over a block of training, then it's highly likely you have underestimated FTP.

meepmeep

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Just on NP v AP, for 1-hour maximal /very hard efforts, I find FTP is always closer to NP than AP, no matter the VI.

Even for rare "NP buster" rides, NP will still be closer to FTP than AP.

As for ramp rates, once you have got past first few months and have a reasonable CTL established (i.e. it is pretty close to reality as well as not being very low), then if you are sustaining >8 TSS/day/week growth in CTL over a block of training, then it's highly likely you have underestimated FTP.

Ok so VI isn't nearly as important as the quality of the effort or would you still recommend trying to minimise the VI and if you would try to minimise it at what level would you be aiming for?

Yeah I'm just going to continue to do the work now I've the illness out of the road and see where my CTL plateaus. Once there my next job will be to start mixing things up a lot more and see how I respond to it, or don't, and how effectively I recover or how quickly I break. Should be an interesting journey. It will be interesting to see what ramp I can actually handle though I suspect it will be at the lower end of the range but better that than injured.

Alex_Simmons/RST

meepmeep wrote:

Ok so VI isn't nearly as important as the quality of the effort or would you still recommend trying to minimise the VI and if you would try to minimise it at what level would you be aiming for?

Depends on what your training (or racing) objective is for that day. Which is dictated by your goals and individual development needs.

meepmeep

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

meepmeep wrote:

Ok so VI isn't nearly as important as the quality of the effort or would you still recommend trying to minimise the VI and if you would try to minimise it at what level would you be aiming for?

Depends on what your training (or racing) objective is for that day. Which is dictated by your goals and individual development needs.

The only goal for the session is to determine FTP so there is no real other objective for the ride. I guess then what you are saying is that just because it is a ride which I am going to help determine my FTP doesn't mean that it has to be aimless. IOW I could use it as a very effective threshold session by controlling VI much more tightly or I could attack all the hills on the ride and turn it into a fartlek inspired V02 intervals. Both very tough rides with very different VIs but would they give me broadly similiar NPs. Would be interesting to see. Now you have me thinking about ways I could do this.

Previously I would simply have done the test at then end of a recovery week but I think I can see how I can fit it my normal training.

Alex_Simmons/RST

meepmeep wrote:

Previously I would simply have done the test at then end of a recovery week but I think I can see how I can fit it my normal training.

Pithy Power Proverb: "Training is testing, testing is training." - A. Coggan

meepmeep

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

meepmeep wrote:

Previously I would simply have done the test at then end of a recovery week but I think I can see how I can fit it my normal training.

Pithy Power Proverb: "Training is testing, testing is training." - A. Coggan

I like that one. That's one I'll be keeping for the memory banks.