How to judge the "quality" af a training ride

liquor box

I have been trying to judge the effectiveness of my rides recently as I am trying to improve the quality of my training rides. I am trying to get fitter and lose excess kg's and this is going well but want to ensure that I am getting the most out of each ride.
At the moment I have a Polar CS200 so I get information on HR, Distance, Time, Speeds, Cadence and Kcal.

I like to ride on a lot of different routes and so there is quite a variance in the amount and quality of hills encountered. Due to this difference in rides I figure that the best way to judge my enrgy output would be to use the Kcal and the time I am in the "HR zone (155-185".

I realise that the Kcal number is not accurate and am not using it to determine how much energy I have actually used but have been thinking that it might be a useful guide to judge one ride against another. Today I used 1239Kcal according to the computer, so I am thinking that If I used 1500 then I could fairly say that I used more energy.

Does this make any sense or am I really wrong on this?

How do you judge the quality of a ride?

jibberjim

You don't particularly need to evaluate the quality of individual rides - but for tracking overal load, which requires you to compare rides then using a TRIMP model that is based on time in HR zones can be pretty good. TrainingPeaks, SportTracks and others provide ways of doing that, http://jibbering.com/blog/?p=535 has a bit of info.

SBezza

Forget the calorie count, it is just a pure guessimate from Polar, and is unlikely to actually reflect calories used.

If you can do rides in HR zones, and keep it there for the majority of the ride, it is likely to be a 'useful' ride. Even then you could do a 5 hour ride in the recovery zone, and it would be a pointless ride.

You need to ride the appropriate duration for your HR zone you are trying to train in. Shorter rides would normally be done in a higher zone, longer rides in a lower zone.

overgeared

whether or not the calorie number from your polar is accurate calories are just a measure of work done (energy expended) rather than quality or intensity. you could however estimate intensity based on calories divided by time, in a roundabout way this is equivalent to average power (power being the rate at which work is done).

putting calories aside there may be a couple of ways to measure quality with only HR data: time in zone(s), or else how about multiplying hours by average HR divided by threshold HR. this way a one hour ride at threshold gets a score of 1 and everything else beomes relative.

Alex_Simmons/RST

liquor box wrote:

I have been trying to judge the effectiveness of my rides recently as I am trying to improve the quality of my training rides. I am trying to get fitter and lose excess kg's and this is going well but want to ensure that I am getting the most out of each ride.
At the moment I have a Polar CS200 so I get information on HR, Distance, Time, Speeds, Cadence and Kcal.

I like to ride on a lot of different routes and so there is quite a variance in the amount and quality of hills encountered. Due to this difference in rides I figure that the best way to judge my enrgy output would be to use the Kcal and the time I am in the "HR zone (155-185".

I realise that the Kcal number is not accurate and am not using it to determine how much energy I have actually used but have been thinking that it might be a useful guide to judge one ride against another. Today I used 1239Kcal according to the computer, so I am thinking that If I used 1500 then I could fairly say that I used more energy.

Does this make any sense or am I really wrong on this?

How do you judge the quality of a ride?

You seem to be asking two questions:
1. How do I know if I am getting fitter?
2. How do I know if my ride was "quality"?

For #1, best indicator is power output per kg of body mass for given durations (e.g. 5-min, 20-min, etc). You can also use hillclimbs to assess this over time:
http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/articl ... ting-19175

For #2, that depends on what you mean by quality. Quality to me is that I execute the ride according to the plan I have for that day, and in that way it is contributing to the bigger picture of developing fitness.

I would put aside the kJ count from a HRM, and instead rate you ride compared to what you set out to do for the day, how you felt etc.

twotyred

Quality to me is that I execute the ride according to the plan I have for that day, and in that way it is contributing to the bigger picture of developing fitness

Well said. Only works if you have a plan though.

KnightOfTheLongTights

I've started going out on the fast chaingang with the club I'm thinking of joining: they leave me feeling decimated afterwards and with sore legs the next day.

Now I know they are doing me good.

meanredspider

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

You can also use hillclimbs to assess this over time:
http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/articl ... ting-19175

.

I tried this but discovered that it was really just a good indicator of how windy it is. I can imagine it works well in most places but up here (at one end of the Great Glen and exposed to the North Sea) it's almost useless. Only by trending over a significant period (months) does it begin to tell a story. The trouble is that it's then a very lagging indicator.

briantrumpet

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

I've started going out on the fast chaingang with the club I'm thinking of joining: they leave me feeling decimated afterwards and with sore legs the next day.

Wow, that's quite a harsh punishment if you're managing to keep up. Still, at least I now know what a bicycle club is.

Alex_Simmons/RST

meanredspider wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

You can also use hillclimbs to assess this over time:
http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/articl ... ting-19175

.

I tried this but discovered that it was really just a good indicator of how windy it is. I can imagine it works well in most places but up here (at one end of the Great Glen and exposed to the North Sea) it's almost useless. Only by trending over a significant period (months) does it begin to tell a story. The trouble is that it's then a very lagging indicator.

I did point out the problem with wind.

meanredspider

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

You can also use hillclimbs to assess this over time:
http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/articl ... ting-19175

.

I tried this but discovered that it was really just a good indicator of how windy it is. I can imagine it works well in most places but up here (at one end of the Great Glen and exposed to the North Sea) it's almost useless. Only by trending over a significant period (months) does it begin to tell a story. The trouble is that it's then a very lagging indicator.

I did point out the problem with wind.

And I did point out that it probably works well in most places. What is working for me is trending the time it takes to cover a week's worth of my commute (the trending and the days involved equalising out the effects of weather and traffic) I'm currently seeing 5-minute incremental improvements week-on-week. These are only 2% increments and such a small increment would be insignificant on an individual ride because of other variables but are meaningful in aggregate.

Alex_Simmons/RST

For a well trained rider, the variance in threshold power through a season is usually no more than 10% (which equates to a much smaller speed difference all else being equal - which is often isn't).

Hence why monitoring fitness change with any certainty (if that's what one want to do) generally requires a method with a little more precision than speed, i.e. power.

meanredspider

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

For a well trained rider, the variance in threshold power through a season is usually no more than 10% (which equates to a much smaller speed difference all else being equal - which is often isn't).

Hence why monitoring fitness change with any certainty (if that's what one want to do) generally requires a method with a little more precision than speed, i.e. power.

Yup - if you've ever one across the Duane Curve, it tells you the closer you get to optimum, the smaller the improvement increments.