On a related note have a look at the “Power vs Heart rate” chart on the /compare page. Your power vs HR curve shifting right (more watts for same HR) is a very nice indicator of improving fitness without have to do any tests. Intervals.icu does a lot of data cleanup to produce good data for that chart.
2 Likes
IMO This is exactly how not to use decoupling, it shows up all the pit falls, you have so many variables added in (HR lag, heat accumulation/dispersion, HRRc, higher NP during the selected period, recovery between intervals not standardised, etc.) that any analysis and conclusions are meaningless.
So you realise the importance of removing the data during warmup (and cool-down) but then unless I am misunderstanding you’ve selected a data range that covers multiple intervals which is effectively multiple warmups and cooldowns.
It works better with long state state efforts where these variables that affect the results are minimised.
If you are using decoupling on intervals I think you are better off selecting each interval and looking at them in isolation as @Shrike did with 50 minute intervals. The intervals also need to be a decent length, almost the longer the better otherwise you are just measuring the HR (lag) ramping up for a given load etc. (the warmup within each interval.)
Total agree with this, although there is nothing wrong with looking at individual workouts, it can be interesting at that moment in time but the ‘Real’ value of Aerobic Decoupling is looking at the longer term trends as you stated.
On a individual session level you could look at a nice long steady state endurance ride and see there is no decoupling so next time target a few more watts for the same duration and see if there is still no decoupling. You have to be careful to understand external factors and that affect each ride. The original ride with no decoupling, or the one at increase watts might have been a outlier so better to look at a few sessions. I’ve I used this method occasionally to get an idea of how hard to push long endurance rides along with looking at other data such as RPE, breath rate.
1 Like
agreed thats why I called it out.
No. Its a 10.8 mile (17.4km) Strava segment that I recreated in WKO. There are a couple of ways to get to the segment, and different wind conditions, and several traffic lights and a railroad crossing, so thats why I said 15-25 minute warmup. And to be more precise, it has always taken no less than ~15 minutes to get to the start of segment and usually about 17 minutes minimum.
The chart in previous posts shows all my efforts on that one segment. Looking at VI and IF you can see for yourself there are fair number of “pure” threshold efforts (IF around 1.0 and VI <=1.02) and the resulting decoupling for ~50 minute effort is low. Now I hope we can agree that ~50 minutes is a LONG effort at threshold, and it isn’t possible to go much longer.
The last pure 10.8 mile effort on that segment was a year ago (March 31 2020) with an 18 minute warmup:
and then 51:07 at threshold, based on an 20-minute field test from 9 days earlier. So that is 100% FTP effort for 50+ minutes.
Removing the first 15 minutes, in other words making it a ~33 minute warmup:
and the decoupling drops even lower (from 3% down to -0.2%).
And I agree with you that longer, lower intensity efforts are likely best for using aerobic decoupling metric. For example doing TR’s Conness, a 165 minute (2:45:00) indoor training workout at 60-70% FTP as part of Traditional Base on Mon/Wed/Sat of the same week (Oct 2018), I had decoupling of:
- 0.3% (84F / 29C in garage)
- 0.6% (79F / 26C in garage)
- 2.8% (61F / 16C in garage)
My conclusion, after reviewing decoupling data from all rides since getting a power meter in October 2016, is that after early base I’ve seen incredible consistency in having relatively low decoupling almost regardless of temperature for efforts from long 2.5-to-4 hour zone2, ~2 hour tempo / zone3, and ~50 minute threshold zone4 efforts. One difference between the UK and Northern California - I routinely ride in 90+F / 32+C temperatures and I have acclimated to working out in warm temps. YMMV.
1 Like