Thanks. I don’t want to hijack the thread with head unit discussion… what is being discussed about WKO5 is useful and extra noise won’t help.
What I will say though is that it would be wonderful if TrainerRoad (and head unit manufacturers) would introduce options for specifying Coggan iLevels. It’s no use having them if one can’t A) see them in your trainer software, and/or B) see them on your head unit
The Garmin Edge 520 appears the only device that had this ability.
More recently the Stages L10, M50 and L50 have the ability to set as much as 20 zones for HR and Power, so one could theoretically set up iLevels (but you can’t label them, which would be useful for 4a and 7a…)
Edit: I know it’s easy to look at the raw power number, but the thing with iLevels is that they change frequently based on recent training history. It’s far easier to just remember a zone number and hit that, and update your zones as your targets/numbers change.
Question for the WKO5 users. Does WKO5 have the ability to track peak power that is completed during or directly after a given effort? For example, best 5min power after holding more than 90% of FTP for an hour.
wko4 and wko5 are pretty flexible and can be customized. For example there is a standard chart to calculate best 5-min power after expending 3000kJ and that is super easy to modify to say best 5-min power after 1500kJ. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure how to rewrite the equation to do best 5-min after holding 90% FTP for an hour.
There are stock charts for showing your power curve after burning a certain number of Kj (calories). From readings stuff about pro training, that seems to be the standard measure for the type of data you appear to be after. Its pretty easy to modify them for the specific Kj you’re interested in. My data for power after 2000 Kj efforts is pretty sparse so I had to lower the level bit ;-). That’s as far as I have gone.
WKO has what amounts to its own programming language and the level of customization appears almost unlimited. I would not be surprised if it could do what you wanted but I have no clue how to help you if it is not already in as a stock chart!
@TimWKO restarted the trial and that problem appears to be fixed. However I’m now getting a lot of crashes while dragging&dropping graphs to rearrange them in a dashboard. There are some things I don’t like - dark color scheme please as my eyeballs are burning! - but overall it does seem more responsive. There are minor/troubling differences in hero bar metrics between WKO4 and WKO5, some unexplained (CTL/ATL/TSB/ramp), and some you’ve explained (mFTP and TTE). Both WKO4 and WKO5 are sharing the same data directory.
TrainingPeaks (owners of WKO) won’t release details on the Power Duration Model that it uses in WKO4/5, including the algorithm they use to calculate certain metrics, like TTE, FRC and Stamina, but we know that the metrics are derived from multiple data points along your PDC curve over a 90 day period.
If you look at SSB MVI for example, the longest workout is 90mins and the highest peaks will come from the Ramp Test and from over/unders, such as Reinstein, McAdie, Tunemah and Palisades. So your PDC chart may not be “pretty” and TTE not impressive, but WKO4 should calculate a TTE.
Once you get into SSB MVII, you now have longer workouts, such as Hunter, Juneau, Tallac, Wright Peak and Boarstone of 2 hours in length, plus lots of VO2 workouts, such as BlueBell, Mills, and Spencer, so there would be lots more data to fill out your PDC and hence more reliable metrics.
However, what you are describe as “doing SSB correctly” I’d challenge. I haven’t listened to all of the podcasts, but I would find it hard to believe that Coach Chad has advised TR users not to do long endurance rides during base training. Building and maintaning an aerobic base is so fundamental to training throughout the year, that to exclude it any phase of training, IMO would not be correct. And, of course, if you did do those important long endurance rides, WKO, of course would have the data points for the tail of your PDC.
Long, read well over an hour, endurance ride are not a part of the SSB plans. They have, however, said on the podcast that if a rider have more time to ride than called for in the plans that they should do more by adding endurance rides.
While playing around with the interface, I accidentally added a second “PDC after 1500kj” chart to my view. I was shocked to find that switching between the two identical charts actually showed me different numbers (one said my 5m power dropped 12%, and the other said it dropped closer to 40%). I checked the chart properties and the expressions/equations were the same on both.
I removed both charts and re-added and since doing so, I can add/remove as many duplicates as I want and the numbers are now consistent. Super weird!
If it was meant to be prescribed it’d be in the plan from the beginning, no?
The point was if the rider follows the plan as written there aren’t long endurance rides. I’m not a coach to say what the difference is. The person I responded to made it seem as if there’s a difference between sweet spot and long endurance rides. If that’s the case, the SSB plan doesn’t make that specific point. You’re kinda backing that up by your response.
Take your pick. Either way, you have endurance rides of over an hour! Every Friday is an endurance ride 60min for HV1 and 90min for HV2. Sunday alternative is always an endurance ride.
Okay. I might be misunderstanding how this is calculated but what I meant by doing SSB “correctly” was that you’re following prescribed power targets for prescribed intervals (even with long endurance rides) so the only data that has any riding to exhaustion (or actual data for a power curve that’s not predetermined by the result of your ramp test) is the ramp test which is short and highly anaerobic.
Thank you @bbarrera and @STP. Selecting on energy expenditure didn’t occur to me. It’s great to hear WKO already has this type of analysis and that it is scriptable. Bonus!
I am actually thinking about how to measure my ability to not fade during a cyclocross or XC race, hence my initial hunch was to select on sustained (normalized) power since different power zones seem to make different demands on the various energy systems. However, energy expended in a certain time interval could be just as good … or even equivalent?
I assumed it was genuine and didn’t mean any disrespect - I’m sorry if it came across that way!
You don’t need any ride to exhaustion for WKO4/5 to determine your TTE; it’s using your data points from your PDC as it exists to predict it. Since TTE is, by definition, how long you can hold your FTP, there are probably few people that actually regularly test that. And even then, I don’t know that if you did an FTP to exhaustion ride, it would use that data alone as your TTE.
I don’t know that I can give you a simple answer to that question as much of my response would be based on your training experience, the plan you are signed up for and your “A/B” events/races). However, probably under most scenarios, during the early part of base training (e.g. SSB LVI or MVI), 60-90mins is fine. But I would think that should increase to the 90-120 by the time you get to Build.
FWIW: I do most of my endurance rides outdoors. Short endurance rides are in the 2-3 hour range, fairly similar to what @KickrLin is suggesting. Longer ones are in the 4-6 hour range, that typically include some Tempo work. Note: My “A/Bs” are 2.5-3 hour road races and 10-12kft centuries.
re: TTE… from a relative clean slate, if you only feed WKO rides from traditional base 1 what I can tell you is WKO provides ridiculous estimates for TTE (close to an hour) and mFTP at upper endurance / lower tempo zone. And per the explanation above, WKO5 does a better job at estimating versus WKO4. But both are really wrong.
What that says is both Xert and WKO require hard efforts to do a good job at modeling. Not sure what to expect if starting from a clean slate and feeding the model a diet of SSB-1 MV (or LV) workouts. On the other hand, my Garmin Edge 530 is giving pretty darn good estimates for FTP with only recovery/aerobic-endurance/tempo rides.
The easiest way would be to do the calculation offline and use the same standard chart:
If, for example, @bclarkson FTP was 250W, then 90% (225W) for an hour would be 810Kj. [1 Watt-Hour = 3.6KJ]. So he’d simply have to substitute 810 for where the chart uses 3000 Kj.
If it was meant to be prescribed it’d be in the plan from the beginning, no?
