Telltale IFs?

Watoni said:

Other than the 1.05/1hr sanity check, are there others?

I have been testing and doing 2x20s, but on a 4.5 hour ride I had an IF of 0.866, which made me a bit suspicious even though it was a tough ride

I will try and test again this week but was just wondering if an IF for this duration can be considered normal.

That's not impossible, but would be a damn hard ride. I've had similar numbers when we've absolutely hammered it round a sportive event - mega tough course, loads of people to catch and pass, basically race-day motivation but without the need for tactics or saving anything for the finish, club mates riding through-and-off all day.

Watoni said:

Other than the 1.05/1hr sanity check, are there others?

I have been testing and doing 2x20s, but on a 4.5 hour ride I had an IF of 0.866, which made me a bit suspicious even though it was a tough ride

I will try and test again this week but was just wondering if an IF for this duration can be considered normal.

Let's say that you're an average endurance-trained cyclist, and your LT (defined the way Ed Coyle does it) occurs at ~75% of your VO2max. Furthermore, based on Ed's data let's assume that your functional threshold power is ~10% higher than that, or ~85% of your VO2max. An IF of 0.866 for 4.5 h would imply that you can maintain ~85% x 0.866 = 74% of your VO2max for that duration when the power was constant, not variable as it was. Lo and behold, the average time to fatigue in trained cyclists fed carbohydrate (you were eating, weren't you?) throughout isopower exercise at 71% of VO2max (while periodically being stabbed with biopsy needles) was 4 h:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3525502?ordinalpos=11&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

All of which is my long-winded way of saying that, at least considering the assumptions involved, I find your IF for that long ride perfectly plausible...

Watoni said:

Other than the 1.05/1hr sanity check, are there others?

I have been testing and doing 2x20s, but on a 4.5 hour ride I had an IF of 0.866, which made me a bit suspicious even though it was a tough ride

I will try and test again this week but was just wondering if an IF for this duration can be considered normal.

I just did a 4h34 ride this past Saturday at an IF of 0.84 (with a an FTP that is reliable across a few Seven Deadly Sins). This thread on the Wattage forum may also be of interest to you: http://groups.google.com/group/wattage/browse_thread/thread/471eb0031a34bc68/a1e004650c5f70d9?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=ad+hoc+research#a1e004650c5f70d9

acoggan said:

Let's say that you're an average endurance-trained cyclist, and your LT (defined the way Ed Coyle does it) occurs at ~75% of your VO2max. Furthermore, based on Ed's data let's assume that your functional threshold power is ~10% higher than that, or ~85% of your VO2max. An IF of 0.866 for 4.5 h would imply that you can maintain ~85% x 0.866 = 74% of your VO2max for that duration when the power was constant, not variable as it was. Lo and behold, the average time to fatigue in trained cyclists fed carbohydrate (you were eating, weren't you?) throughout isopower exercise at 71% of VO2max (while periodically being stabbed with biopsy needles) was 4 h:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3525502?ordinalpos=11&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

All of which is my long-winded way of saying that, at least considering the assumptions involved, I find your IF for that long ride perfectly plausible...

Wow! Thank you for the analysis.

I did indeed eat, though you have to be self-reliant since there are no services for about 35 miles of the route.

It was a variation on the King's Ridge/Coleman Valley loop in Sonoma County, so very challenging terrain and beautiful scenery (Astana did a longer version of the loop this week apparently). I tried to keep mostly tempo/SST throughout.

With an FTP of 284, AP = 214 and NP = 246. Zone break down was 1.25 hours tempo, a little over an hour threshold, 25 minutes Vo2 abd 13 AC, so almost 3 hours of tempo or above and 45-50 minutes of AR and Endurance.

Since my first goal is a double century in late April, this is harder than I will go on that ride, but is hopefully building my engine for the upcoming DC season.

Thank you again to all for the responses. I would post the file but somehow I can only export it as WKO, powertap or SRM ...