On the first question – HR for endurance rides. This depends on your definition of endurance. For some – including me – an endurance ride is less than about 0.70 of HR max, which in practice I round up to 130. Seiler proposes a percentage of HR capacity [= HR max - HR rest] above HR rest. And for both of these, yes, you have to vary power to keep HR below what you have set.Others propose a power definition, such as 55 - 75% of FTP. Choose your weapon.
On your decoupling question – your bottom graph mixes both possible decoupling and problems with the data record. [See my long post with graph and table above]. At the beginning of you ride, there are evidently many zero points and periods of near coasting. So there is apparent decoupling – this should be ignored. In the middle of your ride you have a period of rest, when power is low and HR gradually falls – another period of apparent decoupling which you should ignore. The rest of the decoupling trace is pretty much constant. What is important is not the level of the decoupling trace, but its trend – if it is going up, you need to improve your endurance at that power. If it is flat you have two options [1] ride for the same duration at slightly higher power; [2] ride for longer durations at the same power. Both will provide a stimulus for your body to adapt, according to Seiler.
No need to apologise. You’ve played a leading role in this discussion.
I suspect you search for your 20 minute segments after completing the ride. I approached it from the front end by generating successive 20 min segments in Workout Creator. I’m still searching for a way to extract the segment data without manual invovement!
BTW I was chuffed when I saw that you virtually climbed the Stelvio today. It was THE highlight of our trip to the Dolomites in 2018.
I will have another look at how to better clean this data in a little while. I want to try get some HR/w data on the fitness page. That work is using the much more cleaned up and lag adjusted 1m data points used on the other decoupling charts.
It would be great to see how your efficiency compares to riders similar to you FTP wise… like how is the usual power/HR over different zones/watts/%FTP of people with similar fitness levels. Basically who has the best zone 2, or less cardiac drift at different watts/times.
I know this is a bit ahead, but just want it to throw it out before I forget.
At the end of his presentation, this is what Seiler indicates that he wanted to do: to compare people and to compare performance over time by normalising HR to HR capacity or HR reserve and normalising Power to best 6-minute power [or FTZP].
Daniel_Hernandez: remember that this indicator really only works effectively for steady power sessions. A good 20 minutes to get the HR / power relation stabilised, and then the stable power session over which observations are being made. Effectively this means that the indicator could be used for endurance [Seiler’s idea], tempo or sweet spot continuous efforts.
what I understood from the video is that @ 50 % HRR you should be around half of your aerobic capabilities, so quite good to normalize this with 50 % of Max Aerobic Power/Power@VO2max hence the ratio around 1
As I was going into the second block, I was watching my HR climbing up slowly but surely, and thus I started to experiment with cadence, I was lowering my cadence and due to this, I was even able to drop my HR to couple points, you can see it between minute 45 and 46.
So, in light of this, I would like to suggest you add to the cardiac drift graph the field “cadence” since it does have an impact and can influence the drift.
yup I have noticed that too, but frankly if you want to compare one session to another you try to work in the same cadence to analyze HR or power/HR ratio, usually you work at your natural cadence for this kind of workout, don’t you ?
Yes I do like most people, however, I noticed that cadence is also impacted by fatigue level, usually at the start of the workout I do higher cadence than at the end when in hanging on for my dear life
Ok, but IMHO Efficiency factor is mostly something useful to monitor endurance and easy training.
So if you are dropping your natural cadence on an endurance ride, you don’t need to have a complex cardiac drift graph or In/Ex S ratio to pinpoint where you are getting really fatigued on a long endurance bout, don’t you ?
Ok, so after a more detailed playing around, I made some interesting observations which are described here.
Interesting to know whether @david, you think this might influence the way the charts look in the future. Also thanks to @Michael_Webber for his input.
Looking forward to hearing your thought
Thanks very much for all this work, Kosio. You’ve been thinking and working!
A couple of comments, that I hope will help.
First, Seiler defines his index as the ratio HRR/Prel. This is a non-negative number. You appear to have used David’s measurement of decoupling, which is different to Seiler’s. If your document is ever to receive the light of days outside this forum, then you need to note this, of change your calculations. [It won’t change any of your conclusions.]
Second, Seiler normalises his HRR/Prel values to the second 20 minute interval, not the first. Again, this is a matter of accuracy of reporting, not of substantive change to conclusions.
However, apart from these comments, I think that you have summarised well the conclusions that we reached in our analyses – though more elegantly than I: going downhill and pausing [or coasting up to traffic lights] are problems that really make this a tool for indoor trainers rather than the road.
