Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Quick Training Analysis

I was wondering what (if any) measurable benefit I managed to get out of my recent training regimen -- I mean I feel like I'm riding better and faster, but can I see or quantify any benefits? I decided to look at three standard-ish rides I'd done relatively frequently before and during the training period.
 
Bloomsbury:
This is a loop in Hunterdon County starting from my office; it was my go-to road ride especially in the spring, when I could just hop on the bike and make the most of the remaining daylight after work. This is a table of every Bloomsbury ride I recorded.
 
Date     Avg Speed
4/5/10   13.4
4/14/10  13.9
4/20/10  14.6
4/28/10  14.5
5/5/10   14.4
6/29/10  15.0
 
The first two rides were fairly slow, maybe because I was trying to figure out my course or maybe because I was not yet acclimated, then I "got all the slack out of the rope," and had a fairly consistent 14.5 mph average for the next three spring rides, just before I started the training. Fast forward two months, and the last ride shows a 0.5 mph jump in average speed -- nice, but probably not statistically significant, I need more rides.
 
Sals:
I have a bunch of Sals rides of all kinds, so I filtered this to include only those solo, daylight rides, between 9 and 12 miles in length; this would put me on one or two fairly standard routes, and hopefully would reduce the effect of the 1.25 mile road ride over (and back) on my offroad average. I also removed some snow rides from the sample, which left only three rides.
 
Date     Avg Speed
3/20/10  6.1
6/8/10   7.0
6/30/10  7.0
 
There's a pretty good jump, 0.9 mph, between the first ride (pre-training, in fact before the pre-training base workouts), and recent rides.
 
Towpath:
I narrowed these these rides to solo, daylight rides, longer than say 17 miles, that do not include anything but the towpath (and the short road ride to/from the Sand Island trailhead).
 
Date     Avg Speed
4/19/10  12.9
5/24/10  13.3
5/25/10  13.8
6/2/10   13.9
6/18/10  14.1
7/6/10   15.4
 
These rides included my main training routines, so they show what I would have expected: a progressive, gradual improvement -- 1.1 mph over the period shown. (I didn't count tonight's results, awesome though they were, because I'd just overhauled my bottom bracket, and was running a higher tire pressure, and the towpath surface was hard-packed by the heat, and so  felt unusually fast, and also because I was consciously thinking about my speed, making tonight the time trial that the other rides were not.)
 
So there you have it! I'm not sure of the statistical significance but I would say that there has been improvement. Would there have been even more improvement with a different training regimen, or even just randomly riding a lot like most summers? No clue.

2 comments:

hmk said...

Is there such a person as a riding trainer? That is if you're not in pro races.

Don said...

You mean, like a coach? Definitely, in fact a friend just got his license and I may hire him for some specific help.