Power Monkey

I was looking forward to today as Hunter Allen had travelled over from the USA to do a presentation on "Training and Racing with a Power Meter". He's joint big fish at Peaks Training Group, the market leader in cycling power analysis software. He and Andy Coggan also co-wrote what is commonly known as the "bible" on training with power.

To most, this will mean nothing, but this pair have revolutionised the understanding of training in cycling for many coaches and riders around the world. They have bamboozled some with concepts such as FTP, NP, TSB, TSS and VI. If you take the time to understand the concepts, they are very useful and not as complex as many think. My work has recently entered into an endorsement relationship with Hunter's company, but in no way does that impact on my opinion that they are by far the market leader. I can see why, having met Hunter today.

Anyway to the talk..... My excitement was compounded when Hunter began to speak. He shares an accent with my earliest, biggest all-time hero, Kermit the Frog! Legendary!!! As long as I resisted acting like Waldorf or Stadler, which I often do, I knew the day would go well.. Hunter was an excellent presenter. In fact he was textbook.....great variation of tone, he kept moving, excellent use of his hands and a rubbish impersonation of a Belgian! To re-iterate, his Kermit voice was great! Seriously though, he was thoroughly entertaining and informative.

Most of the stuff he talked about wasn't new to me, but it was fun to hear it from the horse's mouth. I wish I had brought sugar cubes. The audience was quite evangelical, listening intently, a sermon to the converted in fact....even though, I guess that quite a few had memorised the full book! My philosophy is maybe a wee bit different and I'd give emphasis to other things before functional threshold power. Yesterday, I facilitated a cornering session because it was apparent a few riders needed to work on it. There was immediate improvement by one rider, simply by getting him to move his hands on the bars and altering the way he steered the bike slightly. Such technique is more fundamental than understanding power. Notwithstanding, training with power will result in more than marginal gains for most riders.

Ola may have given me daggers if she had heard the bit on hill climb training! I took pleasure in prescribing horrible sessions in preparation for her hill climb at the end of last season. Hunter's prescribed training for pro Dan Lloyd's hill climb season involved.....doing nothing!! Hmmmm, would this not result in a down-regulation of phosphofructokinase and citrate synthase, and slow the delivery of O2 into the working muscle, even if there was not apparent decrease in aerobic capacity? However, the conclusion was that doing nothing worked in this case, as Dan won his events. The physiological underpinnings were immaterial in this case.

All-in-all it was a really great presentation and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Well worth a long journey and I'm dying to investigate fatigue profiles further. Good show and thanks to Bob at Cycling Powermeters for putting on the show.