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Archives for May 2012

Functional Power Threshold – Part 1

05.03.2012 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Guest poster Don Blount tackles some heavy-duty training. In the first of two posts, he explains what it’s all about.

It was an offer that was hard to refuse. It was a test to determine my functional threshold power.

It would only take 10 minutes and it was free.

In short, functional threshold power, known as FTP, is a benchmark of the body’s overall efficiency. It is the effort a rider can sustain for about an hour before too much lactate accumulates in their system and their body begins to break down.

There are a number of ways to test it but Graeme Street, owner of Cyclo-Core and “Recognized Cycling Expert,” according to his video, was offering an opportunity to coach me through a 10-minute indoor test to determine my FTP.

You need a few things to do the test with the video: 1) bike trainer or rollers 2) power meter or heart rate monitor 3) speed/cadence sensor.

I used rollers and a Garmin Edge 305 bike computer with heart rate monitor and speed/cadence sensor.

I was ready. But the problem was that no matter what I did I could not get the video to play completely on any of the three computers in my home. Not a one. The video would begin and play for a bit, but after about 15 minutes, it would stop. I even emailed Street for advice but it still would not work. So I viewed the video on a computer away from my home network. I watched it several times and I took copious notes.

And then I tried it again.

I set up my laptop and rollers in my garage, let the video buffer and launched it again. This time it played, for a short time. The video went as far as the warm up before it froze again.

But by this time I was familiar enough with video’s content to finish on my own. It would have been more effective with Street helping me through it as I had too much left in the tank at the end. This was not a max test but still, I did not ride hard enough.

That test showed a FTP heart rate of 156 beats per minute. I used that in my workouts and it just seemed too easy. So a few days later I did it again and calculated an FTP heart rate of 162 beats per minute. I now use that figure for my riding.

If you are interested in testing yourself and have not done so before, let me warn you this test hurts! It hurts physically and it hurts mentally.

Click here if you would like to see this Graeme Street video. The site says you can take the test anytime within the next five days but the link has been up for about two months. The test itself is free but it also serves as a promo to Street’s training systems.

Regardless of whether you use this video or decide to do it on your own, an FTP test is well worth doing. I’ll elaborate in a future post on how it impacted my riding.

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Categories // training Tags // FTP

A Fatal Rear-End Collision

05.01.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 13 Comments

Like the rest of the Austin cycling community, I am saddened by the death of cyclist Verter Ginestra, 55, over the weekend. He was riding on the shoulder of Loop 360, a major highway on the west side of Austin. The shoulders on 360 are very generous.

Television news stories of the crash show the car in the shoulder. Sound bites from police did not lay blame on the cyclist; in fact, they urged motorists to watch out for them because 360 is such a popular cycling road. It features long hills and few stoplights. The worst part about riding 360 is having to cross exit and entrance ramps, and being on the outlook for fast-moving cars in those spaces.
Verter Ginestra (From KVUE Television website)
Crash scene (From KVUE Television website)

Ginestra apparently was not crossing an entrance or exit ramp. He appears to be the victim of a type of collision that is fairly rare — the daytime rear-ender. One statistic I saw (and cannot vouch for) says that only three percent of car-bike collisions are daytime rear-enders.

On top of it, the driver of the car is 85 years old. So you’ve got a bike on a wide shoulder, in bright daylight, and still he gets hit.

What can a cyclist do?

Not much, apparently. Cyclists should always be aware of what’s happening around them. “Scanning” — looking behind — is a riding technique everyone needs to learn. But if you’re riding with traffic, and you’re on the shoulder, you’re not likely to spend a lot of time looking behind you. The most common advice for avoiding rear-enders I’ve been able to dig up is to wear a rear-view mirror. That idea has its pros and cons. It might have alerted Ginestra to the car moving onto the shoulder, but since traffic on 360 is fast, it might not have given him enough time to react.

I didn’t know Verter Ginestra, but Dan Colvin, who joined me on my birthday ride, rode with him often. Dan says Verter was the kind of cyclist you’d want to ride with: “He was strong enough to ride with most A groups, but was not one to force the pace if others weren’t as strong. Interesting conversationalist. Helpful with mechanicals. The whole nine yards.”

Cyclists plan to converge on Austin City Hall Thursday evening to urge tougher enforcement against drivers who hit cyclists. As I write this, the 85-year-old driver has not been charged in the crash.

The KVUE story about the crash can be seen here.

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Categories // crash, Safety Tags // crash, fatality, rear end

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