This was my 5th HM and maybe I was paying more attention this time:
Unlike most other workouts, the on-screen instructions/quips are not shown if using the mini-player to have a vid going in the background.
Wahoo Support HM instructions don’t mention stopping for at least 15 sec after maxing out on the ramp. The on-screen instruction do.
Support instructions say you can soft pedal for the rest of the ramp but on-screen says to fast forward to the end of the ramp.
The cursor to fast forward was hidden behind the power readout and I was unable to fast forward on my Win notebook. I tried pausing and tapping/dragging in the power graph but to no avail. I might have been doing wrong but there wasn’t much of the ramp left anyway.
For the heck of it I switched from the power graph to the HR graph during the constrained effort. I didn’t find it significantly informative. Ideally it would be possible to have HR graph overlain over the power graph like in other training apps.
My observations:
For the 20m constrained effort (and for the FF 20min max effort) I find it easiest to control things with cadence. I use a level and gear that gets me near the target HR or (or power in the FF) at my preferred cadence (90-95) and then go up/down a few rpm and hold that to keep things where I want them. I find this works better for me than chasing HR, which tends to respond slowly, ( or power, which tends to fluctuate a lot more). If my HR is trending up, I decrease cadence a couple of rpm and hold that as my HR responds and decreases, and vice versa.
In the 20m constrained HR at cadence and power, I found my HR would go down ~4-5 bpm in the drops compared to the hoods, and up ~4-5 bpm if I sat up with my hands off the bars. I just stayed on the hoods.
Not sure what you mean here? didn’t know you could do that. I just have all the data in a line at the bottom of the workout. How do you show just one or the other? thanks
Yep. The salient point wrt the HM is changing position during the constrained HR effort will make it more difficult stay within the narrow HR range, and possibly perturb the result.
I’m wondering if the 15 sec stop after maxing out on the ramp is still necessary. IIRC, the written instructions used to say that, and now they don’t. Has that changed or am I remembering it wrong? The on-screen instructions still say to stop pedaling. My presumption has been that it was necessary for the algorithm to better detect when you were done with the ramp, although I would have thought the precipitous prolonged drop in power would be sufficient without having to go to zero for 15 seconds.
There also is the inconsistency between the written and on-screen instructions wrt either soft pedaling or fast forwarding to the end of the ramp. Are either acceptable?
you can sit and recover, or fast forward the workout to the end of the yellow section (do not skip more than 10 seconds into the blue section)
but
At no point should you maintain a prolonged effort ABOVE or BELOW the ramp power target
which could be inferred as you do have to stop
I always have 3-4 steps left before I can’t maintain target power on the ramp, I prefer to have an extra few minutes to recover before the next section of the test, plus I’ve tried fast forwarding on my phone screen with sweaty hands and its not easy. If I don’t have to stop pedaling for 15s or more at the end of the ramp I would not consider I had given it my all!
I think the key thing about position and HR is specificity, I ride the constrained section in a position that would be normal for that kind of effort. Its a tempo effort so I would expect to be low on the hoods. If I was training for a TT, I’d do the test head down on aerobars.
