I'll begin by announcing my return to contact lenses. I cannot recall how long it has been since I last tried contacts. Ten years, maybe? The big deal then was that I could get lenses that corrected for astigmatism. They worked well enough under everyday conditions, but on the bike they were, well, unpleasant. If you want more details, see my last post.
This time around I can get a useful amount of close-up focus, plus the material is thinner and more porous. Hopefully this will make them less of a challenge. Wore them last Tuesday on a run around Diamond Head. Also wore my Rudy glasses with clear lenses. Good thing, as the wind was strong. The close-up correction is not quite enough for up close reading, but the Rudy bifocal lenses makes reading my watch easy. Without the corrective insert the Rudy Ryder glasses are light enough for running. Tomorrow will be my first long bike ride with them. We'll see how it goes, pun intended.
Now onto the other subject of today's blog, zone setting. A perennial challenge.
I paced today's long run by RPE and Stryd power. I knew my Stryd zones has not be updated since December so I was not relying on them as much as watts, but most of the time when my watch indicated power zone one I felt like I was in zone one, and likewise power zones two felt like two. There was even a stretch on the second lap when I knew I was going too hard and sure enough, the Stryd Zones Connect IQ app indicated zone three.
Back at home I reviewed the data and saw some big anomalies. The TrainingPeaks HR zone graph looked good compared to how I felt, but the power graph was off. It had me running in zone four. I know I was not running that hard.
The new Stryd website makes it more difficult than ever to enter a baseline value manually. I call it LTHR, they call it CP; same thing. Stryd insists on computing it. On automatic the site reviews data for the previous ninety days, sort of like WKO. On manual the site asks for a recent run result or their special test result, and again, they compute it. Frustrating, because I want to use Jim Vance settings, which are a good match for Joe Friel's work. I cannot find a way to just set my own CP.
Just for kicks I switched to auto and Stryd came up with 144. Hmm. My last test gave 143, but I was sure it was too low. Obviously Stryd is looking at the same run. Is that really the value? Now what?
Well, when in doubt, look at WKO. The new version does a nice job of separating run and bike results. I let it update, and the hero bar gave me run mFTP 147. Hmm.
Let's come at it another way. Today's run from 40 min. on felt like a solid zone two -- 2Z. HR was in fact a solid mid 2Z. It was power that seemed wrong. So I got out my zone calculator, which I programed using Jim Vance zones, and started plugging in run FTP values until I got a mid 2Z for today's power. Guess what? I got 148. I actually do not like backing into threshold settings this way, but it is a useful method for validating test results.
So, what to do? I will adjust my TrainingPeaks run power threshold from 143 to 148. Not a huge difference, but enough to help reduce my confusion and perhaps make my future workout efforts more productive.
Now I hope it doesn't rain too much tomorrow. I want to ride with my new eyes.
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