We have all been beginners once. Through the more than 20 years of direct involvement with competitive sports I have discovered that a helping hand during those first steps or in moments of hardship as an athlete makes a world of difference.
I do not claim complete expertise when it comes to training, endurance sports, and cycling, however, through many trials and errors (mostly errors) I have collected a lot of practical experience that has put me in the right direction. We all makes mistakes, even the PROs make beginner’s mistakes (YES they all do), I guess that’s what makes them human after all. On that note, I have found that sharing and discussing questions, ideas, and goals with likely minded people to be inspiring for everybody involved. Therefore…
If you have any comments or questions, ideas of what you want to see on this website you can reach me at:
banishki [at} gmail [dot} com
I, Nikola Banishki, would be more than happy to answer. Thank you in advance!
17 replies on “Your Questions”
ich benutze GoldenCheetah V3 auf meinem iMac /moutain lion.
Frage: Habe mehrere Athleten gespeichert. Wie kann ich einzelne wieder löschen?
Hi,
I am answering as best as I understand your question (Google Translate). In Windows to delete athletes you have to go to C:\Users\*Your username*\appdata\Local\GoldenCheetah. There you will see the folders of each athlete. Simply delete (or move) the folders of the athletes you don’t want to appear in Golden Cheetah.
On a Mac I am not sure where Golden Cheetah stores its library files, however, if you do a filename search for GoldenCheetah you should be able to find the folder that has all the athlete data. Than again just get rid of the folders you do not need.
Good luck!
-Nikola
Hello Nikola, first congratulations for sharing your thoughts and knowledge to all of us. I recently installed “Golden Cheetah” but I don´t have a powermeter (too expensive for me) but I have a powermeter in my indoor bike (bkool) and I wonder if you think is posible to extract usefully information from all rides (indoor / outdoor), or is best to use only indoor workouts.
Could I use the Strava Suffer Score as xPower, and insert it manually with other data like Energy Output and Average Power?
I found very interesting your “EASY 5 WEEK TRAINING PROGRAM” and I reviewed your weekly sumary from january ¿did you make your own training plan?
What do yo think about the “12 week lance armstrong comeback training plan”? I did a CTS test few months ago but now that I have a PC value I find it hard to establishing their zones (SS, CR, PI…) in my own zones (z1 to z7).
Too many questions? Sorry 😉
Thanks in advance!
Hello Emilio and thank you for your comment. It was a busy week for me so sorry for the delayed response! So on to your questions.
1. As far as extrapolating/estimating power from your rides you need to understand how Golden Cheetah (or another training analysis program) uses the data. In a nutshell the Avg/xPower is an an exact number of “How hard?” you pushed. When you multiply it by “How long?” you trained, you get a training stress value (TSS, Bikescore, Daniel’s points etc.). Therefore at the end, it is training score you are estimating. For example a 1h Z2 ride is about 40 Bikescore.
Since a lot of the times you do the same workouts/rides over and over again you can kind of label them all the same and get a pattern on how your fitness is improving. Although you need to have at least some way of estimating how hard you pushed (Heart rate is an OK indicator, perceived effort is quite subjective in my opinion, nonetheless with some discipline and objectivity you can gauge how hard you are pushing, ie which training zone you are in.) I advise you to read my article about making sense of your powermeter data. (http://www.thetallcyclist.com/2012/11/making-sense-of-your-powermeter-data-golden-cheetah/) Golden Cheetah has the TRIMP metric which is based on HR. I use a HR monitor for all my rides together with a powermeter so I have enough data to post an article how the two correlate. In the end you have to have some kind of baseline that you can use to compare all your rides upon and be consistent with how you estimate. A powermeter in this case illustrates the statement “Numbers don’t lie.”
2. I am not familiar with Strava at all, and again I will point you towards my article on understanding your powermeter data since all estimations try to come up with the same thing – training stress.
3. The Easy 5 Week Program is something I used to get back in shape for one last race at the end of season and it worked quite nicely ( as i mention it incorporates everything a yearly plan does, just on a smaller scale.)
Overall at this point I make my own training program/racing schedule (You can follow it in greater detail in all my weekly summaries). When I first started with cycling in 2012 I read the Road Cyclists Guide to Training by Power by Charles Howe (link on the right menu) and used the included training program there with some modifications. Of course it wasn’t perfect so this season I am improving on what I did wrong last year=) You will start to get the hang of it after a while since training principles for endurance sports are pretty universal.
I am not familiar with the 12 week Lance comeback program but 12 weeks is usually a good timeframe to accomplish even ambitious goals.
4. Maybe you can give me a little more information on what is a CTS test and what is a PC value? In general all those fitness tests estimate your “redline/maximum” so you can make your training zones based on that. Methods vary but they all try to estimate the same.
I hope that helps, if you have more questions do not hesitate to post them here and good luck with training!
P.S. You can get older model powertaps for very cheap, even if they have bad bearings etc. it is a simple repair as long as the electronics are functional. A powermeter is a very valuable tool!
Thanks a lot four your reply Nikola 😉
I checked that the Suffer Score in Strava is the same as the xPower in Golden Cheetah when training with my indoor power meter (bkool), so I think that I will use this value to get an approximation of my stress value for my outdoor rides until I get a power meter to my bike.
About the “12 week lance armstrong comeback training plan”, I don’t know If I can link to the entire PDF (I found it searching for a training plan on the web) but here is a link where Carmichael explains how to do it (http://www.trainright.com/assets/downloads/trainrightguidedescriptions2010.pdf). Days ago I thought that I could update my CTS value with the “critical power” obtained from the last training session with “Golden Cheetah”, but now I’m sure that it would be a bad idea.
Hello Nikola, First of all you are big inspiration and I learned already a lot of the blog here.
I have a question, I like to determine with an adjustment on my pedals : with/without spacers what’s the best power output. With some changes in my development I think it’s better to ride without and some bikefitter told me I should try. So I have a power tap and I have a tacx trainer, so How can I do this the best? And the best objective way. How would you do it? For example ride at 140W for 5-10minutes and see what’s the lowest HR ?
I don’t know, and I like to experience. With the spacers on my pedals I can’t take the corners not as deep as I like. ,
Thanks,
Greetings Koen
Hi Koen,
I am happy to hear you find the blog inspirational. So about your question; I am not a fitter myself, however, with such changes you should give your body a week, ideally two or more until you get the muscle memory and/or see if you don’t get any discomfort/injuries. You probably are pretty familiar with what power corresponds to what heartrate while on the tacx, so after you remove your spacers from the pedals you can see if you can output the same (or higher) wattage.
Another way is while still having the spacers do a workout or two where you hold a certain wattage for say 5-10min. Do it in a couple of steps like +10W and -10W. Then once you remove the spacers and take a week or two to get used to the new setup, do the same workout and see what happens.
Again, I am not a certified fitter, however, as long as you get the improvement you want (corner deeper) and not get injures and/or lose power, removing the spacers, is a positive development.
Good luck and let me know if you have more questions.
Best,
Nikola
Ok Nikola Thanks! Winter is coming, will be doing some tests now!,
greetings,
Koen
Nikola, awesome site. Inspiring to check your posts.
I am training for almost 3 years on a medium entry level road bike.
Going to buy a power meter and a garmin so I can make most use out of my training when the sun is shining again in spring.
My idea is to upgrade my bike as I go along.
If I want to go from, lets say, a Crankset of 105 (I have now) to DUR ACE, is this possible without putting extra wear on the new crank?
Changing the chain is a must I guess, but besides that, can it do any harm then when you upgrade the whole set from a 3 year old 105 to DUR ACE?
Hi Jeroen,
Thanks for the post. I am glad you like the blog.=) About your question, as far as upgrading Shimano cranksets, the Hollowtech II system (axle on the cranks) is intercahngeable across the different component levels. Since you are looking at an upgrade, I would definitely advise you to get the newer Shimano 9000 crankset in 52/36, almost ideal for any terrain. Should you desire lower gearing for some climbing you can use the same crank and put compact (50/34) chainrings and be good to go. Don’t let the fact that it is 11 speed scare you since it will work just fine with previous generation Shimano 10 speed.
In addition if i understand correctly you want to upgrade your entire groupset part by part. If you want to go to the latest 11 speed groupsets you have to make sure your wheels are 11 speed compatible. Even if not you CAN use 11 speed cassette, however, you will have to remove a cog and a spacer and adjsut the liit screws on your rear derailleur, so it will be essentially 10 speed. A possible order of upgrades that I would do is: Crankset>>Shifters+derailleurs+cassette+chain>>Brakes. It goes without saying that the shifters and deraileurs should be both 10 speed OR 11 speed. Mixing and matching the newest Dura Ace 9000 with older 7900 does not play so nicely and since it is an upgrade, might as well do it right. All Shimano 11 speed groupsets (DA 9000, Ultegra 6800, 105 5800) are interchangeable as well as are all 10 speed ones EXCEPT Dura Ace 7900 shifters and front derailleur (http://www.thetallcyclist.com/2013/05/the-shimano-dura-ace-7900-front-derailleur/). I am saying all this since you can save money (for a powermeter =) ) and buy the lower end (Ultegra/105 for example) cassette+chain even brakes and mix it with Dura Ace.
Let me know if you have more questions and good luck with the upgrade!
Thnx so much for the response, didn’t knew that all shimano wether they are 10 or 11 speed, are interchangeable with each other. So a new crankset doesn’t suffer from an older chain and/or cassette? thnx!
I would definitely change the chain. The cassette should be fine unless you have been running it with very old rusty chains for many many kilometers. Crankset/chainrings wear much slower so no harm to a new crankset. =)
Thnx soo much this has been VERY valuable for me 🙂
Hey Nikola, I was wondering what type of clothing you wear for cycling? I’m 6’8″ myself and was wondering if you had any insight for skinsuits or jersey’s that would fit a fellow tall cyclist. Thanks!
Hi Chris,
I have accumulated team issue clothing from both BioRacer (Belgian brand) and Poli (French brand). I still have a full black skinsuit i got from eBay that i use for training. Without knowing your body proportions it is tough to say especially since we cyclists tend to be on the skinnier side, however, I have good experience with Pearl Izumi. A piece of clothing that I use all the time (from summer through winter) is a Windproof cycling vest. Since you don’t want flapping clothes my advise is to go a size (sometimes even two…) smaller than your normal clothes. If you can go and try it in store, it is the best option especially since brands do vary in size, sometimes by quite a bit.
Hi
I am just wondering what you eat while you are on a 5-6 hour endurance ride or race?
Thanks
Hi Tony,
After starting with MAF training (see my article here) I am working on developing my fat burning and as such i don’t need any food even for 5h rides, I haven’t ridden longer than that so far. For shorter ones since it is winter, I don’t even take water. As far as racing, I haven’t done many races after starting with MAF, though for the two 3+h group rides I also needed only water. I also point you towards my cycling nutrition series with the first article on carbohydrates that dispels some of the myths that we need constant intake of energy in order to be competitive.
Best,
-Nikola