Using Power Meter with Don Fink's Be Iron Fit Plans

I'll bump this thread out of curiosity. I am also planning on using Don Fink's competitive plan this year for IMAZ and will be doing some training on the CycleOps. Would love to know if anyone has taken a thoughtful approach to converting the HR workout zones to power zones.

My .02:

IMO - I wouldn't substitute heart rate for watts.  Reason being - they're two different things.  I'm not saying you should nix power altogether - use both if you want to still monitor wattage.

I've trained with and without power, and have used Fink's competitor IM program.  After years of trial, I sold my power meter (as many people do).  My best results come from RPE training.  Second best results come from heart rate.  And in last, watts.  My fastest Ironman - RPE.  My slowest - watts.  You get the idea...  Perhaps not the most popular conclusion around these parts but thats the way it is for me.  With power, I was too concerned about pushing a certain amount of watts because I knew what I was capable of, and I knew what wattage I should be able to maintain comfortably.

In short - your body knows how you're feeling.  RPE and heart rate takes this into consideration.  Your quarq doesn't.

I have two thougths on this:

1) You spent the money on a power meter and signed up for an Ironman. Why not hire a power certified coach? It doesn't seem logical to me to spend all of that money and then put your training in the hands of a book.

2) If you don't want (or can't afford) to hire a coach then buy Training and Racing with a Power Meter and learn how to calibrate your efforts in wattage vs HR and use the book as a guide.

Good luck!

I don't have a power meter and really no plans to purchase one either. I ride based upon cadence and HR and it seems to work really well for me.

That's great if you are content with leaving ~10-15% of bike fitness on the table. I am sure that the other folks in your age group appreciate it

Wow - as a level 2 coach I'd expect you not to throw out numbers like 10 - 15%.  Perhaps your "~" means we can bring that closer to zero.  Chrissie Wellington can win Kona with nearly the best bike split of the day...and no power meter.  She must be ~10-15% better than the other women?  I think not.

I'm not saying power can't help bike fitness.  But 10-15% is excessive, especially when HR and/or RPE are used properly.

Steve you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

First of all Chrissie is a freak athlete and completely irrelevant to the average age grouper. She is so supremely talented that she could ride a Huffy with a banana seat and still win comfortably.

I stand by what I say about gains made with a power meter vs HR/RPE. An athlete will make the biggest gains by doing interval training. Shorter intervals to improve/raise VO2 Max and LT/AT/FTP and longer aerobic intervals to increase efficiency at sub-threshold levels. It is virtually impossible to get the same gains out of these intervals using HR/RPE due to the fact that both are influenced by outside factors that skew the data. Using RPE you might feel like you are working just as hard on the 3rd or 4th interval as you were the first one when in reality your 10-20 watts less in power output. Using HR as a metric isn't as precise either due to the fact that by the 3rd or 4th interval the HR isn't recovering as quickly due to accumulated fatigue, dehydration, and cardiac drift. Throw in some heat and humidity and your last interval that feels "just as hard" and has a higher HR number might be as much as 15-20% below the power output for the first interval. Where I come from that isn't efficient training and in the end the athlete is leaving fitness on the table.

Power isn't the only way to fitness, but it is the most exact.

What he is saying is that watt produced during the first interval will almost certainly have a lower heart rate than the same watt produced later in the workout for the reasons he mentioned.

Let's say for example that you're doing 4x8' intervals at 250 watts.  Your HR is likely to increase from interval to interval... while the power remains the same.  The first interval might average 150 bpm while the fourth interval might average 165 bpm.  Or it could be 150 vs 160 or 150 vs 157 or whatever.  Your HR will rise over the duration of the workout given the same effort.  It's just physiology.

He is saying that if you're just pacing off HR and keeping a steady HR that the power will likely be lower in the later stages of the workout.  Using my hypothetical example above... let's say you're trying to keep your HR at 150.  That first interval might be spot on 250 watts.  The fourth interval done at 150 HR will be at a lower power.  Maybe it's 225 or 230 or 235 or 240.  It will be lower.

I think that's all he was trying to say.