Italian team manager orders his riders to race without power meters

[jr59]

I have no real idea on how good or bad this idea is, or isn’t. What I do know is racing is results oriented. They start having good results and in short order, most teams will follow. If they don’t, this person will be looking for new employment, or change his stance quickly

[seanile]

back in the day when i was rowing, during indoor practices my coach would push our erg's screen down and out of sight. then he'd put us through timed full-pace efforts with only his vocal cues. me and my boatmates often PRed at these practices.
i think it's a wise decision, particularly that he's only removing access to the data during the race, and allowing the usual access during training.

[fiamme red]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

Yee gads....Indurain had a wired Avocet computer on his bike..WITHOUT A WIRE..lots are sportin' one of these for sponsorship $..in the heat of the battle, I wonder how many actually use them, look at them..anyway.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/01/...er-meters.html

As shown in review after review, the Shimano power meter is simply not accurate. There’s no two ways around it. It’s just not. It’s still not, and it won’t be, due to the way Shimano casts their right-side crank arms in the 8000 & 9100 series. That’s a reality. And yet, the majority of pro peloton are on it for sponsorships.

Heck, we could actually take this a step further and note that the ROTOR 2INpower is also not the most accurate duck either, something teams in the past have noted to me. And then we have the non-active temperature compensation SRM units out there, which by SRM’s own admission desperately need temperate compensation to handle any sort of temp swings (it’ll handle it if you stop and zero offset, which of course no pro rider will do mid-climb)...

[ltwtsculler91]

Originally Posted by seanile

back in the day when i was rowing, during indoor practices my coach would push our erg's screen down and out of sight. then he'd put us through timed full-pace efforts with only his vocal cues. me and my boatmates often PRed at these practices.
i think it's a wise decision, particularly that he's only removing access to the data during the race, and allowing the usual access during training.

Thanks for stealing my thunder
-The guy who would PR on all those practices.

But this is really common in other endurance sports to cut out seeing your data when racing and trusting your training to deliver results on race day. If you've been training properly then as an athlete you should be able to understand your limits and can definitely surprise yourself with your performances.

Watching numbers just leads to paint by numbers racing where you look down and see "oh I'm pushing 300w that's my max, I can't possibly make this break" where in actuality without being mentally chained to that number you could push 320w in that same situation.

In college rowing we'd actively take all the data away from our coxswain while racing, and leave it to him and me to drive the pace of the boat based on our racing situation.

I'm surprised another coach hasn't done this before, but as Heisenberg pointed out above, I'm sure plenty of pros are already doing this "manually" by editing or covering their computer screens.

[echappist]

Originally Posted by redir

I know from my personal experience as an amateur I only started actually winning races once I got rid of all the electronic gadgets. I can see a PM being useful in a TT so you don't blow up too soon but even then you might rely on it too much and only perform up to it's level rather then your level. I suppose the could mount the meter's on the frame or something so that they can still collect data but the riders wont be syborged.

few issues with that statement:

first is that the same critique could be leveled at pacing based off of any metric, be it RPE, power, HR, or a combination thereof. One could just do a TT based off of whim, but then one may also spectacularly blow up. There's a reason why most will peg efforts based off of something.

second is that I doubt most TTers would actually agree with the statement. The reason why efforts in the initial portions of a TT have to be relatively throttled is because lactate generation build-up isn't linear with effort. 105% may be 10.5% greater than 95%, but the lactate generated is going to be greater than 10.5%. This is why doing a TT with 105% out and 95% back is always going to be much more difficult than doing a TT 95% out and 105% back, because one ends up with more lactate in the former. PM/HR helps to serve that purpose.

third is that when one plans to do 95% on the way out and 105% on the way back (with 100% being what one could reasonably do for the estimated duration), it is descriptive, not prescriptive. That's the first order approximation that may be adjusted up or down depending on how one feels. If one isn't feeling labored, that 95% can always be dialed upward. Similarly, if one is feeling labored, it should be knocked back a few watts. There is nothing inherent in pacing with PM that precludes one from setting a PB on race day.

Lastly, "up to [one's] level" is only going to be 2-3% more than expected. There was a study a few years back where athletes were "tricked" by being told that they were going at a speed ~2-3% lower than what they were capable of sustaining (when in effect they were going at the previous best). The "tricked" athletes were able to squeeze out another 2-3% over the previous best; however, that was the most that was squeezed out, any under-reporting by a larger number did not result in larger improvements. We are all largely governed by physiology, though mental efforts and adrenaline could help a slight bit. But it is slight.

And since we are dealing with personal anecdotes, one of my best TTs was one where I targeted 290-295W out and 310W back, for an overall power of ~300W. I felt really good on the way out, and after three minutes, I upped it to 300W on the way out. At the turnaround, I noticed that my HR and RPE were on par with what I expected from a 290-295W out leg, so on the back leg, I decided to go for 315W and ended up doing 320W for the back leg. Overall power was just about 3% higher than expected. Racing by PM certainly didn't prevent me from setting a PB on that day.

Also, a PM is also quite useful for off-the-front efforts. Though granted, within the pack, I didn't look at it much, and it was an issue of I do whatever is needed to stay in the group, regardless of what the PM reads.