Afternoon all.
Going to shortly do some testing so I can start to utilise this feature. Just to be certain, am I correct in saying that if I use this feature then any intervals in a workout (above threshold) will be automatically adjusted in terms of duration/power/time between intervals (or am I getting the wrong end of the stick)?
No, sorry we don’t have any automatically adjusting workouts. This just helps you design workouts in our editor or when looking at workouts you can see how many intervals you can finish or generally how close to failure you are going to get. I would call it a learning tool to better understand how adjustments to intervals or rest durations and intensities work with your anaerobic limits.
You can do the same thing by just trying workouts and see how they feel or when you can’t do any more 
Thanks Alex.
Still a very useful tool with regular testing. This will be especially so come build up to hill climb season when it’ll be all about the intervals.
is there a plan to integrate W’bal in Coach Jack or is there a specific reason why this is not a good idea? I think manual workout creation is a big disincentive to train with W’bal: if W’bal changes then you have to re-edit all your manually created workouts.
It’s a great idea and we are working on it. It’s less critical in the current model because we are not trying to push people to failure although at the end it maybe a lot harder for some then others. We are working on new AI plans and if someone want death plans it will provide then so that’s where it becomes critical.
If a user is going through the effort to do 3x maximal effort tests (I’ve read 3m, 6m, and 12m is recommended) to provide an accurate model then workout optimization is probably not a big deal for that user?
Good calculator: Critical Power Calculator — High North Performance
Dave
I don’t understand what you mean? The idea is if you want to give someone that effort that is extremely hard but they should be able to complete it, it’s nicer for you to believe you can finish it and then you actually do even if it requires extreme suffering. And then as you get more dynamic you take their feedback and reduce how deep you dig their grave. Some people can go very deep a couple of times but going moderately deep 10 times is too much and visa-versa… Most people have a harder time doing many close to failures than single very deep (to failure) one or two times.
We also have a calculator. It’s better when using our workouts to use our calculator because our w’bal calculations work inversely off of this method of W’ calculation.
I mean if someone is willing to go through the pain of 3 maximum efforts then that person is probably willing to go through the workouts and use the W’bal prediction to edit the workout for the desired effect.
Dave
I find 3 minute max effort or close to max much easier than sustained intervals, especially outside on a climb. Many people will do a ramp test but don’t want to do VO2max or HIIT. It can even be 1-2 minutes and get a pretty good idea…
Look at you, you have found your optimum vo2max intervals through a lot of trial and error. So if we know your W’ we can have you do something that should just be hard. Then after that you give feedback as to your preferences then we can dial in a whole series of workouts perfectly optimized for what you want to do. It becomes more important for the people wanting to get close to failure each time and love finishing what was prescribed. Also you could create 6 intervals and the person could fail the first one or they could feel easy if you are at one end or the other of the w’ spectrum.
Again CJ sequences at level 1 are at the easier end so it does not matter so much and by the end of the block they will know if they are likely to do it or not so it’s not so important.
I did a KOM attempt 2 weeks ago where the leader did it in 53 seconds. This is at the end of the road ride we’ve been doing so I had about 2 hrs 55 minutes in my legs at that time, but was feeling good.
It starts with a flat section leading into a right hander where there’s a kicker that peaks at 8.4%. I hit the flat hard and then went all out max on the kicker and reached a new cycling HR peak at 191. My time was 55 seconds so I missed it by 2 seconds 
I was heavily fatigued for about a full 24 hours after that. The 5x3 intervals I’ve been doing are a dream to recover from compared to that 55 second effort.
I’m swearing off KOM efforts in the short-term here, they take too much out of me.
This may be a classic “Your Mileage May Vary” type scenario of how much max efforts take our of you versus intervals.
Dave
Yes, for sure there is the the recovery aspect, I was speaking more on the mental aspect… Every hard effort I do requires substantial recovery 
But again also this all of this is highly individual, this is where w’bal can factored in can make a difference… but as you saw the mental aspect of the KOM was likely fun and not so bad but the recovery is a whole other matter and yes you had worse case scenario… Doing it fresh after warmup would be much wiser from a recovery standpoint.
I don’t think I was getting at all what you were saying before, but I do now.
The Trainer Day app does NOT require 3 max efforts to calculate W’. That is only the High North approach where you’re trying to figure out CP also. All you need is 1 max effort and a reasonable estimate of CP.
I did a 6-minute max effort tonight as one of Dr Seiler’s metrics (6 minute power, 60 minute power) and I haven’t done the 60 minute power yet. So if I plot what I think my CP is then I can find where the red line intersects and see what the model says W’ is.
This probably isn’t that great of pacing, but I tried to be conservative with my starting point effort and it turns 0.5 degree slope changes increase power rapidly.
Intervals.icu agrees by the way…
Dave
Nice cross checking. I usually consider FTP as 40 minute power and CP as 20 minute power and CP is a bit above FTP but for training purposes they are probably close enough . For hitting perfect w’bal = 0 intervals accuracy matters more. But yes in your case looks like they align perfectly and W’ calculations don’t care about perfect pacing. Good job. So in theory, now you can design intervals that get you close to failure and compare a single failure vs 5 “close to failures” regarding W’bal and see which you can tolerate better. It always depends on how close but usually 30% of W’bal remaining for 4-5 intervals is a good place to start.
