More Power Stuff

I wrote a while ago about how I was messing with some power meter concepts (with no power meter!). I've discovered that I didn't do the calculation quite right. I was doing a straight rolling average, but I should have been doing an exponentially weighted average. I found a pretty cool article that describes the background for this calculation.

It took a little more effort to implement this in a spreadsheet, but I did it. I made a plot that compares the two calculation methods. The trends are roughly the same, but the absolute values are noticeably different.

So far, I haven't found that either method has done a particularly good job of predicting when I'll feel good on the bike and when I won't. Maybe its because I'm estimating my training load instead of actually measuring it. Maybe I don't have enough "data" yet. It seems like other factors in my life (sleep, work stress, etc) have a bigger impact on my performance than fine-tuning training load and rest.

Speaking of, I've been feeling a little sick since I came home from camp. Reviewing my training log, I noticed that I've once again strung together too many days of not quite enough sleep. I've taken it pretty easy since Wednesday morning, and I don't seem to be getting worse. If I feel decent all day on Friday, I'll probably go ahead and race "Mad Anthony" on Saturday; otherwise, I think I'll hold off racing until Lower Huron on Sunday. One of the interesting things that you can see with my spreadsheet though is that missing a couple days has a relatively minor impact on the overall picture. Like I've written before, I think it's much better to be conservative and miss a couple days than try to push through and end up having to miss a week or more.