Ironman increased his threshold power with 62 Watts in 12 weeks

This article is a part of the final articles in the Power Meter Project 2007. I will try to describe the training programs and results from the 5 participants in the project.

Dave Simonson had finished 3 ironman competitions before he entered the power meter project so I knew he was a very experienced athlete. If you don’t have a clue on training it is very unlikely that you can finish three ironman competitions. The reason Dave entered the project was because he recently had purchased a power meter. He had bought a Cycleops Pro 300PT (Powertap indoor) and wanted to learn more on power meter training and get some experience.

Optimizing of physiology for an ironman athlete
The goal for Dave was to increase his average power output on long distances (112miles/180km). This is often trained with very long rides at a comfortable pace, but I believe in building up this endurance with intervals close to race speed and even intervals performed at VO2 max once in a while. The reason for these tough intervals is that a higher VO2 max also improves your performance at lower workloads. Another reason for doing intervals close to race speed is to learn the pacing strategy which is made easier than ever before by the development of power meters. Thus, Dave’s program was a combination of short 3min intervals to build VO2max, repeated 6min bouts of high aerobic intensity and finally long 15min pacing control intervals. By doing the intervals very frequently he had a good chance to get familiar with the pacing strategy.

Results
Bike training with high intensity does not require the same amount of time as training with lower intensities. Dave performed 6 to 8 hours weekly training and that was enough to significantly improve his 5min and 20min maximum power output. It is also worth to remember that these increments are achieved with solid indoor training. The graphs below speak for themselves:

Maximum Power Tests	5sec	1min	5min	20min	Body Weight
Week 1 (Watt)	850W	450W	290W	219W	90.6kg/199.8lbs
Week 1 (Watt/kg)	9.4W/kg	5.0W/kg	3.2W/kg	2.4W/kg
Week 6 (Watt)	978W	512W	326W	264W	90.0kg/198.4lbs
Week 6 (Watt/kg)	10.9W/kg	5.7W/kg	3.6W/kg	2.9W/kg
Week 12 (Watt)	894W	498W	346W	281W	89.8kg/198.0lbs
Week 12 (Watt/kg)	10.0W/kg	5.5W/kg	3.9W/kg	3.1W/kg

Interview with Dave Simonson after the Power Meter Project
After the project I asked Dave a couple of questions to get his opinion on power meter training:

Your 20min maximum power went from 219Watts in week 1 to 281Watts in week 12. What impact has this increment had on your performance?

Dave: “My improvement has made it much easier for me to gauge my effort on long rides.  Also, I am able to ride long distances faster with less exertion.”

How will you describe your progress through the project?

Dave: “I was surprised that I made the progress I did only on 7-8 hours/week of training.  The training program you created for me really enlightened me to the need for specificity for each workout.”

Have you adapted some of the ideas from the power meter project into your daily training?

Dave: “I have adapted your training plan to my continuing training and now exclusively measure my training performance and training progress using power.  I download my power data into CyclingPeaks software and evaluate my progress and plan my training from a power perspective.”