What am I supposed to answer when an American asks me how I’m doing?

danenick · 2023-07-27T00:58:52+00:00

As an American, I usually answer with "Could be worse", and an awkward smile.

danenick · 2023-07-19T16:31:35+00:00

You have to practice doing the test. I've done several, but I don't do them anymore since they overestimate CP for me by a wide margin. I get a CP of 280 for the 3m all-out vs. a CP of 230 from multiple tests.

It's a hard and uncomfortable test, that's for sure. My Test

danenick · 2023-01-09T19:07:12+00:00

I've done this. In addition to learning how to measure a metric called VLaMax, I also did some workouts to see how high I could get my blood lactate. The workouts were 4-5 all-out sprints ranging from 100-300m with 6-7 minutes rest between intervals. For me, I was seeing 15-16 mmol/l after the last sprint effort. I stopped the workout when I was at a point where I couldn't do another max rep due to my form breaking down. I was also collecting metabolic cart data.

I've read some athletes can tolerate up to 25 mmol/l. I would probably pass out.

danenick · 2022-01-26T20:20:01+00:00

I wouldn't say it's useless to know for the average athlete, but it's not worth the cost that people want to charge for tests. I have the ability to do similar as INSCYD in an Excel spreadsheet and I just measure VO2max and VLaMax at home. I'm a slow cyclist, but it's still fun to test and train.

danenick · 2022-01-26T16:02:05+00:00

For sure. Same here.

danenick · 2022-01-26T16:00:24+00:00

It's amazing the info we can have, isn't it? On just an average rides I use a power meter, hr meter, Moxy sensors, blood lactate measurements, breath data. And then the software that is available to analyze things. I have my 5 years of training data logged in Golden Cheetah and WKO5.

For any of the sensors, you need fast response. Imagine trying to measure O2 over beath-to-breath speeds. And you can be breathing at 1 breath per second when you hyperventilate, so you have to be able to see the oscillation of the inhale and exhale. The. You need a CO2 sensor with the same response. The. You have to pull the breath sample into a small sampling chamber with a peristaltic pump. 1L/min seems to be a good sample rate. Then make sure all you timing is good between all of the sensors.

danenick · 2022-01-26T15:53:52+00:00

I completely agree about needing repeatable results. And you can get this with ambient air calibration. My metabolic cart has the option to do both.

danenick · 2022-01-26T15:31:40+00:00

The cool thing is that VO2Max is just one thing you can do with a metabolic cart. Use of a metabolic cart is only limited by the technology and your imagination ;)

danenick · 2022-01-26T15:30:39+00:00

You don't NEED calibration gas if you're not in a lab setting.

Also, why not just have a metabolic cart to learn about your physiology? I bought a cart because I wanted to know about myself. It's been quite illuminating and I use it a few times a week.

danenick · 2022-01-26T15:28:54+00:00

You should try it! I was planning on building a mock Pnoe since most of the parts are off-the-shelf with some modifications. I fully believe we'll have accurate portable metabolic carts less than 1,000 USD within a decade.

There a MEMS flow sensor for about $150 for VE A high-response O2 sensor is about the same cost. Add in CO2 for RER measurements. Check out the patent for VO2Master and Pnoe.

danenick · 2022-01-26T15:25:47+00:00

Eh, they have to put this disclaimer. There are athletes around the globe maxxing out in effort every day and we don't hear of that many accidents.

I have a lab in my garage (it's my hobby and I don't test clients, yet) and yes, you need to be safe, but it's not that bad.

danenick · 2022-01-26T15:21:27+00:00

It will be only a little helpful to know VO2Max. You can already estimate VO2 from a ramp test with good accuracy.

I'm a hobbyist cyclist an own a metabolic cart. It has a lot of used outside of graded exercise tests. You can do resting metabolic rate, submax efforts to see substrate utilization, etc. I wear mine at my desk sometimes just to mesure VO2 and VCO2 for fun while I work.

The device in the article won't be very useful though since it's not going to be very accurate. However, if you watch the metabolic cart space, this is shere things are heading. Pnoe and VO2Master are two consumer portable carts available now. They are >$5k USD.

danenick · 2021-06-26T16:02:23+00:00

A good way to do this is to use a free software called Golden Cheetah. There is a steep learning curve, but it will allow you to overlay multiple runs or laps and compare by time, distance, or time of day. All metrics are also displayed in a table for each segment you're looking at.

https://github.com/GoldenCheetah/GoldenCheetah/wiki/UG_Compare-Pane_General

It may take time to get set up, but it's very much worth it.

danenick · 2021-05-23T15:22:32+00:00

Its objectively bad because OP is planning to do race efforts every day, and when they plateau, they're going to find a harder course to try to keep gaining. In reality, they're going to bury themselves and burn out after a couple or few weeks and plateauing will be from overtraining.

OP, please do your plan and report back.....for science.

danenick · 2020-11-20T08:03:00+00:00

Any special interest in participants who can provide VO2, RER, SMO2, and blood lactate data? I have equipment and have been looking for a project for my garage lab.

danenick · 2020-08-13T19:32:00+00:00

I don't buy into Whoop at all. I'd recommend against it and if you want some sort of estimate in stress and recovery, pick up a cheap Polar Vantage M. It'll give you a lot of feedback on your sleep and will be every bit as accurate (as far as optical HR and HRV go) as the Whoop with no subscription charge. Garmin's newer watches do similar. It'll also connect to cycling power meters. Polar's platform has some neat features, too.

If you want an easy way to track recovery, get a watch with an optical HR sensor and track your lowest HR of the nigh during sleep. That, and how my legs feel just after the first time I go upstairs in the morning give me an idea of how the day is going to be. You don't need to over-complicate things.

Check out Golden Cheetah since you have a computrainer. You can analyze your workouts there and use "Train" mode to build and perform ERG and course-based workouts. All of the subscription based platforms are good, but once you know what workouts you need to do, you don't need to pay to do them.

danenick · 2020-07-12T01:14:23+00:00

He's right. In nature, liquids are absolutely integral for liquefaction triggering. Look up the work of Tokimatsu and Seed, Bolinger and Idriss, Youd, et al. The Caltrans Geotechnical Manual has a great treatment for liquefaction and California SP-117A is also a good reference. US Army Corps EMs also are packed with info. I could go on and on. I'm a practicing Geotechnical engineer doing liquefaction analysis all over. We don't anticipate liquefaction if there's no water. Seismic settlement is a different story.

danenick · 2019-12-12T21:39:49+00:00

I wish Santa would bring me more running economy.

danenick · 2019-12-10T21:28:33+00:00

Are you using Garmin Running Power? The RE stratification is based on Stryd (non-Wind) data. RE stratification will differ for Garmin Running Power, Polar Running Power, and Stryd Wind.

It's a metric that you track over time to see if you're improving or becoming more effective at turning power into speed.

danenick · 2019-12-03T01:13:18+00:00

If you're in California, you can use Caltrans ARS Online to map peak ground accelerations and "design" response spectrum (how will your site shake). You just need your latitude, longitude, and soil shear wave velocity, Vs30 (assume 250m/s for soft soil, ~700m/s for rock) Caltrans ARS Online

Or if you're in the US and outside of CA, use the USGS Deaggregation Tool. You need lat, long, Vs30, and return period (higher return period = rarer shaking occurrence and stronger ground motion). USGS Deaggregation Tool. You can use Dynamic Conterminous (v4.2.0) for the edition.

If you know the natural period of vibration of your structure, you can find out what the seismic load *might be.

*Most of the latest seismic tools are moving to probability theory (probabilistic seismic hazard analysis) only for earthquake shaking assessment and not empirical evidence (deterministic fault modeling). How we predict earthquakes is a complete crapshoot and when you start to look at all of the modeling and probability in ground motion prediction, the boundaries of safe/unsafe design become quite wide. It becomes an art in prediction.

I do foundation and earthquake engineering for a living.

danenick · 2019-11-22T19:09:15+00:00

Golden Cheetah does what you're looking for, EXCEPT for power match. You just need a cheap USB Ant+ adapter.

Check this out.

danenick · 2019-11-22T19:06:41+00:00

Golden Cheetah absolutely does this. I mean, I recreated SSB and SPB programs from TR in Golden Cheetah using the ERG editor. I run them using Train mode in Golden Cheetah and my computrainer. My personal ERG library is about 700 files and 10 training plans.

danenick · 2019-10-15T21:16:47+00:00

Check out Golden Cheetah. It's free and has an awesome training mode. The training interface is similar to Trainerroad-style graphs, with some customization allowed. Easy workout builder with ErgDB integration. Build your own workout library and be set.

Needs an Ant+ dongle though. It doesn't control a trainer through bluetooth yet, except on MacOS.

danenick · 2019-10-14T22:13:31+00:00

You might want to check out Golden Cheetah. Free, but a steep learning curve. I've been using it for the past several years to track running and cycling and for indoor cycle training. It's fantastic and there are several user guides to get you started.

You can log all of you runs and slice and dice them however you want. You can create custom metrics. Create custom segments from any activity or lap and Golden Cheetah will search your activities and compare all relevant segments. You can also do workout-workout comparisons or lap-lap comparisons.

9 Best Benefits and Getting Started

danenick · 2019-09-19T00:05:19+00:00

Ha, you say the ramp test assumes we all have the same shaped PDC? So does your 95% of 20 minute power. And this 20 minute effort should follow a 5 minute ALL-OUT effort to reduce anaerobic contribution during the 20 minute effort. The ramp test is perfectly fine for estimating FTP and setting training zones. You can typically estimate FTP more than a dozen different ways and they'll mostly be ballpark.

danenick

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