Something like
Every ride I...
a) Pump my tyre up to the same pressure
b) Lock it in the turbo with the same number of turns on the resistance unit (mine is a QR so this is not tedious)
c) Zero the power meter
d) Warm-up for 10-15 minutes, progressively shifting up over the 1st 5 minutes until riding at ~70% FTP
e) Re-zero the power meter incase it has drifted as the room warms up etc, note or remember this value
f) Do the planned session
g) Do the reverse of the warm-up
h) Check the zero offset on the power meter again and compare to the value in e) to ascertain the extent of any drift throughout the session (this gives confidence in your data)
i) Lay on the living room floor for 15 minutes until the nauseous feeling subsides
j) Drink milk & put away the kit
k) Stretch
l) Shower
m) Plug the Garmin in, upload to Garmin Connect (don't know why, suppose it is a decent backup and can be used as a quick reference), Upload to Strava (to make my friends sick when they see I have been smashing it on the turbo while they have been supping beer again), upload into Golden Cheetah (for actual analysis)
n) In Golden Cheetah I do various checks on the data, depending on the session, for example, lets say a 6x3 min session, I will check the average power of each interval, hopefully they are very close, if there is a notable drop off, I will calculate the drop off with respect to the 3rd interval to check if I should have stopped earlier. I usually refer back to a couple of previous sessions of the same type to see if my figures stack up.
o) If it is a race (I race TT's), I usually check average power, normalised power, intensity factor, variability index (hopefully close to 1). Check my pacing, so I will look at the laps and compare my power for each lap, looking for good pacing, i.e. slightly reserved start, good steady effort and a build at the end. Look for points where I may have lost time. Compare out and back times.
p) Make any notes about RPE, conditions, any external factors (eg. being held up by traffic), official race result, time position, any prizes, any other notable things while I still remember them clearly.
Every week I...
a) Check weekly TSS
b) Look at the PMC
c) Decide what, if any changes need to be made in the following weeks training plan
Then to understand the changes in performance I... look at my race results, am I going faster? Is my placing relative to the number of riders better? Who was riding? Am I closing the gap on faster riders? I also look at the aerobic power tab to see the trends for 5, 20 and 60 minute power intervals. If not racing, repeat the FTP test protocol as and when required (once a month or every 6 weeks maybe), this is not required as often when racing as a 25 mile time trial is good for this, I race a 25 at least once a month so will check normalised power and take this as my new FTP, unless it looks suspect, like I had a bad day, or the temperature was bonkers etc.
At the moment I'm at the point where I have a basic training plan and am collecting data. Now comes the tricky bit
