S1E3: Inside the EF Training Camp: A Deep Dive into My TrainingPeaks Stats 📈

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My marginal gains

10 min readJan 10, 2024

In this episode, I’ll share both the theoretical and practical aspects of our training, such as simulating races, pacelining, and testing dynamic threshold power. I’ll also share personal experiences, challenges I faced, and lessons learned during these sessions when we hit the road and analyzed data later. You’ll learn that there is so much more to cycling performance than power output. The application of power and overall rider efficiency makes an astounding difference in a rider’s overall ability. So, while we are always working on improving fitness, we need to have an equal emphasis on improving technique in order to maximize efficiency

A historical moment of my life captured, overtaking Ben Healy. 🤣

I‘ve divided this post into sections where I share analytics behind a few training techniques: the first one covers standing and seated climbing position drills with some tips for you to practice too, the second is the DTP test, and the third includes overall statistics from the camp, along with some insights into my power profile. 📊

What do you think my progress is going to be from June 2023 to December 2023? Let’s dig deep into the data and analyze it together.

📋 Standing and seated climbing positions drill

This has always been rocket science to me. I know people who have been cycling since childhood and racing, and they don’t understand why I am so confused about switching between standing and sitting position. However, it just never felt that natural and smooth, the transition between these two. Especially when you have to deal with the inconsistency of unknown terrain, control steady power, maintain a smooth cadence, avoid being wobbly on the saddle, and refrain from using your arms or hips too much — taking all of this into consideration. You need to get a few pieces of technique right for this approach to be efficient.

Our coach Zack shared with us the secret to smooth body position transition and also the importance of it for maintaining speed. Switching between seated and standing positions can help us climb faster. We are using slightly different muscles in each position, so by switching between them, we can allow our muscles to recover a bit and have more tools at our disposal to use when it comes to making decisions for every obstacle on the road. We should always be considering output, cadence, and body position when riding.

Now, let’s take a look at my data from this 6-minute drilling test. The goal of this drill was to alternate between 30 seconds of standing at 70 rpm and 30 seconds in a seated position at 80 rpm.

6-minute drilling test — alternate between 30 seconds of standing at 70 rpm and 30 seconds in a seated position at 80 rpm

😮‍💨 Haha. As you can see above, this wasn’t executed very well.

First, the power should be very similar between the positions. We shouldn’t see significantly higher average power for the standing position portions of the climb. If you look at my power in purple, you can see that I was quite unsuccessful in this drill, as the power is anything but consistent.

Second, the transitions between the positions should be very smooth. We shouldn’t see significant drops or spikes when switching the positions — something that can be observed through cadence marked in yellow. It helps to be thinking about keeping the tension on the chain as we are switching positions. That’s something that I’ll need to start focusing on in my training.

The best thing you can do to learn this and make the most of these techniques is to do this drill:

6 Minute Tempo (your Zone 3)— alternate between 30s 60 rpm standing & 30s 70 rpm seated
6 Minute Tempo (your Zone 3) — alternate between 30s 70 rpm standing & 30s 80 rpm seated
6 Minute Tempo (your Zone 3) — alternate between 30s 80 rpm standing & 30s 90 rpm seated

DTP test [Dynamic threshold power] 🚇

So let’s get to my very own case study, the first deep test (DTP drill) and the analysis of data from this test we did on the second day. You may be familiar with the FTP test, which works something like this. The DTP test is the new FTP test. The typical training programs are designed around the concept of Functional Threshold Power. It was created in the early 2000s, building on the foundational work measuring lactate thresholds by Francesco Conconi in the 1980s. It’s still relevant, but cycling has moved on since 1982. So, the EF coaching team has developed a more dynamic test of power outputs that gives a clearer indication of whether you’re reaching your performance peak in many different situations.

📋 The DTP drill and how it works

🐌 Pacing — ideally the power should be fairly constant throughout the 5 minutes. In practice we typically see a slight downward slope.
😓 The first 60–90 seconds typically feel very easy. It takes time for the heart rate to get up and lactate to accumulate. However, it’s important to avoid starting too hard.
🚇 Minute 3 is the hardest. A lot of lactate has already accumulated in the muscles, however it’s still a long way to go. They call it entering the pain cave. Alternatively, the tunnel of pain.
☃️ Clothing — people perform better in a colder environment. Short sleeves and bibs even in 12 degrees C.

📈 Analysing my power data

First 5 minutes

Before diving into my power data, there are probably two most obvious things to focus on when analyzing it — and that’s how the power output changed over time and analyzing the switching between seated and standing and how that affects spikes and drops.

You can see my power curve from the first 5-minute interval in purple 🟣(for someone maybe pink?) color. In the first 2 and a half minutes, you can’t really see any super weird and awkward high spikes (but it’s only if you ask me — if you ask Zack he’d tell you there are spikes and that I should learn how to control my power better) because I was trying to listen to the coach and not overburn in the first minute. The first minute seems and feels the easiest, and while it may sound easy theoretically, there’s another factor — the terrain. That’s something I struggle with: controlling power, watching out for terrain, and acting accordingly. Since I’ve never climbed this hill before, I had no idea about the terrain — flats and little downhills. So after the second minute, there comes the pain cave but also the flat part and little hills where I struggled to control the power, going up and down. I realized that I need to keep pushing and switched gears for a tough one, standing up, but it hurts, so I tried to sit down to ease and then again stood up from the saddle. That’s something you can see from my yellow cadence data 🟡 and the drops and spikes around it.

Last 5 minutes

Ability to recover from a hard effort is critical for racing. It’s not just about how high were the both 5 min intervals, but as well what % of the first one we managed to do in the second one. Below 95% is poor. Above 97.5% if good.

Comparing the two tests (emotions and the excuses that go with it)

So, as you can see below in pink chart, my second interval [Interval 10] was approximately 5.24% worse than the first one. 😳 And as I already told you, 95% is considered poor. Above 97.5% if good. So this is poor. Bye. 👋🏻🤣

To me, this test was a very interesting experiment — a mental experiment. We had been talking about doing this test forever, and I had never ever done it before. I was super excited and nervous about how I would perform. I was scared of discovering the “pain cave” that everyone had been talking about. Even before undertaking this test, I could see that my heart rate was abnormally high, reflecting how excited and nervous I was.

I’m the type of person who burns all the matches in the first few kilometers to secure a QOM on Strava or just to show off, or because the first few kilometers simply feel incredibly easy. I leave everyone behind, wait for everyone on the hill, but after 20 minutes, it’s no longer working — my legs are not working. Then it hurts, and I spend the entire journey crying after only 20 kilometers while everyone waits and curses me for overexerting myself. In races, I stay at the front with the fastest man group, but after 3 kilometers, I can’t keep up and lose everyone to race by myself for another 100km. That’s exactly me.

So, for this test, I decided to listen to the coaches and wanted to start slow for the first 5 minutes, really. But maybe it was way too slow, to be honest. In the second minute, I looked behind my shoulder and could see Daniel catching up. Surprisingly, I didn’t even feel like catching my breath was hard, which is usually the case as I am asthmatic. My heart rate was around 160bpm, but my max heart rate is 184bpm, so this felt like a relatively easy effort compared to climbing our tiny little hill in Klecany, Prague (which is almost flat).

Another piece of feedback I received on this test is that my torque is evidently very strong, Colby said maybe too strong, and I rely on it too much. I should try to use a much higher cadence in that effort, which I did not do. As you can see, I was on my big ring, with a super low cadence (65rpm avg) compared to the others (around 90rpm avg). I think this is strength training for me, and I really rely on my strong muscles, haha. Also, I have been strength training since before getting my former road bike; I used to ride with Daniel next to his Canyon Endurace on the old Berlin bike without gears. If you want to go far with that bike uphill, you need to be very strong… otherwise, you’ll get dropped right away.

Overall statistics from the camp

Total days: 6 days
Total distance: 480 km
Total elevation: 5541 m
Peak performance: So this was actually mind-blowing. I made progress and set a personal record every single day, which had never happened before. But to be completely honest, I bought a power meter this June, when I also started getting coaching. So, there is a huge space left for improvement, and I will probably be able to improve over the next three years or at least until I get too old. And this is a funny part as I also still ponder how far I could have taken it if I had realized that I enjoyed cycling, maybe 10 years ago, haha. But at least when I’m just pondering about it, there’s some chance that it could have happened, rather than if it had never happened because I would have found out that I’m just an average kid. Some examples of my peak performance records 😀: 1min 411W (when I was sprinting to overtake Ben Healy), 5min 288W, 20min 220W.

My wakeup call ⏰

I don’t want to sound like I am showing off, but in my social bubble (that mostly consists of people with kids or those working 14 or more hours in the office) sometimes it really felt like I have the potential to become an elite athlete who can excel in any sport and be exceptionally fast, athletic, and above average. Considering that those Garmin stats are also encouraging when they label you as a superior person in the top 1% of female athletes. However, after looking at real data here (and also undergoing some laboratory testing), I quickly realized the hard truth. I fall into the ‘Good’ category, which already sounds alarming to me, especially considering myself as an overachiever. 😅

On the below graphs, I want to showcase my power profile so that you understand that I don’t perceive myself as anything extraordinary (anymore 🤣). I am just a moderately good athlete, but with some properly structured training and coaching, I can undoubtedly achieve much better results. Consider that I only started training more in the second half of the 2023. What I really love about cycling, and find magnificent, as in any other sport, is that there are just so many variables you can tweak and improve. They’re called marginal gains, and they can be achieved through mechanical adjustments, technical refinements, weight management, technique enhancement, the quantity of training, proper fueling, adequate sleep, structured training plans, pedalling efficiency, bike fitting, and many more.

June 2023

The first graph represents the initial month of training (June 2023), while the second graph below illustrates the improvement with coaching by December 2023, all while maintaining a full-time job.

December 2023

As you can see, my power improved in all the time efforts. Sometimes, it even skipped two categories and brought me to the upper level of category 2, which is finally ‘very good’ 😄. For the 5-second category, I owe it to an amazing pro cyclist and coach, Petr Vakoč, who took some time to teach me ‘life’ sprinting, which was all super new to me but is now my most favorite thing to do. 😄

It’s incredible how much improvement and progression into the next category can be achieved with just small gains. I hope next year I hop into the Cat 1 in at least 2 power zones. 🤣 Fingers crossed!