Will Mangar

Team GB 30-34 Age Grouper

Euro Rank:18

Sevenoaks Tri Club

Having raced in many Olympic Triathlons now for the last 4 years, I made a decision to purchase my CompuTrainer unit from Simon at the beginning of 2008. Up until this time I can now say I had been cycling and so racing at pretty much one speed and not making any real progress. I say to people now that I was probably ‘dabbling’ in the sport rather than training for serious racing. My bike splits were always fairly good and would position me in the top 10% of the field in most national ranking triathlons. I wanted to develop my cycling further as I felt I had more potential to fulfil and the proposition from RacerMate of improvement by 20% sounded too good to be simply ignored. At the beginning of 2008 I set myself the goal of qualification and top good performance at the ETU Triathlon Championships in Lisbon in May 2008 with a second aim of improving my time-trialling as the year went on.  

What was initially evident was the obvious motivational quality of the unit – we all hate doing turbo sessions but I was using it for perhaps 2 or 3 hours at a time for my long ride each week if the weather was totally rubbish. There are loads of courses to do and you will never ever get bored – and if you ever do you can always use the numerous videos available. Having started to use power rather than heart rate to quantify my workouts I was getting an exact measure of my improvement as each week went by. There was no hiding from the wattage output and there were less conflicting variables as can occur with heart rate depending on levels of fatigue, stress and hydration.   As my watts improved week by week I was fascinated with the SpinScan facility and after researching ‘how to pedal’ using the guidance supplied in the pack, I could ride a 10mile TT on the unit at a lower wattage in a faster time. I was totally impressed as I had proven that the CompuTrainer was teaching me to cycle more and more efficiently. I guess it was at that time I realised that a 20% improvement was totally possible. Throughout the winter ‘Base’ period I used the unit to keep my Threshold power high so as to perform well in local time-trials to obtain some road figures. As time went on there was a long running joke at the tri club relating to my eternal love for the unit. As a consequence of my new found abilities on the bike I was losing training buddies as fewer and fewer could stick to my back wheel!

Last year my coach said to me that one day he would teach me how to ride a bike. Although at the time I didn’t understand what he meant, I know realise that the CompuTrainer taught me how to keep steady wattage and listen to my body and develop a sense of ‘ride to feel’.  When out on the road I was far more in tune with my ‘level of perceived exertion’ as I could relate it to the power experienced on the unit. I was also developing a steadier ‘head’ in TTs and during races as I wasn’t blowing after 5mins as I would have done before. I read a lot about power management this year and if you are not blessed with a vo2 max of 90+, the CT may help in other ways.

I use the CompuTrainer for some basic workout sessions each week now:

Session 1:               VO2 max

                                       10 min warm up

                                       (3-6 min intervals at VO2 max : 3-4 min recovery) x 6

10 min warm down

Initally I was riding intervals at 240 watts and up until last week my VO2 max is 410 watts with recoveries at 150 watts

Session 2:               Steady State

                   10min warm up

                   40 min at 25mileTT pace or 90-95% of Threshold Power

10min warm down

My current Threshold (FTP) is 380 watts so I ride this at a tempo pace or sub-threshold of 340 watts and this simulates the bike of an Olympic race. I always run tempo off the trainer for at least 20mins.

Session 3:               2x20s

                   10min warm up

                   2 x 20mins at threshold wattage

                   5min recovery between sets

                   10 min warm down

This is a classical but essential road-cycling workout which I feel works well for learning to accept the suffering of 25s or 10mile TTs. If I can, I run off this set too.

My functional threshold power (FTP) has really developed this year since purchasing the unit:

                                18/11/2007                          238 watts

                                3/3/2008                               332 watts

                                27/6/2008                            346 watts

                                2/9/2008                               382 watts

These figures speak for themselves. After the European Championships in Portugal (I achieved the third  fastest bike split for my AG) I concentrated exclusively on cycling and my FTP went crazy at 382 watts which I performed at 2 weeks ago having plateaued for several months at 330-340watts which is still reasonable  for a triathlete.  It actually represents a 60% improvement in my FTP from my base period, or a 15% improvement since the START of the race season. It’s really impressive.

Our local midweek sprint triathlon is at Leybourne Lakes in Kent and I have included the stats for you to see. Not only have the bike splits become faster, but check the run splits too. I am much fresher getting off the bike and feel I have saved loads of energy by pedalling efficiently as SpinScan shows me:

Leybourne Lakes Midweek Tri

I have also compared the time on my local 10mile TT course in Kent. All three days had similar conditions and all the equipment was comparable:

20/8/2007            24.57

27/4/2008            22.23

6/8/2008               21.15

This translates to a 15% improvement in my time-trialing abilities since I have been using the unit.  To top it off, I recently raced the South East Racing League criterium at Betteshanger and finished 5^th in front of the whole field of 1^st and 2^nd Cats. Not bad for a triathlete and Cat 4 racer!