Am I A Better Cyclist?

 A question that I'm often asking myself is, "Am I a better cyclist?" The answer to that question is often that it depends. Cycling is littered with metrics and there's enough seemingly objective benchmarks to answer that question however we want. One way to answer this question is simply by observing this Training Peaks chart of Fitness over time.

Another way to consider the question is one of workload. Am I able to handle more work this year versus last year? Well, consider that in 2021 over the past 180 days, my weekly Kilojoules (KJ) have averaged 7,421 KJ whereas in 2020 for the same period, I averaged 4,044 KJ per week, an 83% increase Year over Year. Similarly, I've averaged 627 Training Stress Score (TSS) and Intensity Factor (IF) of 0.77 per week for the past 180 days in 2021 compared to 570 TSS and the same 0.77 IF for the same period in 2020. So, when comparing TSS year over year, that's a 10% increase.

So, is all that increased work translating into me being a better cyclist? Again, it's hard to answer. If we look at my peak power output at various intervals, it's a mixed bag:

	Power Profile History (watts)
	2018	2019	2020	2021	YoY ('21 v '20)	YoY ('21 v '19)
15 sec	876	779	958	894	-6.7%	14.8%
30 sec	685	595	797	759	-4.8%	27.6%
45 sec	605	472	656	656	0.0%	39.0%
1 min	502	419	585	614	5.0%	46.5%
2 min	409	392	509	464	-8.8%	18.4%
5 min	332	347	422	420	-0.5%	21.0%
10 min	299	329	363	378	4.1%	14.9%
15 min	286	318	350	354	1.1%	11.3%
20 min	282	313	349	348	-0.3%	11.2%
30 min	277	301	344	332	-3.5%	10.3%
45 min	267	287	302	332	9.9%	15.7%
60 min	239	272	297	329	10.8%	21.0%
90 min	219	234	258	267	3.5%	14.1%
2 hrs		217	224	247	10.3%	13.8%
3 hrs			214	234	9.3%
4 hrs			189	225	19.0%
5 hrs			180	207	15.0%

	Power Profile History (w/kg)
	2018	2019	2020	2021
15 sec	12.7	11.3	13.9	13.0
30 sec	9.9	8.6	11.6	11.0
45 sec	8.8	6.8	9.5	9.5
1 min	7.3	6.1	8.5	8.9
2 min	5.9	5.7	7.4	6.7
5 min	4.8	5.0	6.1	6.1
10 min	4.3	4.8	5.3	5.5
15 min	4.1	4.6	5.1	5.1
20 min	4.1	4.5	5.1	5.0
30 min	4.0	4.4	5.0	4.8
45 min	3.9	4.2	4.4	4.8
60 min	3.5	3.9	4.3	4.8
90 min	3.2	3.4	3.7	3.9
2 hrs	0.0	3.1	3.2	3.6
3 hrs	0.0	0.0	3.1	3.4
4 hrs	0.0	0.0	2.7	3.3
5 hrs	0.0	0.0	2.6	3.0

What we can see is an obvious improvement from 2019 to both 2020 and 2021 at all intervals, but when zooming into 2020 versus 2021, we see much smaller improvements or none at all. That got me wondering about trying to control for my single best days. Am I able to hit the high notes more frequently? To answer that question, I thought about the sum of my 5 best efforts at a given interval, for example, 1 minute (table below), in 2021 versus 2021?When we look at the cumulative 1 minute peak power values of 2021 versus 2020, what we can see is about a 2.6% cumulative improvement. 

1 minute Power Peaks (watts)
2019	2020	2021
410	585	613
396	564	576
	560	574
	556	572
	555	559
	2820	2894
		2.62%

Similarly, if we look at the 10 minute peaks (table below) we see a cumulative 3.4% improvement.

10 minute Power Peaks (watts)
2019	2020	2021
329	363	378
270	362	367
	350	362
	343	358
	343	356
	1761	1821
		3.41%

When I looked at the data this way across a range of peaks, the improvement is in the 3% - 5% range, with the biggest improvement at 60 minutes, which makes sense owing to my much improved endurance.

So, I'm training more, I seem to be able to hit my peaks more often, and my fitness is higher than its ever been. I think there's also an aspect to these numbers around when they occur. Am I able to output these peaks at key moments in races or towards the end of hard efforts, or can I repeat them in a given session or race? For example, I set a new 1 minute power peak yesterday of 613w. That came towards the end of a 2 hour ride that ended up being 283w normalized power.

 Ultimately, these numbers are a fun diversion but they still don't answer the question of whether I'm a better cyclist. I'd say that I'm better prepared than ever to be a better cyclist, but the proof is in the pudding. I need to put the results together to match the effort and that, combined with simply having fun with the whole process of working at the craft day in day out should lead to an unambiguous answer towards the affirmative.