- Morning, Trainiacs.
One of the new podcast sponsors that we've got, is Solestar
and these are the carbon-fiber insoles
that I've been talking about a little bit,
that even during my off-season,
I put in the highest five-second average power
that I have all of 2018.
So, what we're gonna do today,
is we are just gonna do a little bit of a bike test,
comparing the Solestar black carbon-fiber insoles,
which are super, super stiff,
ideally to transfer a lot of power into the pedals,
to some of the more high-end, like structured insoles
that you'd get a bike shop,
compared to the standard insoles, that would come in a shoe.
Let's do it.
(fast energetic music)
So, here's how we're going to do this test.
Now, full disclaimer,
I realize that this is totally unscientific,
but I think it might give you at least an idea
of how these things perform.
So, what I'm going to do here is
I'm going to start with a 30-minute warm-up.
And why 30 minutes?
It's because at around 30 minutes,
your heart starts going into cardiac drift,
that's where towards the end of a workout,
even at the same pace and effort,
your heart rate is higher,
just by the accumulated increases in your heart rate.
What I'm going to do, then, is at 30 minutes,
I'm going to switch into the standard road shoe,
very floppy insoles that come in every single road shoe.
I am going to do a one-minute max effort build,
where over the course of one minute,
I'm going to build up to a 10 second sprint,
to see the top end power with these insoles.
I'm then gonna do nine minutes, keeping my heart rate
at a steady, 115 beats a minute.
This is very, very recovery,
and we're gonna see what the average power is
over than nine minute period.
That's my zone two.
So, hopefully over the course of the workout,
I'm not gonna be really building any fatigue.
Then, at 40 minutes into the workout,
I'm going to switch to these more structured insoles
that you'll get after a bike fit,
that end up positioning your foot a little bit more stable
but still is fairly flexy.
I'm gonna repeat that same routine,
going one minute, building to a 10 second sprint,
and then nine minutes, but I'm going to knock the heart rate
down to around 113, to account for that cardiac drift.
Then, at 50 minutes into the workout,
I'm going to switch to the Solestar insoles,
which you can see are made of carbon fiber
on the bottom, completely stiff
and I found end up transferring more power into the pedals,
but I'm gonna do that same routine.
One minute, build to sprint for 10 seconds,
nine minutes at 111 to account for cardiac drift,
and theoretically because I'm doing this
at the end of the workout, and the heartrate is lower,
I should in, theory, actually be making it harder
on the SoleStar instole.
I'm also gonna do all of this,
with just nasal breathing.
So that, I'm not changing the amount of carbon dioxide
and oxygen uptake in my lungs,
over the course of the workout.
Thus, skewing what my heart rate number is going to be at.
So, we're gonna try to level out that heart rate,
as much as we can, slightly accounting for cardiac drift,
and then after we'll compare some of the rides
that I've actually done in the real world,
with these Solestar insoles over the last few months,
to the mid-range, slightly structured insoles
that I've used for the rest of the year.
Alright, let's go about this.
(energetic instrumental music)
Tremendously unscientific,
but we might be able to pull something out.
Yup, yup, yup trainacs, we got some good info to look at.
It worked.
So, I had to make just a couple of changes to that test,
because I wanted to give a more stable representation
of the power, so what I did was instead of nine minutes
at the low intensity,
I finished that high intensity,
gave myself two minutes
to bring my heart rate somewhat down,
and then did five minutes.
So, that then allowed me two minutes to do a U-turn,
so that I could come back on the same course,
level out the data.
Here it is. Here it is.
Pete, you're like a data scientist,
you're gonna know all about power profiles.
"I'm so excited to know about power profiles, dad".
So, this is the workout here,
and what I want to first look at is the peak power profile,
because that's less susceptible
to changes in heart rate and cadence.
So, we'll take a look at the first effort.
Zoom in here, over on the right.
We can see that the max power,
with the ... basic entry-level insoles is 788 watts.
Take note of that.
Then, we go onto the second test,
which was the forty, fifty dollar specialized insoles
that are meant to stabilize your foot a little bit more.
Zoom in there on the right.
And is actually 750 watts. Less.
My guess? I was starting to get a little bit tired,
which is normal of these peak efforts.
But let's see what happens with the third test,
with the Solestar insoles.
Zoom in there, on the right.
The peak power is 859 watts,
and that's what I've consistently found
time after time, with these.
That at the same effort,
I'm probably getting about 10% higher peak power,
which then translates down to better power
at lower intensities.
I'm gonna show you how the year of peak power
ended up going.
This here, is my max five-second average power
over the course of 2018.
And you can see that over the Winter,
in January, February, March,
I was doing some average power.
The second and third best average power was in February.
But at this time, I was starting
to build a lot of fitness.
I was actually doing really specific training
for peak power.
Then, all of a sudden, race season comes in,
and the peak power is a fair bit lower.
Even though, I was still, at this point, pretty fit,
and I was doing once-a-week, the group rides
that got crazy intense.
But, so, right here ends up putting us into September,
after Half Ironman Worlds, and I go into an off-season,
and at this point, I was not training specifically
for anything whatsoever.
Only thing I did was I changed over to these insoles.
I was actually on the road bike,
which I hadn't really been on much,
because I'd been doing so much time trial specific riding
for so long, that I was on a new position
with new insoles, and once I adapted to them,
you can see that the power profile increases,
and the peak five-second power that I put out,
over all of 2018 was in the dead of the off-season.
After Kona, when theoretically I'm not very fit,
with a back injury, if there is a time for me
to not be able to do peak power, this was it.
Managed to crank it out.
Combine that with the fact
that on the last theoretical tiredest peak power interval
that we just did, I put out--
Calculations, Canadian math.
9% more power than when I was purely fresh.
That shows something.
I want to show what happened with that steady effort.
So, this is what I think got a fair bit skewed,
and we're gonna have some trouble with.
Steady effort with the standard comes-with-the-shoe insole
at 117 beats per minute average,
I averaged 115 watts.
Then, I did the slightly supportive
40, 50 dollar stability insole,
and I averaged 114 beats a minute, just 97 watts.
I had a hard time bringing my heart rate down,
that makes sense.
So you'd then think that with the Solestar insole,
I would then have even less power,
because my heart rate has cardiac drifted up.
Go to that five-minute section,
and with average 114 beats a minute,
I was able to average 105 watts.
So, with the Solestar insoles, I was still able
to put out more watts than I did with this,
even though theoretically, I should have a harder time
keeping my heart rate lower, at the same watts.
Is this official that the Solestar insoles
are like guaranteed to increase your power?
No. Definitely not.
This is not a scientific study, whatsoever.
I just say that anecdotally.
I find that it is much easier to put out
those really high efforts.
In addition to that, I have put out the highest FTP
that I ever have.
In addition that, athletes like those on Team Sky,
which is notorious in the Road Cycling world,
for looking at incremental, tiny, average changes
that they can make, that might be a little better,
that is going to result in better performance,
they are sponsored by Solestar instoles.
If we talk about a helmet costing $300
to save a little bit of watts,
we talk about wheels costing three to four thousand dollars
to save a little bit of watts.
When we talk about this, costing just $100
to maybe add one, two percentage on your wattage
at the same effort.
That's a pretty good dollar per speed investment.
So, now, if you want to get yourself a pair of these
because they are a podcast sponsor,
they have set up a discount of 10%
that you can get by going to Solestar.de
and using the coupon code "Triathlon10".
I don't make any money off of you going there,
that's not an affiliate link or an affiliate code.
They sponsor the podcast, they send these out,
and everyone that I talk to is like,
"What is the best investment that I can make?"
Furnace, bad timing!
"What is the best investment I can make,
"that doesn't cost a lot?"
You can give these a try.
Triathlon10, at Solestar.de to get yourself 10% off,
and give them a shot.
Alright, later Trainiacs.