Friday Night Wattbike League is back!

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , — Steve Marshall @ 5:25 pm

Friday Night Wattbike League

Race start for Lichfield

Friday 5th January saw the return of the Friday night Wattbike league at Friary Grange Leisure Centre. The Wattbike league is based on the type of racing commonly seen at indoor velodromes and provides 5 different events for each competitor to participate in. Riders are split into 3 groups of 10 riders.

The first race of the evening was the 500m time trial, Chris Stilgoe blasted to the fore with a 33.25 second ride ahead of Beth Clayton’s time of 34.39; David Beattie made his first appearance at a wattbike event and came third with a 34.85 ride.

In group 2 Neil McDonald’s time of 30.83 ensured him of the win ahead of Steve Clarke in 31.02. Tony Wrighton’s 31.32 earned him third place. With both groups having such close finishing times between the top 3 riders all eyes turned to Group 3 to provide similar racing. Clearly, Ian Beard had not read the script so far and powered away to win in 26.31 seconds. David Hirons 27.63 gained second place but was still 2 seconds clear of Steve Clayton who finished third in 29.95.

Race organisers in a cruel streak according to the riders then imposed the distance races as the next event. Normally left to the end of the evening, this promised to turn proceedings upside down. The sprinters could find themselves too fatigued to gain valuable league points, although the riders who preferred the longer distances could suffer even more in the later sprint based events.

Group 1 also had to contend with an extra kilometre, being made to ride 3 instead of the normal 2. Beth Clayton showed her form by winning in 4.20.62 with Chris Stilgoe second and Alison Holmes coming through to third. In group 2 meanwhile Rob Cox continued his good form in the distance races to secure first place in 4.08.86, Tim Challinor was second and chris parlour took third.

Group 3 race over the 4000m distance, Matt Gee’s ride of 4.56.86 secured him first place and a new event distance record. Steve Clayton finished in 5.06.17 with Graham Birch taking third.

A short respite in the evening’s races allowed riders time to recuperate whilst the teams were decided for the next event: The Team Sprint. Each rider completes in turn 250m their cumulative time deciding the placings. Organisers try to team riders together with the aim of creating an evenly matched race. Debbie Capewell and David Beattie took the honours in Group 1, giving Debbie her second team Sprint win in 2 weeks. In Group 2 Tony Wrighton and Pat Staite won whilst in Group 3 Ian Beard and Phil Kelly took the honours

The Devil race, with pre-determined distances used to eliminate the last rider to reach it, guarantees fast and furious racing in which tactics are all important. Alison Holmes did enough to ensure she wasn’t eliminated in any of the sprints and finished ahead of Beth Clayton in second and David Beattie in 3rd. Tim Challinor proved the stronger rider in Group 2 ahead of Chris parlour and Rob Cox. Matt Gee, Steve Clayton and Graham Birch finished in that order for Group 3.

The 500m Handicap event, the last of the evening, sees riders set of at intervals dependant on their times in the 500m time trial event. If the handicapping is done well it should see all riders crossing the line together. It does however rely on the riders not holding back in the first event, as if they would consider doing so!

Anne Robinson held on in Group 1 to win ahead of  Alison Holmes and Debbie Capewell. Pat Staite took the first place in Group 2 but was hotly pursued by Tim Challinor and Rob Cox. In Group 3 meanwhile Ian beard proved to be the 500m specialist taking the final event  despite being set off las with a 5 second deficit. Ian Simms took second and matt gee 3rd

By the end of the evening Alison Holmes and Beth Clayton tied for first place overall in Group 1, Chris parlour and Tim Challinor also tied for the top place in Group 2. Group 3 was more decisive as Ian beard took the overall ahead of Matt Gee and Steve Clayton.

If you would like to participate in this event which is open to anyone to do so please contact Nigel Capewell on 07768 560932 or Phil Kelly at the leisure centre on 01543 308842. Full results and details are available on www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/wattbikes

Cycle Show Time Trial Results

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — Steve Marshall @ 11:28 am

Cycle Show

Hello to everyone who raced on the Wattbikes at the cycle show. It has been an extremely busy few days since then however I am now back in the office and able to post the results of the Cycle Show. There were some exceedingly quick times and close races across all 4 days of the show. There will be full results posted on the site soon from our records, however take a peek at the final leader table below.

Everyone who entered goes into a prize draw to win a trip to Lanzarote with Sports Tour International. Keep an eye on your mailbox for details on this. The prize for winning you may ask??????? Glory…  just good old fashioned glory!

Male

Catergory Name Time
Over 60 Peter Williams 00:32.18
50 – 59 Michael Fier 00:28.55
40 – 49 David Andrews 00:27.70
30 – 39 Jason Prior 00:27.21
Open Phil Williams 00:27.56
Under 18 Joe Moore 00:30.12
Under 16 Adam Finch 00:31.00
Under 14 Noah Smith 00:32.50
Under 12 Tom Lye 00:34.41
Under 10 Tomas Barnett 00:45.6

Female

Catergory Name Time
Over 60 Zanna Heighton 00:45.94
40 – 49 Ruth Hamilton 00:37.68
30 – 39 Nicky Hjerpe 00:35.84
Open Tanya Gibbs 00:34.80
Under 14 Ella Dobson 00:42.72
Under 12 Mabel Dalrymple 00:46.22
Under 10 Michaela Lysakova-Ivanova 00:42.08

The Wish List

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — Chris Rowe @ 4:56 pm

Today we added three new ranking distances to the Ranking, after a request from TrackyTracky in the forum - we are yet to have anyone enter a time, but I am sure that will come! He has now come back and requested that it is possible to race over the internet, and as I said in the forum , it is on the list. With the new software update now released it means that we are ready to move on to other projects like the internet racing. We will keep you posted with the progress, but as we cannot think of everything please use the forum to provide us with your ideas so that we can keep the software moving in the right direction.

Tonight will see the third round of the Lichfield event and the first run with the new software and firmware for the performance computer – Eddie updated the software earlier today adn all the bikes are ready to roll. We will add a news report from the meet early next week.

New Wattbike Expert Software and Performance Computer Firmware

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , — Alex Skelton @ 4:47 pm

The major change to the Wattbike Software is the addition of the angle of peak force being displayed in the Polar Graph and the rotation shown on the software starting with the left leg at the top and going anti-clockwise. The new polar view looks like this in the software:

 

 

Changes to the Polar View

Changes to the Polar View

 Two new parameters have also been added to the software taking the grand total to 29, these are efficiency and average efficiency. The efficiency is based on the percentage of a perfect circle the powerplot is. The interesting thing about this is that we have started with a circle as being 100% efficient, but we know that is not the ultimate shape, but no one in cycling can tell us what the perfect power plot should look like. We are  hoping that a PhD student or other research organisation will be able to do a study into what the most efficient shape is and how it depends on body shape, and we will then implement that shape as the 100% marker.  The efficiency values can be displayed on the software as follows:

 

Efficiency and Average Efficiency

Efficiency and Average Efficiency

The Performance Computer firmware has seen some major changes; speed is now available to one decimal place, average heart rate is now displayed below the heart rate:

 

Average Heart Rate is displayed in the bottom right hand corner

Average Heart Rate is displayed in the bottom right hand corner

There is also a major change to the Polar View which now includes percentage left leg and right leg, as well as bringing the firmware and software together in displaying the left leg starting at the top of the pedal cycle and moving anti-clockwise. This display now looks like this:

 

New Polar View on the Performance Computer

New Polar View on the Performance Computer

In the custom workout and reride displays there is now a pace bike that shows your progress against a desired pace. The pace bike is displayed on the bottom with a P denoting which the pace bike is and it also displays how far both you and the pace bike have travelled and how far ahead or behind the page bike you are.

 

Performance Computer showing the new pace bike

Performance Computer showing the new pace bike

The custom workout screen has a new view that allows you to view your pace, and when setting a custom workout it is now possible to select a pace for the pace bike for both timed sessions and distance sessions.

 

Setting Pace in a timed session

Setting Pace in a timed session

 

 

Setting Pace in a Distance Session

Setting Pace in a Distance Session

 One change that I have been pushing for is the display of the recall of data immediately after the end of a session, so when you are in Just ride, Standard, ReRide or Custom workout the Recall of the workout is displayed automatically and three new lines have been added, Peak Power for the session, Peak cadence for the session and percentage power from left and right leg. If the session is one interval within an interval set then the time remaining in the rest is displayed in the top left of the monitor screen. 

 

The New Recall view, displayed automatically at the end of each workout

The New Recall view, displayed automatically at the end of each workout

 

 

 

The new Recall view as displayed in an interval with the time left in the rest period counting down in the top left corner

The new Recall view as displayed in an interval with the time left in the rest period counting down in the top left corner

The new software is now available on the Wattbike.com downloads page and the performance computer firmware update will be available there soon (with instructions about how to install). Happy Wattbiking!

Cycling Efficiency coming soon

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — Alex Skelton @ 2:33 pm

After a year of using the Wattbike monitor and software we had, by the end of November, come up with a short wishlist of changes for the monitor and software. The most exciting of these is the development of the polar view. Previously it had been a very simple radial force plot showing the force that you applied throughout the pedal cycle – this is what it used to look like:

Old version of the expert software - polar view

Old version of the expert software - polar view

What has been added is a measure of efficiency – given as a percent, and the addition of the angle of attack for both legs. We have also added some more arrows to better explain how the polar graph correlates to the pedaling on the bike (left foot starts at the top, right at the bottom and the as you push down the the left foot the graph starts going anti-clockwise from the top).

New Polar View

New Polar View

The graphical representation is better and more helpful and the efficiency percentage should also allow users to become familiar with the benefits of cycling efficiently and not simply standing on the pedals. When we have run taster sessions on the Wattbike at the World Championships and World Cup we have been surprised by how even reasonably good club cyclists have been very inefficient! It was also always possible to assess how good someon was, i.e.  when any of the top track cyclists have had a go they have – even using toe-clips produced a very efficient power plot, and even though at the time we did not recognise him when Jan Bos (Theo’s brother and former member of the Dutch Olympic Cycling team) came to have a go his power plot immediately gave away the calibre of cyclist he had been.