An Hour OF Power!

[postal_bag]

Nice way to visualize the ups and downs of riding with others and making it work out to a solid SST effort.

I use a similar method when training on gym ergs. They tend to have pretty big power jumps between their preset levels. The gym near work has ergs that jump from 240 watts to 290 watts between adjacent levels. So I'll do various mix and match workouts like you describe to get the average power where I want it and to break things up every minute or two. 1:4 ratios like you describe work great as do 2.5 minutes up, 2.5 minutes down and other variations on the theme.

I'd never thought about it like riding a 4 up TTT, but that's a cool visualization for those up down efforts.

-Dave

I've been doing one where I am in a two-man break with a weaker rider. I pull for 3 min @ 100-105% FTP, and he pulls for 2 min while I recover at 85-88% FTP, repeat for 30'. Actually, I usually take the last 5' @ 105% FTP because the other guy blows-up.

Another one I do is with a rider of equal strength: 1' @ 106-110% FTP, 1' @ 83-85% FTP, repeat for 30'.

I have been getting IF's of 0.96-0.99 for my 30' intervals.

 

[Animator]

Certainly there are many ways to help break up a steady-state effort. One that I use is to imagine I'm in a break with 4 other riders (or 3, whatever) with each rider doing one minute on the front of the paceline...

Thanks guys! Very, very helpful!

 

[jsirabella]

One thing which seems to hekp but does not much sense to me is switching gears while on the CT....on Saturday I was doing three 20 minute efforts, 220, 240 and than a 250...I was getting spent on that last 250 and was not going to be able to finish it...I could ot keep the 90 cadence in the 53X11, I switched down to 53X13 and it all came together...I do not know why but it worked...

-Js

Thanks guys! Very, very helpful!