Are we there yet?

JS- Is that a Planet Terror poster ?

That's nice Dave. Good off-road simulation, and the tires on that bike are huge.

For me today was my usual 1x40 at mid/high L3, and 1x15 at what I think is my high L4/low L5 at this time, and 5 min cool down. I'm slowly but surely creeping up on my old power #'s, but still at least 10 watts off. The only 'new' thing I'm experiencing is that I am constantly averaging out 100+ rpm, even on the 40-min intervals. I know I gotta train some in lower rpms for more strength, but I think it's cool that I'm hitting higher cadence with such normality, surprisingly.

-Greg

gman->I got a whole bunch of posters in there but there are 2 PT posters I like in that room. The kind of movies I like to watch and produce. Sometimes I move the whole rig into another room as I have a viewing screen in my own office so I can watch some flicks and get in the miles. Today is PIRANHA...now that is a fun movie. Hooked on HD now so atleast my old TV in here can do 1080i.

dave->Just looking at that video makes my LB start to hurt. I bet that CX I did did not help that in the past...funny.

Almost forgot but I do not know about you guys but my tires are a mess. I had some really old hutchinson from years past where literally the glue came off of the bead than I buy brand new bontrager RZPlus which looked like they be perfect for the CT and they now have bumps and cracks from the heat generated. I have never had this luck before the CT is so smooth and easy on the tires I can not believe these tires are [censored] now. Got to get something better.

-js

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by tonyzackery [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Strictly mid to high L3 pour moi at this time of year with the odd group ride on Sunday mornings when weather permits. Strictly indoor training rides as it's been very wet up here in Pacific NW, and I don't do rainy rides anymore - yeah, wimpy describes it best. No interest in cleaning the bike for an hour afterwards...

Been fitting in the 5mi runs once or twice/week as of late. Getting some knee swelling due to some loose cartilage floating around in my right knee (old football injury) that's held me back from doing more running (a true blessing in disguise really because, knowing how I am, I'd probably hurt myself by doing too much running). Recently started the Saturday morning snowshoeing expeditions up on Seymour mountain this past weekend. Got some hardcore crampons and Asolo boots that will allow some serious ascents on the mountains around here - totally psyched to use them tomorrow morning!

These things look like they should be registered as a weapon. Nasty!!!!

I have spent quite a bit of time on the trainer and rollers this week. Today I did 1hr on the rollers, 1hr on the trainer, and then 30min back on the rollers, all at a steady pace/HR. I am coming off of LT intervals on Thursday and then VO2 max intervals Friday, so I wanted to take it a bit easy.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by davereo [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Quote: Originally Posted by tonyzackery [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Strictly mid to high L3 pour moi at this time of year with the odd group ride on Sunday mornings when weather permits. Strictly indoor training rides as it's been very wet up here in Pacific NW, and I don't do rainy rides anymore - yeah, wimpy describes it best. No interest in cleaning the bike for an hour afterwards...

Been fitting in the 5mi runs once or twice/week as of late. Getting some knee swelling due to some loose cartilage floating around in my right knee (old football injury) that's held me back from doing more running (a true blessing in disguise really because, knowing how I am, I'd probably hurt myself by doing too much running). Recently started the Saturday morning snowshoeing expeditions up on Seymour mountain this past weekend. Got some hardcore crampons and Asolo boots that will allow some serious ascents on the mountains around here - totally psyched to use them tomorrow morning!

These things look like they should be registered as a weapon. Nasty!!!!

Ya mon! They were great to use today! Just kick your toe in the snow/ice and your set. Don't imagine they'd be allowed in a carry-on bag by airport security. They'd definitely make for an awesome torture device for someone not in your best graces - for sure...

I trained on rollers today. A few rolling hills. [IMG]/img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]
Everyone was nervous that we would hit a patch of ice so we all kept a calmer pace and that was good for me since I was feeling tired today. I suppose the indoor training all week kind of left me more fatigued than I thought.

I am wearing the helmet cam

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Got a 2 hour ride in yesterday morning in the sub-30 degree area for temperature. Planning on a 2x20 at LT at some point today with a 3x12 tomorrow and two-a-day workouts starting on Wednesday. Theres just under 7 weeks until the first races of the season here so its crunch time.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by ToffoIsMe [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Got a 2 hour ride in yesterday morning in the sub-30 degree area for temperature. Planning on a 2x20 at LT at some point today with a 3x12 tomorrow and two-a-day workouts starting on Wednesday. Theres just under 7 weeks until the first races of the season here so its crunch time.

I'm feeling you on it's being crunch time. I have an important (to me) race in 10 weeks!

Sat = 1.5 hrs on the computrainer for 5min and 3min VO2 intervals.
Sun = 2 hrs trainer "ride" averaging 88% of my LT for the duration. I usually ride for at least three hours on sundays, but didn't have time today, so I increased the intensity a bit to make up for the lost hour.

Call me crazy, but I am kinda loving those long rides at just a little below threshold. Tiring for sure, and not something I'd want to do more than once a week, but so much less painful than 5min intervals at 110+% of threshold! Additionally, I feel like these longs rides are doing a lot to build my threshold, and they give me some confidence that I can sustain some fairly hard efforts, which is a confidence I hope to bring with me to some early season road races.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by Felt_Rider [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

I trained on rollers today. A few rolling hills. [IMG]/img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]
Everyone was nervous that we would hit a patch of ice...
[CENTER]
[/CENTER]

Southerners are always so deathly afraid of hidden ice patches (I know, I used to be one and was the same way). Your video has left me hankering for clear and dry roads again. It seems I remember a time when our roads looked like that. It was such a long time ago...

Well, back to the rollers for another round of 3x18s.

Do not know why sometimes but I sometimes feel more sluggish after a day off. I had a great weekend with good quality training in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Took off Monday as I wanted to get some rest time. Today hit the trainer and could only get in 40 minutes of SST/L4 time. I always get in an hour and has been a long time could not get in 60 minutes. Bit miffed but I will live. I decided to not finish the session and live to fight tomorrow instead of putting in another 30 minutes just to put it in.

A more techy question for all the WKO+ folks out there. How much TSS do you shoot for in a training session this time of the year? I always seem to be between the 125~150. I expect 100 is a good number cause if I understand it. Am I correct as is the range I hit upon earlier too much for training 5 days a week?

-js

js,
A lot of folks feel tired after a rest day, you're not alone there. My power is often better on my Wednesday rides after a good Tuesday session but it's not unusual for things to feel a bit harder after a complete rest day on Monday.

I typically get 90-130 TSS from a midweek indoor training ride, perhaps a bit more outdoors and up to 200 or more for longer outdoor rides on weekends this time of year. When I'm doing more midweek work outdoors come spring I might get up to 150 TSS per day midweek.

What sort of IF are you seeing for those indoor rides? Or asked another way, how much time are you putting in to see 125 to 150 TSS for trainer rides? From your description above of rides near an hour or so mostly at SST I'd be amazed if you're racking up 150 TSS. Are you putting in two plus hours per indoor ride?

FWIW, I'm averaging about 600 TSS per week this time of year and typically get a bit more come spring so I wouldn't say 125 per day for 5 training days is excessive but it all depends on how well you're recovering and how much time you have to train.

-Dave

dave -> Pulled up WKO+ and saw this

IF TSS

Friday .874 134
Sat .892 160
Sun .850 145
Tues .874 89

Everyone of these rides were of the variety of about 2 hours. A little more, a little where as today I stopped after 1h10m. I see that over the last 4 weeks.

Weekly TSS
Last week 656
week before 521
"" 735
"" 641

The weather here is terrible and it was a nice long weekend. Woke up a bit late but still thought would be a fine day as had yesterday off. The warm up was fine, the first 20@190 went fine and thought let me do the next at 10@220 and than go back down to 20@190 and finish with again 10@220. All with 5 minute breaks. That 10@220 hit me really hard. Started the next 20@190 and 10 minutes in, I could see I was going to loose this battle. I believe I may have a partial cold and it seemed the 10@220 really brought it out but I was tired even before the ride. Makes no sense.

Well tomorrow is another day and back to the fight.

-js

I had a good workout today where I focused on sprints and some high cadence work (definite weaknesses for me), but felt pretty darn good. Tomorrow is scheduled to be off the bike. However, and this goes to what js was talking about, I plan to do a threshold test on thursday and am starting to think that I should get some time on the bike tomorrow, to open the legs up before I test, kinda like I would do the day before a big race ... I don't test very often and take it seriously when I do . . . maybe 30-45min on the bike with a few efforts thrown in there tomorrow. We'll see.

Speaking of testing, I also need to do my FTP test sooner than later, as I don't have anything to base my levels on. I might have a rough ball park idea, but I haven't done an FT test, a real test since my last winter training, and to be honest, it scares me to find out, especially after that month break, so I keep delaying it, haha.

A question for all of you, (and I know everyone is different and this has been discussed). I'm currently trying to figure out what my weekly schedule should look like. For now I'm doing 2 days ON 1 day OFF, which is 5 days/week, with every 3rd week having 4 days. Are there any +'s or -'s to this schedule ? Is there a greater benefit of throwing in 3 back-to-back workout days in a row ?

Thanks,
-Greg

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by gman0482 [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Speaking of testing, I also need to do my FTP test sooner than later, as I don't have anything to base my levels on. I might have a rough ball park idea, but I haven't done an FT test, a real test since my last winter training, and to be honest, it scares me to find out, especially after that month break, so I keep delaying it, haha.

A question for all of you, (and I know everyone is different and this has been discussed). I'm currently trying to figure out what my weekly schedule should look like. For now I'm doing 2 days ON 1 day OFF, which is 5 days/week, with every 3rd week having 4 days. Are there any +'s or -'s to this schedule ? Is there a greater benefit of throwing in 3 back-to-back workout days in a row ?

Thanks,
-Greg

This time of year I don't do many back to back workout days. I train tues, thurs, sat, sun on the bike with Mon and wed reserved for strength training. This still results in a decent number of training hours. When the weather gets better and I am outside more, I'll ride more, but my hard training will stll be tues, thurs, sat sun.

gman->I am the opposite of CC in that I want to get 5 days of training in a week but I do no rides of more than 2 hours. My rides are between 90-120 minutes long. I do Tue,Wed,Thurs, Sat, Sun. Also after the ride I need to do about 30-60 minutes of core. LBP exercises. No choice on those.

On a side note today was a much better session. Completed the workout with a IF .88 and TSS 149. I see the difference for me seems to be the cadence which is affecting my LB issue. When I first started and went back on the bike I was usually in the 90 and below on the cadence. As time went on +95 felt so easy and natural but it seems to irritate me as I looked at the data and that was the only big difference from my day where I did up to 6 intervals of 10@220. Today I did the ride in a bigger gear at 90~95. It was actually hard to keep that pace as I had to keep reminding myself to slow down the cadence. I feel beat up but a good beatup today.

cc-I like your workout schedule I may steal it. Not sure yet as my CT slope I think will just flatten out too much unless I do more than 2 hours a ride. Good luck with the L4 session.

-js

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by jsirabella [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

Do not know why sometimes but I sometimes feel more sluggish after a day off. I had a great weekend with good quality training in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Took off Monday as I wanted to get some rest time. Today hit the trainer and could only get in 40 minutes of SST/L4 time. I always get in an hour and has been a long time could not get in 60 minutes. Bit miffed but I will live. I decided to not finish the session and live to fight tomorrow instead of putting in another 30 minutes just to put it in.

A more techy question for all the WKO+ folks out there. How much TSS do you shoot for in a training session this time of the year? I always seem to be between the 125~150. I expect 100 is a good number cause if I understand it. Am I correct as is the range I hit upon earlier too much for training 5 days a week?

-js

Js, Mine may be a different issue, but I too had a bad few days starting with last Saturday's group ride. I had several great days of training and then came apart at the seams for reasons unknown to me. I felt as if I was fully recovered before doing the 55 mile ride and the pace was very calm, but right out of the gate I had labored breathing and my legs were extremely tight (not sore or discomforted) and became worse each mile. I skipped my Sunday training thinking I may have been fatigued even though I felt very good. Monday I struggled with extremely tight legs. The sensation was like pushing against a 30 mph headwind for the 2 x 20 session on the trainer. I trained on the spin bike Wednesday with some standing / sitting type intervals for 40 minutes and again they felt tight. Thursday I was dreading my 2 x 20's because of this sensation, but in frustration I pushed through the extreme discomfort and as I went it seemed to break loose. At the end my legs started feeling normal again.

I am not sure why this happened. I know that I am fully recovered and in normal activity there is absolutely no muscular soreness. However, my flexibility is very low. I started being more intentional with stretching. I read one sports science paper that implied that this very contracted state can be beneficial to sports performance in some sports and for me it was beneficial when I competed in lifting, but having muscles this contracted in cycling seems to be a negative for me personally.

I just hope that tomorrow's ride will be okay. We may be doing an 80 mile route with climbing and that is going to be a crappy ride if these legs don't cooperate. I think I have punched through the barrier though. My legs feel good at the moment, but I guess I will know after about mile 10.

I hope you have broken through your barrier.

felt->I am sure your issues are temporary. I do not know your age but as we get older these things just start to happen. A ping here, pop there and they have no real rhyme or reason. You know your body really well and can work through it with some stretching and exercises. I believe that has really helped me deal with my issues right now. Also based upon your posts if I am reading it correctly you did more trainer workouts than usual before this issue started. That seems to be the only different data point in the equation.

Actually recently I did make a breakthrough. It happened yesterday as I have my bike fitting measurements pretty much memorized based upon my original fitting years ago. I decided to play with them about a couple weeks ago. In the beginning I believe I made the situation worse until yesterday. I pushed the seat post down about 2 inches, moved the handlebars up 1 inch and shifted the seat forward 1 1/2 inch. What this did was pretty much take most of my back side hanging off the seat and put the seat closer to my inner thighs. The raising handle bar allowed me to relax my shoulder blades more and keep my shoulders down. In essence this all had the affect of pretty much isolating everything under the shoulder blades to about the hips with no pressure on the LB and relaxed muscles. Granted that this has made me less aero but I can live with that.

I did my workout yesterday which is Thursday so one hour of power. I plugged in 190 and I kept my cadence at 90~95 even though my legs really wanted to plow through faster. In terms of comfort, best ride I had for a long time. In terms of numbers when I downloaded the data it said I did the hour at 208. My ftp I believe is 210 but I can see what was holding me at 210 was the discomfort from LB. I will try 220 soon enough with this same setup cause honestly I really was not fatigued at all after the 210. I believe I can move the seat back 1/2 inch. I also use a narrow seat which seems to help also.

-js

BTW, very nice build on the other thread! Wish I was handy like that.

Felt,
When my legs close up like that, the miracle elixer seems to be riding easy for about an hour and mixing in some high cadence work and accelerations. This serves to "open" the legs and get me ready for upcoming efforts. I don't think I would try a 2x20 session with dead legs, but I know that bull-headed feeling of wanting to work through a training session no matter what!

.....
So, I told you guys that I was testing this week. . . . good test for me! I tested my 5min power and put up 107% of my previous best! I also tested my 20min number on the same day to get an estimate of my FTP (no 1hr TT for me in January!!!), and I also recorded my best effort, putting up a 10W increase, or 105% of previous best!

Anyway, I thought I'd share because I am really proud of that. I am not really surprised because I have been feeling very good, but it is nice to have some raw numbers to back that up. It was also a nice feeling to dig really deep in a test and know that I had given my all (doable in a race, harder on a trainer!!). I don't think I had one more pedal stroke left in me after my 20min test, and the whole experience left me pretty shattered, but happy :-)

. . . but now my workouts have to get harder, so I may be regretting my testing effort pretty soon when I suffer to get through my 5min VO2 intervals!!!!

I can say now 100% for sure that it was all the stuff in my last post that was holding me back for some time. I believe now I finally got the fitting correct for my issues. Today got on the bike and put on Piranha again as just love the campy fun combined with Kelly Brook (WOW!!). Also had quite a bit of energy as the OL [censored] me offed a bit last night. I did move the seat out 1/2 inch before I started and did my usual warm up of 20 minutes and than added an extra 10 of mixed high and low cadence and went straight into the 200 set. It did irritate the LB for the first 20 minutes but than I found the sweet spot in my position and the last 40 minutes was nice!! I have now been going with my ~90 cadence but using the highest gear and once the legs are going and I am keeping a >90 the power numbers are reading about 230. As I noticed that after 10 minutes I put the CT at 230 and no difference in feel and number read out on the PM. When I got off the bike and looked at the data, HOLY COW, peak 60 minutes was a 232!!

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If the LB was [censored] the cool down would be where I really feel it. But nothing more or less than when I started!! My doc said to me that I really do not think John you lost much of your fitness many times. Your nerve is compressed to cause some pain on and off but not enough to loose any big amount of strength and if you stop your exercises than you will loose strength quickly. You must be diligent.

Now I do not know what to do, guess lets plug in 230 as new FTP and make 240 the new goal by sometime this year. If I can get to 260 eventually, my old ftp, I will be one happy camper.

Anyway I needed this to perk me up and thank you folks for just keep posting so I do not give up. Also special thanks go to the OL for getting the blood flowing and Kelly Brook for getting the blood flowing in a different way today.

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-js