Base training - Sweet Spot Intervals



Originally Posted by ambal

That is one cool name
Not if you've got dyslexia.

evil.png
 
Originally Posted by 531Aussie
Studies like you quote are often misleadsing.

The improvement in VO2max is most likely to the doubling of time in Z3 and regardless of the time in Z2 and below. Perhaps equally important was the fact that the length of his interval session increased. The power increase is most likely do to the improvement in VO2max.

There is little reason to believe that 15 hours of Z1 is any better than the minimum that is needed to allow for the 105 miuntes of Z3 and above.

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In science one comes up with a theory, makes predictions based on the theory, and then tests the theory. It is not clear what the theory is. It is not clear that the tests were related to the theory.

But if the claim is that 105 minutes of work a week will increase FTP by 15%, sign me up for several years.
 
Lon Halderman once commented "For many years, I rode all winter for 3-4 hours per day and my heart rate probably never got over 160. I wasted a lot of training time, but I learned how to stay on the bike".

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From the vid: "You could probably do that (riding above 90%maxHR, not 90%FTP, the latter former being akin to a VO2 effort) and cut your other training time in half and be in better shape when all is said and done". In another article he adds the disclaimer: "there is no scientific basis for this, but it seems to work for me". Another anecdote but there you have it.

These days we have a deeper scientific understanding of zones and related energy pathways, definitions of these zones within 2-3watts of accuracy, blood chemistry testing, dozens of new training approaches, but aerodynamics aside we seem only marginally faster at the elite level than guys like Eddy Merckx (using Boardman's 2000 Hour attempt to compare against Merckx's hour and even earlier attempts from the late 50's).

Smaryka,
I can attest to your comment: build the "fast" first, then the "far" (i.e. reverse periodization, albeit opposite to the typical road race training convention), being an effective strategy for me one season after having developed some speed with Carmichael's time crunch interval based plan, but getting much stronger overall with better results for the seasons tail end simply by adding some 3+ hour rides on the weekends as the warmer weather arrived, while using racing to maintain speed.

YMMV.
 
Didn't watch the video, but how is riding at 90% FTP akin to being a Vo2 effort?

90% of my max HR puts me firmly in mid-FTP zone which is actually probably a harder effort than 90% FTP so I'm not sure I understand what he means there.
 
Originally Posted by smaryka
Didn't watch the video, but how is riding at 90% FTP akin to being a Vo2 effort?

90% of my max HR puts me firmly in mid-FTP zone which is actually probably a harder effort than 90% FTP so I'm not sure I understand what he means there.
My bad, thanks for pointing out. I meant the former... not 90%FTP... as in above 90% of ones maxHR, what Lon's talking about. 90% of MaxHR should be quite a bit harder than 90% of FTP, unless one's FTP has been seriously miscalculated.

Edit: As Lon indicates "at 90+% you are not able to talk", which is true for me at about 2 mins into my VO2 max interval (once my HR has started to catch up to my effort). Looking at one of my Garmin Training Center files, I see my HR climb from about 85%maxHR to 95%maxHR over the 5 minutes (my typical VO2 effort), whereas during a 20 minute FTP 'sweet spot' interval my HR climbs steadily from about 75%maxHR to about 85%. I could chat about the weather in fully formed sentences during my 2x20's, maybe not perfectly articulated, but I could do it.
 
Originally Posted by smaryka
Didn't watch the video, but how is riding at 90% FTP akin to being a Vo2 effort?

90% of my max HR puts me firmly in mid-FTP zone which is actually probably a harder effort than 90% FTP so I'm not sure I understand what he means there.
Depending on how one defines 90% you get very different absolute numbers and and different efforts.

90% (max)
90% (max-resting) + resting

90% (LT)
90% (LT-resting) + resting

For me those 4 formula give targets from 155 to 171. 164 is typical for 100% FTP for 30 minutes - so a 95% effort by power. 171 is typical toward the end of 100% FTP for 50 minutes. I suspect that the video is reasonable in its claim.

I usually look at my ride data after the fact and check ot see home much time I have spent at 150-160bpm and 160-170bpm. Lots of time indicates I was not out wasting my time.

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Measuring effort by the ability to talk is seldom worthwhile. I can talk rationally at 170bpm - 90% of max, or for the first 55 minutes of a FTP test.
 
Originally Posted by danfoz
Lon Halderman once commented "For many years, I rode all winter for 3-4 hours per day and my heart rate probably never got over 160. I wasted a lot of training time, but I learned how to stay on the bike".

0.jpg


From the vid: "You could probably do that (riding above 90%maxHR, not 90%FTP, the latter former being akin to a VO2 effort) and cut your other training time in half and be in better shape when all is said and done". In another article he adds the disclaimer: "there is no scientific basis for this, but it seems to work for me". Another anecdote but there you have it.

These days we have a deeper scientific understanding of zones and related energy pathways, definitions of these zones within 2-3watts of accuracy, blood chemistry testing, dozens of new training approaches, but aerodynamics aside we seem only marginally faster at the elite level than guys like Eddy Merckx (using Boardman's 2000 Hour attempt to compare against Merckx's hour and even earlier attempts from the late 50's).

Smaryka,
I can attest to your comment: build the "fast" first, then the "far" (i.e. reverse periodization, albeit opposite to the typical road race training convention), being an effective strategy for me one season after having developed some speed with Carmichael's time crunch interval based plan, but getting much stronger overall with better results for the seasons tail end simply by adding some 3+ hour rides on the weekends as the warmer weather arrived, while using racing to maintain speed.

YMMV.
At some point, if you want to go fast, you need to ride fast. For most folk, if they never rode above 90%FTP they'd rarely see 25mph on flattish roads. Try limiting yourself to that, even in a Cat4 race and see if there's anyone still left at the finish when you get there. If you have a nice bank of L2 and L3 training done, you'll have a nice building block to attain some nice long lasting gains. I always found that without the high quality base training you'd still see good gains from short intervals but the gains would almost disappear as fast as they came.

Boardman's hour record was a bit of a mystery. He was suffering due to a medical condition for about the last year of his Pro career, one that forced him to retire. He went into the record attempt with the understanding that it was a new category and he didn't have to beat the Merckx distance. In the final few hours before the record attempt the UCI told him that all bets were off and Eddy's numbers were the ones to beat. I think he got it by some really slim margin like 10 meters. However, Eddy did his at 7,500ft altitude where as Boardman's record was done almost at sea level.
 
Originally Posted by swampy1970

At some point, if you want to go fast, you need to ride fast. For most folk, if they never rode above 90%FTP they'd rarely see 25mph on flattish roads. Try limiting yourself to that, even in a Cat4 race and see if there's anyone still left at the finish when you get there. If you have a nice bank of L2 and L3 training done, you'll have a nice building block to attain some nice long lasting gains. I always found that without the high quality base training you'd still see good gains from short intervals but the gains would almost disappear as fast as they came.
That's been my experience as well. Quickly earned gains, lost almost as quickly. And if one gets sick on a plan with a traditional base and build, one week off getting sick or something doesn't seem to do as much damage to fitness as it would on an high intensity plan. These plans seem like a good way to maximize fitness if running on limited time, but I'm hearing more and more coaches advocating them as replacements for more time on the bike. Last fall I told one of these coach guys I was going to do Battenkill and take it somewhat seriously and would probably end up doing at least 10-12 hours a week (I'm only a lowly Cat4) and he replied his plan would get me the same results on 7 or 8. The sad part is he wasn't selling snake oil and I think he really believed it. At least Carmichael is somewhat honest in saying you get one really good match to burn, ok on a shorter distance flat course where the option of wheel sucking is available, but not great on a longer course with lots of little climbs or a few really long ones.

When I was a junior the prevailing wisdom (at least for poor amateur racers like myself without actual coaching available to them) was once a base of a thousand endurance miles or so had been logged, what followed was a race and a long ride (at least 1.5x the distance one raced) on the weekend (with the early races essentially "racing one into shape"), Monday's off, sprints on Tues, VO2 on Wed, and threshold 20 minute type stuff on Thurs, Fri rest, rinse and repeat. One was essentially working every energy system, every week, all season long. No power-meters, no HR monitors, all RPE... all done "the old fashioned way" <said in a John Houseman voice from The Paper Chase>.

Then the grand tour specialists showed up (aka Indurain), pro's who would focus on the one major tour and maybe a couple other races like the Worlds or wotnot, not like in the 70's and early 80's where you raced most every race to win. The classics guys kept doing what they did and didn't seem too concerned with the tours, not to win anyway.

And then came the model that allowed the weekend warrior joe's and the 9-5ers to become somewhat competitive on limited time, at least in the lower categories - the time crunch plans. I think this really cemented the notion of "peaking too soon" (of course one could do that on a traditional plan as well) because with the typical interval plan running 12 weeks or so it was a real possibility to burn out, and the kind of fitness earned from high intensity is not easy to hold onto. It's essentially an ON/OFF switch. Typically 6 weeks for some power to arrive, 3 more weeks to ramp it up, and then another 3 weeks to hold it before it was too hard to maintain the same level of intensity. The danger on the older style plans was physically over training, the danger on the new plans is mentally over training imo. There is an ad (completely unrelated to cycling) in the NYC subways right now - What is sustainable happiness? I can tell you from personal experience, time crunch is not it.

I was reading some forum material on Weight Weenies by some guy from Australia saying that because of the weather, and when the racing season is longer, for many riders there no wrong time of year to be doing speed work, which in some ways harkens back to the days when I started racing, we did speed work all season long, just not in the manner of loading it's done today. It's kinda like what Lon is saying in the video above, and it's no secret Greg Lemond did VO2 work all through the winter, Kinda flies in the face of modern convention.

I'm currently doing one of Hunter Allen's 4month plans specific to Battenkill, and he does make a point to discuss introducing VO2 work as early as he does and that it flies somewhat against the modern current, but the more I get into it, the more it sounds like what I did as a kid, and what the fella from Australia was talking about. Of course there is a fine tuning and tweaking of workouts as the target event approaches but it is not like a typical Friel plan where we are warned about "peaking to soon", in fact Allen even says, and I quote, "don't worry about peaking to soon". It doesn't involve the kind of intensity Lon talks about in the video - an hour a week over 90+%maxHR is a lot,.. that's essentially 12 five min intervals at over 110-115% of FTP, that's quite a bit of intensity, especially if sprinkled on top of sweet spot work and shorter anaerobic/NM intervals. (To clarify, and for anyone interested in the HA plan, the first 5 weeks or so don't involve anything above Z3.5).

I'm not advocating any particular approach but one thing I can say for sure is that there seems to be many ways to peel the same onion, and some folks find better results doing different things.

One concept I do try to focus applying to any plan I work is from a quote I believe made by Cyrille Guimard... "most people train too hard on easy days, and too easy on hard days.", though bona fide modern plans using field tests and PM's seem to mitigate this somewhat.
 
Swampy1970 : as a matter of fact the training protocol to reach maximum fitness in cycling is not really much of a secret, really heavy volume year (30,000+ km a year) round for multiple consecutive years with most of it around 65-75% max HR or corresponding power output, and reduced load in the winter. Swimming is good for a change because it gives the feet and legs a rest (at a relaxed pace) and deloads the whole skeletal structure.

Pick up a book on cycling from like the '60's or '70's and that's exactly what it says there.
 
There are so many different types of training that are involved in cycling that getting through all of them really is a task. But eventually I want to make sure that I participate in every single type of training there is. This will give me the endurance that I've been looking for.
 
One thing I can suggest that you do is to create a to-do list. I keep mine on my phone, and everytime I wake up in the morning, I open up the list and plan my day from there.
I have an obsession to always add stuff and finish things listed in my to-do list.I really enjoy getting things done and I always want to do more, so a to-do list works well for me. Of course, you need to make sure the things you do are beneficial to you and to the people around you. A well done list of things you want to achieve every day will make you a better cyclist in days.