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