It's killing me but..........

Was reading through the posts and gudu just wanted to give you props for cycling in that kind of weather. That is not easy stuff at all. That takes an extra amount of dedication.

 

Dave, no I typically don't. But I have done more than 5 quality 5x5s in one lump and have done 20 1x5s in a session. So my thought was doing less of each and combining them would not be much different. I actually feel like having suffered for 5 minutes makes gut checking 1 minute seem easy, which it was my legs just didn't have it. I am convinced all of this SST on the trainer has just made me "stale". I did some sprints today towards the end of my ride and I just am not producing power over 500 watts (general observation, my sprints were over 500 watts, lol). I am sure the more I get out, it will come back.

 

Thanks, but I actually think it takes more dedication to ride inside. It's much more entertaining outside particularly on ice and snow covered singletrack.

 

Not sure how well I managed training this weekend?

After Fridays 2x20 incl the max effort test, I went on the Saturday club ride - 12 of us, 3.5hrs, 55miles, 175TSS and the typical bursty/fiesty session with 2 mechanical stops and 50% in L1 and short periods of L3/4/5/6 from some through-and-off and a few hills. I suspect this as close to 'junk miles' as I'll get really, although with a CTL of 63 I'll take the TSS from a slightly longer ride. Sunday and I was feeling the legs, so decided a 90 min steady L2 ride would allow me to get some quality work done while the resulting 65TSS should allow me to recover nicely from the last few days and be ready for 1 more session on Monday. I hope this is an intelligent compromise as I didnt think I was up for a harder session today and I wanted to avoid a rest day as I'll be forced to take one on Tuesday due to work. I'm hopeful I'll have enough in the tank tomorrow for a solid 2 hour tempo ride before a full rest day Tuesday and then 3 more good days work. Next weekend I have a 70 mile early season event on Sunday, so want to take Saturday off so I be a little fresher for a good ride. I just never know whether only 90 mins of well paced L2 work with an IF of 0.66 is actually going to do much for me?

I was looking back at the PMC for the last couple of years and thinking about CTL. In 2011 I had a noticeably higher CTL all year, and 3 times hit a CTL >100. I felt I made much better gains than last year when my CTL was a little more constant but was lower with fairly little time >70. Last year I was coached and followed my plan closely and sometimes felt the workload wasnt as high as I could comfortably cope with, although I still made reasonable gains in FTP over the year. I'm aware as years go by that gains become harder to achieve obviously, but I still dont think my endurance and performance in general developed as far as it might have done. This year I plan to add volume as we leave winter and see what happens when I get my CTL >80 and keep it there as much as possible into summer. I dont want to loose any quality though, so will be using lots of L3 and L4 work to build 60/120/240 min power levels as much as possible.

Any feedback appreciated...thanks

 

I agree with this strategy at this time of year and with your specific event objectives. Plenty of time to shorten durations and add L5-L7 work. What you're doing now will pay dividends on your long ride.

 

First up, have you actually checked that a day off is your best approach to being ready for that sunday event, and are you sure it's worth a 0 day? For me - to do 20-60minute effort, the day before a ~80 TSS including MAX effort 5 minute is helpful. (with a 100-120 CTL) and for a longer ride then an 60 minutes at 0.85-0.9 is helpful, days off actually mean I'm more likely to perform badly in the event, and the rest also costs be later fitness. Have you actually validated that the day off is the right strategy for you?

Can you find a faster group? 50% in L1 is a bit frustrating? I don't think you have much chance to find a hillier route to get more sustained L5/L4 out of climbing where you live? Riding for 90 minutes in todays weather strikes me as managing anything pretty well to do that, but yes if you really didn't think you could handle more - then it was a sensible approach I think, 0.66 perhaps a little low, but the steadiness may offset that quite a bit.

 

+1 on an openers ride the day before a harder event. I'll rest two or sometimes three days before a race or big ride but try hard not to rest the day before, I definitely do better coming off an openers ride than a total rest day.

YMMV,
-Dave

 

In general I think your approach of working on the longer interval power is good. If your goals support those kinds of intervals then you can focus on those primarily (vs something like crits that would require some L5+ work on a regular basis).

I found that my CTL ramp was difficult to get going using this approach. Like most people, my weekends are the primary source of hours to build CTL. ~4-5 hours Saturday and ~3 hours Sunday. I planned routes very carefully on Saturday (I live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mtns with lots of climbing....but lots of descending) to minimize the spread of AP and NP. Sundays I tried to get in 2 hours of SST. It took a month of doing this to feel like my Tuesday workouts did not start in a hole. Once my body began to adapt to the stress of the weekend riding I found my FTP began to hit a new stride.

Try the longer consistent intervals, but I would recommend throwing in some higher intensity periods (e.g. hit some higher L4 on a few climbs) from time to time. I believe it can help you keep pushing up the FTP.

It sounds like your 20 minute power is quite good. You obviously understand the basic priniciples of training and have had good successes in driving up your FTP. Sometimes a good review of the past can really produce valuable information for the future. For whatever reason it is easy to bypass some of the workouts or principles we've used that have led to success. Were your best gains in FTP following a period of higher intensities in L4 (e.g. 2x20 at 98% FTP) or longer L4 (2x30 or 1x60 at 92%)? Did you incorporate an extra day into your week? Etc.... At the end of the day...don't be afraid to try some new things, but stick with the basics and build your aerobic engine.

+1 on Dave's +1. Openers on Saturday = good legs Sunday.

 

There are so many discussions and participants going on in this lively thread these days that I am not sure which one you are responding to, but what you posted is right where I have been since last year and I really like it. At the moment I am missing the 4 to 5 hour Saturday ride due to weather, but I am anticipating my favorite 80 to 100 mile route very soon.

I really like this training schedule and I am content to be on it year round. Noted that I am a recreational cyclist and feel like I am okay to leave out structured L5 to L7 type training. My entire focus is on the aerobic side for the most part. When I do attend those fiesty group rides on occasion where they are trying for KOM on every single roller or climb I am right there in the mix these days without the dedicated high intensity training. What I am finding is that raising my FTP ceiling that I am getting into that match book a whole lot less than in the past. When they surge I just hold on and I find my endurance is better than a lot of them on the other side of the surge.

My weekday training is indoors for mainly L4 and at least one of those days with shorter duration 20 minute efforts trying to hold 95% and then tack on some over and unders in a 10 minute segment at the end of the 2x20's. That has been helping my legs remain ready to respond to those surges, but aerobic training is still my number one focus. Since I am recreational I do not have a period to focus on structured high intensity L5+ type work.

 

2 good points.

Firstly, I'm not sure about proof for the rest day before or openers? I certainly seem to get good or perhaps better power numbers in intervals after a couple of days riding, although am not sure about going better for the full 4 hours or so this ride will be? I was conscious of being a little too fatigued from several longer sessions during the week. Its only a 'C' event so not very important, but one of the longest rides for a while so I always get a little nervous gong in. Weather might have more impact this week on which days I get out, and it might end up being a rollers session the day before instead?

Secondly, on the club rides. Saturday was the shorter ride, supposed to be about 50 miles plus a ride to the start. These are always a tough one to call as the pace is slightly dependant on who turns up, although its the faster group so doesnt usually change too much. We actually had more people than usual for this ride so turns on the front were fewer and after a couple of forced stops for mechanicals we ended up doing through and off for 10 miles until I split off for home. Having said that though the numbers are always 40-50% L1 for me on these rides and usually fairly a low % L2/3 and more L5/6 work due to working hard on the few hills we have around here. The Sunday rides are usually 75-90 miles though so give me more riding time even if the quality isnt really there. I dont do them very often to be fair as they also take most of the day by the time the cake eaters have had their long stop in the middle /img/vbsmilies/smilies/rolleyes.gif

I think my plan has to be to get regular 4 hour solo rides done to keep the quality high, along with the shorter L3/4 sessions. Group rides maybe for those weeks when I havent ridden as much during the week or want to do the social thing.

 

bp, this is what I am all about I either do short workouts like today of 90-120 minutes where I focus on SST/L4 or the > 2 hours where I focus on the AP of the ride. I found it to work well for me but I am not racing or I would follow more of what you, bg and tb are doing. I only do the CP circuit and even now that will kind of be out of the question with me working in Belleville. That is why I want to make the commute my focus. Besides saving like 300 a month in just tolls and gas I can get some really good miles in.

As for your other comment about rest day before events, when I was doing crits I would take off Thursday and do a 1 x 20 all out Friday, before the Saturday morning crit. Also a big difference maker for me was to get and ride the course like 30 minutes before the start to open up the legs. Your event though is so different than a crit that I can not comment and would def defualt to Dave or TB on taking off a couple days before the event and than a short hard ride the day before.

Another strange thing was if I hit a new high on the FTP, instead of taking off the next day I would do one of the all out 20 minutes and found sometimes some really high surprising number. Never understood why though?

Felt, sounds like you are dong well with the shorten training and the weekend hammer fests. Same group and are you still coordinating?

-js

 

'Proof' may be hard to come by, but it is a widely accepted practice and there is a lot of experience to support it. The key, especially for a longer event is not to burn too much glycogen or to do a workout that's likely to create too much residual muscle soreness. So not a huge long nor a very hard ride the day before but I'd definitely ride. Typical openers rides are something like 45 minutes to an hour, mostly mellow riding rolling up into Tempo but then one to three shorter faster bits of a minute to a few minutes each. You generally want to touch on each of the systems you plan to use in your event but not in an exhausting way. So before a TT I might do three minutes at Threshold and a minute and a half into VO2 Max once or twice each and that's all for harder work the rest of the hour or so being pretty easy. For a crit or cross race there may be some L6/L7 as well.

I don't know of any rigorous science on the openers day concept, but this is where the science behind coaching meets the art and field experience of coaching. I have yet to work with anyone that actually performs better after a complete rest day so at the very least do an active recovery spin, again only 45 minutes to an hour or so, fuel up well afterwards and don't go crazy but I'd strongly suggest doing something before your bigger event. Personally I'd definitely spin it up a few times during that openers as well just don't bury yourself or do an actual interval routine.

Good luck,
-Dave

 

I believe I am doing well with the group because I avoided the group all of last year. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif

I've participated in a few group rides in January just because it fit well with my schedule and it gave me an opportunity to see if I did improve with the same group of cyclist. A look to see if they have improved and if I have improved.

I am very happy to see the result of training primarily solo last year. I do like my friendship with them and do not want to harm that aspect with any disrespect, but I am pretty sure based on what I have seen in some of those group rides that what I did solo turned out to be better than what I probably would have done with them.

Training solo last year (like teebone mentioned in his post) I picked a very flat out and back route that allows me to go beyond 100 miles low traffic and traffic stops far between. There is usually a headwind and I have to face it solo. No drafting. No long store stops (I don't do store stops - I stop for the occasional quick nature break). No multiple mechanical or tire flats that occur on big group rides. No paceline. No extended descending. Very minimal coasting. So on my 80+ mile flat route I get in a good amount of steady effort.

Riding in their group on their 80 mile route it has a really good 10 mile climb and some very sharp rollers, but here is what happens. There are a whole lot of big descents that most can only coast. When there are flatter sections they paceline and if the group is big you may not even get a turn on the front. In the paceline it can get up toward 30 mph, but I have been in those at that speed and feathering my brakes in the draft and then maybe get to about 100 watts. There are those that want to stop at every store they pass and it can be up to 10 minutes or more to get everyone back out on the road. There are flats or mechanical issues and out of respect we typically stop until it is repaired. With all that going on I still have ended up with a 300 TSS because they hammer every roller so if there is exertion it is from the matchbook and then it is right back to coasting. At the end there are no sustained periods of effort and legs that are so demolished that training the next day two is near impossible.

So while it is nice to join in once in a while just to see if my legs can cope the antics of group rides, 2013 is going to be another year of training primarily solo on my same ole flat out and back route. I will probably do a few more ride with them (because they are in "winter pace") and then get back to solo efforts. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif

I got my TT bike setup to do a self sustained 100 mile route with no store stops needed. I can sit aero for just about 90% and just spin with the legs for those long sustained blocks of time.

 

Is it possible that in some situations, CTL is not a true representation of actual fitness? I ask because I am in a an interesting situation:

Last season, I broke my ankle in the second race of the early season (April). I spent the next 4 months off the bike. Recovered through rehab and exercise, then finally got back on the bike seriously December, after sporadic riding from October-November. With the season over, I started back training for this year. All I have done from Jan until now, are SST/L4 intervals indoors. My FTP has really gone up to where it was at this time before my crash last year. The volume of these intervals has not been that high, but I do them often. Like 2 x 20 @90-95% about 4-5 days per week.

But my CTL had gone to zero and is only in the high 20's, but I feel fitter and my FTP is rising. Granted, all of my SST/L4 work has been on the indoor trainer and I have not gone on the 3+ hour team rides yet over the weekend. Will be doing those soon. I feel that those were the CTL building days, I guess. Could this be a situation where CTL is not a true correlation because of the injury and months off the bike?

 

I'd say in general CTL is not a literal and true representation of fitness. It is a very good representation of long term average training workload and depending on the make up of your training that may indicate fitness but it's an overall workload metric and doesn't tell you anything about the makeup of the individual workouts all by itself.

In terms of your time off due to injury and rehab, a couple of thoughts:

- Even though the CTL model will drop to zero or start at zero I seriously doubt actual base fitness ever drops that low with possible exception of extended bed rest accompanied by substantial muscle atrophy or very serious illness that saps all residual fitness. IOW, one way to look at CTL is the average daily workload you could comfortably tolerate without becoming excessively fatigued. If you could jump up off the couch and ride say a 40 TSS ride on a given day even from an untrained state then does your CTL ever really get below that point? Yeah the model says it does but realistically most of us maintain some background fitness level and could get out and ride some sort of ride even after months off the bike without digging a big training and recovery hole. Sure Alex with his bad accident a few years ago and others might be more accurately represented with the CTL model that decays to zero but I'd suggest those are extreme situations. I know when I've broken bones in racing and had to take months off the bike I came back to fitness much faster than I'd originally gained it. So one part of the answer might be that the model predicts a much lower starting point for CTL than what you're actually capable of and some CTL starting seeds might be a good idea.

- Your rising FTP is a clear sign of fitness increasing, hard to say about overall base and fatigue resistance for longer riding but the FTP alone is a very clear sign that your fitness has progressed. I'd say if you can bring your CTL up with the same basic mix of riding or at least in a way that doesn't sacrifice your hard earned FTP then you'll get the best of both worlds, increased sustainable power which is key and higher average daily workload that influences what sort of long or hard rides you find exhausting vs typical and how quickly you recover from longer or harder rides and races.

IOW, not all CTL are created equal, the model may have some issues at the low end in terms of not allowing for basic background fitness and in the end race fitness is a combo of sustainable power which may be the more important part and the endurance/fatigue resistance that can come from a higher CTL assuming that CTL is composed of the kind of workouts that target your specific needs.

Good Luck,
-Dave

 

Interesting info, I find that my IF factor greatly impacts my ability to generate tss and ctl.
I am doing 3 days of 2x20 at %91 to %95, this is out of 5 days. so over half my entire load for the most part is at or above and IF of .95

I could easily increase my tss by simply riding twice as long at a lower intensity factor, I guess the question is what would that do to my CTL

 

Thanks so much Dave.

 

Hmmm, I'd be suspicious that your FTP is set low if you're spending half of your weekly training time at 95% of FTP. Maybe that's not what you're saying but that would be unusual.

Remember that in the end TSS is an aggregate workload metric, it serves the same purpose of tracking overall miles or hours ridden or kj of work performed. But just like those other aggregate workload metrics it does not directly tell you how those miles or hours or kilojoules were ridden. So sure you could likely get outdoors and ride a ton of easy miles and accumulate more TSS and over time a higher CTL but that may not be your best approach to increasing fitness relative to your goals.

I'd also suggest this stuff shouldn't be viewed in black and white or all or nothing terms. IOW, most balanced programs have some more focused days that are typically shorter and some longer more moderate as well as some much longer easier days and even some short easy days for on the bike recovery. There are ways to increase weekly training workload and to extend some rides to work on extending saddle time and fatigue resistance but still include some days focused on Threshold or particular areas specific to the rider's needs. But in the end your daily or weekly TSS and your longer term CTL trends only reflect aggregate workload so do the right kind of work and then work on doing more of it but it's usually not a great idea to chase CTL without regard to the specific workouts that make up that CTL.

-Dave

 

That is interesting, I am currently doing 3 days of 2x20 out of 5 days. each ride is an hour so 5 hours per week and of that 5 hours, 2 of it is %91 to %95. I have yet to retest my ftp since doing so in OCT 2012. However my current sessions are still hard to complete and i've increased wattage from 135 to 180 over that period of time. 180w is still tough to finish.

I am not doing much in the way of lower intensity riding I have two days of L2 low end L3 but only an hour. I simply cant mentally take more than say 1 or 2 hours on the trainer.

Once the weather drys up around here I plan to increase volume significantly by commuting 32 miles a day, most of that time would be spent in L3, with some longer weekend rides in the L2-L7 range

 

It sounds like you've got good plans. And I agree trainer burnout is a real challenge for those stuck indoors all winter. I wouldn't generally advise extended L2 work on the trainer but you might stretch some of those L3 trainer days a bit, perhaps add an extra 15 to 20 minutes and maybe work up to a bit more on the moderate days before winter is over. That's a good way to prop up overall training load but still keeping it focused enough to work when riding indoors.

The commuting when things warm up can work nicely as well, just keep some of those L4 days in the schedule so you get a bit more workload but keep hitting the key systems as well.

-Dave