L2 vs. L3/4 workouts



For me the longer intervals harden me mentally. I think the ability to suffer through 20 minutes of hell, while staring at a wall makes it easier to dig deep when I need to. How is that for science, lol
 
Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .

By definition, No of course not but the better question might be: do folks ride well above their FTP when they shorten their intervals to the bare minimum of 10 minutes and are they stressing the desired systems or are they hitting relatively high power numbers for shorter durations by relying on AWC contributions.

Once again you fail to pick up on the subtlety of:


This is not a literal description of physiological processes and as I clearly stated there is no real science to back this up. You really seem to have a reading comprehension problem and view things unbelievably literally even when they are clearly not offered as literal scientific descriptions.

-Dave
Thanks for the kind words. You can be very encouraging and helpful at times and very critical and abusive at other times. In the end, I still appreciate your depth of experience and knowledge of the subject matter and thank you for taking the patience to explain things to us newbies.

But anyway, I think I answered my own question during my ride home. There might be a transient state and a steady state of the system. I think I read somewhere that VO2max is not reached immediately, but slowly ramps up. This leads me to believe that during the first 8 or so minutes during a SST interval, the ratio of energy from the aerobic system to the energy from the anaerobic slowly increases until it reaches a steady state. In other words, it takes some time for the aerobic system to come fully online. Then from that point on, forays above threshold decrease the ratio and forays below increase the ratio. At threshold AWC remains constant, but forays above it cause it to decrease and forays below cause it to increase.
 
Originally Posted by gudujarlson .


At threshold AWC remains constant, but forays above it cause it to decrease and forays below cause it to increase.
Actually, AWC can be thought of as a battery. At the beginning of a ride, it has a maximum capacity which can be thought of as one's maximum duration at a power target above one's sustainable aerobic power. I use my 120%FTP duration as the measure of my AWC. During the ride, each time you go above your aerobic capacity (e.g., FTP), you use (deplete) your AWC. If you continue to ride above your aerobic capacity, you will exhaust your AWC (drain the battery). When you drop back to your aerobic capacity or below, you will restore part of your AWC at the rate of a 30sec half-life. Part of your AWC recovers at the rate of a much longer half-life (e.g., several hours) such that you can largely write it off until the next day. This cycle of depletion-recovery-depletion-recovery is essentially what you are doing when you ride rollers and go hard on the upgrades and ease off on the downgrades. Or what pursuit team riders are doing when they are pulling above their sustainable power on front and recovering in the draft on back.
 
Originally Posted by RapDaddyo .

Actually, AWC can be thought of as a battery. At the beginning of a ride, it has a maximum capacity which can be thought of as one's maximum duration at a power target above one's sustainable aerobic power. I use my 120%FTP duration as the measure of my AWC. During the ride, each time you go above your aerobic capacity (e.g., FTP), you use (deplete) your AWC. If you continue to ride above your aerobic capacity, you will exhaust your AWC (drain the battery). When you drop back to your aerobic capacity or below, you will restore part of your AWC at the rate of a 30sec half-life. Part of your AWC recovers at the rate of a much longer half-life (e.g., several hours) such that you can largely write it off until the next day. This cycle of depletion-recovery-depletion-recovery is essentially what you are doing when you ride rollers and go hard on the upgrades and ease off on the downgrades. Or what pursuit team riders are doing when they are pulling above their sustainable power on front and recovering in the draft on back.
Right. That's basically what I was trying to say, but didn't say it well. You said it much better. My main point was that there is a transient state where the behavior Dave describes holds true and a steady state where the behavior Howe and you describes is true.
 
Originally Posted by gudujarlson . Thanks for the kind words....
I'll give ya credit for sense of humor :)

I probably shouldn't have posted that in exactly those words, but that's the second time in a week you've tried to argue a concept point in literal terms and in both cases I went out of my way to make it clear that this wasn't a statement backed by science. But yeah in a perfect world I'd wait a little while before responding and do so with more maturity....trouble is the world aint perfect and neither am I.

I might as well continue to be blunt and tell you it doesn't help when you throw up a freshly googled paper you haven't digested or challenged against the larger body of work or start with a statement like: "...This seems contrary to the concept described in Howe's paper (which I am currently reading)..." it's a lot like the psyche 101 student that halfway through the text starts diagnosing everyone they run into. Sorry if that's too direct but that's the way some of your posts hit me. I'll almost always answer in an encouraging way as you put it when someone asks a direct question but when those questions are framed as a challenge against the authority reference du jour it does get my hackles up. It's one thing to say here is my rationale and where I'm coming from, quite another to have to dig into a third party work and start debating their particular viewpoints. I have no argument with Charles Howe or his work and don't care to debate his findings or your interpretation of them.

But in terms of the subject at hand:
In other words, it takes some time for the aerobic system to come fully online....
That is basically how I look at it and as you likely know and implied in the rest of this post there isn't a point, FTP or otherwise where anaerobic metabolism kicks in like throwing a switch. That's part of the reason why the term Anaerobic Threshold has fallen out of favor in ex-phys circles as there really isn't a discrete AT and we utilize anaerobic metabolism even for low intensity activities. So we do draw on our AWC even when exercising well below FTP and something like a ten or even twenty minute hard effort has contributions from anaerobic processes and draws on our AWC. The Monod model demonstrates this very clearly.

So even at SST pacing as suggested earlier there is contribution from AWC but the longer we sustain the effort the higher percentage of he actual work has to be performed by sustainable aerobic processes. But why 12 minutes or 10 minutes or 8 minutes as a minimum? I don't think we really know the answer to that question other than seeing what has worked better or not as well for various athletes. I do think conceptualizing it as 'exhausting the higher end systems' is convenient and it helps in terms of understanding minimum durations for other efforts (e.g. 30" - ~ 2 minutes for L6 work, ~2' to 8' for L5 work, etc.) but don't think that's literally the reason. Perhaps a better reason would be looking at something like Monod-Scherrer curves and figuring out what durations represent a certain ratio of CP to AWC contribution but I don't know I'm just thinking out loud and trying to fit the observation that longer L4 efforts seem to yield better results to some of what we know about these systems.

-Dave
 
Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


I'll give ya credit for sense of humor :)

I probably shouldn't have posted that in exactly those words, but that's the second time in a week you've tried to argue a concept point in literal terms and in both cases I went out of my way to make it clear that this wasn't a statement backed by science. But yeah in a perfect world I'd wait a little while before responding and do so with more maturity....trouble is the world aint perfect and neither am I.

I might as well continue to be blunt and tell you it doesn't help when you throw up a freshly googled paper you haven't digested or challenged against the larger body of work or start with a statement like: "...This seems contrary to the concept described in Howe's paper (which I am currently reading)..." it's a lot like the psyche 101 student that halfway through the text starts diagnosing everyone they run into. Sorry if that's too direct but that's the way some of your posts hit me. I'll almost always answer in an encouraging way as you put it when someone asks a direct question but when those questions are framed as a challenge against the authority reference du jour it does get my hackles up. It's one thing to say here is my rationale and where I'm coming from, quite another to have to dig into a third party work and start debating their particular viewpoints. I have no argument with Charles Howe or his work and don't care to debate his findings or your interpretation of them.

But in terms of the subject at hand:

That is basically how I look at it and as you likely know and implied in the rest of this post there isn't a point, FTP or otherwise where anaerobic metabolism kicks in like throwing a switch. That's part of the reason why the term Anaerobic Threshold has fallen out of favor in ex-phys circles as there really isn't a discrete AT and we utilize anaerobic metabolism even for low intensity activities. So we do draw on our AWC even when exercising well below FTP and something like a ten or even twenty minute hard effort has contributions from anaerobic processes and draws on our AWC. The Monod model demonstrates this very clearly.

So even at SST pacing as suggested earlier there is contribution from AWC but the longer we sustain the effort the higher percentage of he actual work has to be performed by sustainable aerobic processes. But why 12 minutes or 10 minutes or 8 minutes as a minimum? I don't think we really know the answer to that question other than seeing what has worked better or not as well for various athletes. I do think conceptualizing it as 'exhausting the higher end systems' is convenient and it helps in terms of understanding minimum durations for other efforts (e.g. 30" - ~ 2 minutes for L6 work, ~2' to 8' for L5 work, etc.) but don't think that's literally the reason. Perhaps a better reason would be looking at something like Monod-Scherrer curves and figuring out what durations represent a certain ratio of CP to AWC contribution but I don't know I'm just thinking out loud and trying to fit the observation that longer L4 efforts seem to yield better results to some of what we know about these systems.

-Dave
You misunderstood questions for challenges. I wasn't claiming you were wrong in either case. I'm not interested in a pissing contest with you. I'd lose anyway. LOL I greatly respect your knowledge of the subject. In the later case, I was simply trying to make sense of two things that at first seemed to contradict each other. I'll phrase my questions more carefully in the future.
 
Originally Posted by gudujarlson .


But anyway, I think I answered my own question during my ride home. There might be a transient state and a steady state of the system. I think I read somewhere that VO2max is not reached immediately, but slowly ramps up. This leads me to believe that during the first 8 or so minutes during a SST interval, the ratio of energy from the aerobic system to the energy from the anaerobic slowly increases until it reaches a steady state. In other words, it takes some time for the aerobic system to come fully online. Then from that point on, forays above threshold decrease the ratio and forays below increase the ratio. At threshold AWC remains constant, but forays above it cause it to decrease and forays below cause it to increase.
(Re-)read (fast/first) oxygen uptake kinetics from your physiology book.
 
Ok now I have a question. Given what has been stated regarding the supporting role that AWC seems to play even in SST/L4 work,is there potentially any benifit in incorporating a bit of AWC during all phases of training including building base? Leading into a mountainbike race in November that is basically a 2hr TT type effort I did lots of L4 and AWC, I did other things, but really focused on these. To me it really started to feel like they almost fed off of each other. I sort of attributed it to how they balanced one me another in terms of physiological stress (moderate pain long duration/intense pain short duration), but maybe there was more to it. In short come November I felt like I was in better form than I had ever been during road season.
 
Originally Posted by bgoetz .

Ok now I have a question. Given what has been stated regarding the supporting role that AWC seems to play even in SST/L4 work,is there potentially any benifit in incorporating a bit of AWC during all phases of training including building base?...
Some folks definitely support including L6 work year round, others not so much. Dr. C. made a pretty good case for it with his 90-90-90 workout described here: http://jeraldcook.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/east-miramar-909090-workout/

Personally I think it comes down to the individual rider, their strengths and weaknesses, where they are in terms of training history and overall aerobic fitness development and what sort of training mix they can tolerate both mentally and physically. Some can probably handle focused L6 work year round, personally when I've done a lot of that in structured sessions during the off season I've been pretty burned out come racing season but YMMV.

-Dave

PS I also think there are two different discussions buried in your post. One is whether AWC work 'helps' during Threshold work because, like it or not, we draw on that energy system at the start of hard efforts in which case I'd say the goal isn't to have additional AWC boost in your power numbers but stretch the interval lengths so you can't rely as much on the AWC crutch if you're actually trying to focus on FTP development. The other is whether L6 work and AWC development is a good thing for overall better race fitness and worth working on year round and to that I'd say it depends...though I'd expect MTB racing and cyclocross to be disciplines where you'd want to have a lot of AWC at your disposal to deal with rapid terrain changes and high power bursts.
 
I find intervals stressful, but the workout that Rapdaddyo suggested to me a while back of 1min max effort 5min off really was not to stressful. I feel like I could mix a few hard 1min efforts into one of my workouts if it was going to help come race season. But if I can focus that same energy towards building a solid base and get further, then I would prefer sticking with my plan.
 
Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


PS I also think there are two different discussions buried in your post. One is whether AWC work 'helps' during Threshold work because, like it or not, we draw on that energy system at the start of hard efforts in which case I'd say the goal isn't to have additional AWC boost in your power numbers but stretch the interval lengths so you can't rely as much on the AWC crutch if you're actually trying to focus on FTP development. The other is whether L6 work and AWC development is a good thing for overall better race fitness and worth working on year round and to that I'd say it depends...though I'd expect MTB racing and cyclocross to be disciplines where you'd want to have a lot of AWC at your disposal to deal with rapid terrain changes and high power bursts.
Exactly.
 
Actually, it's hard to think of a competitive event in which AWC is not important. Even an individual time trial is likely to involve segments of variable resistance due to grade or wind or both. An optimal performance on such courses would include riding segments above one's sustainable power for the entire duration and riding recovery segments below one's sustainable power. So, contrary to what some believe, even ITTs can exploit AWC.