L3, is more better?

[wally58]

Ok so this is my 2nd year of training and my first year with a power tap. I have got all my base miles in and I've been working on L3 once a week and L4 three times a week. My FTP is 253w and I can spend 2hrs. right is the middle of L3 witch is for me 213w. Should I try and work for 3hrs. or just put more time in to L4.
TIA

 

[Spunout]

Depends on your training goals. Do you have a goal to ride 3 hours in L3?

Is it time to work on speedwork?

 

[wiredued]

I wish I knew the answer to that one because some days I am not up to doing L4 but rather than waste the day L3 is a good alternative. I hope 3 hours at L3 on the trainer isn't the answer though.

Ok so this is my 2nd year of training and my first year with a power tap. I have got all my base miles in and I've been working on L3 once a week and L4 three times a week. My FTP is 253w and I can spend 2hrs. right is the middle of L3 witch is for me 213w. Should I try and work for 3hrs. or just put more time in to L4.
TIA

 

[Steve_B]

I wish I knew the answer to that one because some days I am not up to doing L4 but rather than waste the day L3 is a good alternative. I hope 3 hours at L3 on the trainer isn't the answer though.

I hope so too. I can give you my own findings.

When I've spent a large amount of time doing mostly L3 (and a little L4 - maybe 75% L3 though), I found that I got really good at doing long blocks (2-3 hours) of L3 and that's about all I was good at. I was a one trick pony. I was really aerobically fit, threshold power was good, but my racing went to **** because I spent no time doing anything else and I was too tired (low TSB) to race well to begin with.

So, if racing is far off, you might be Ok doing that. But I'd say devoting your time towards higher intensity while indoors is a better plan. Save the tempo for outdoors. If you've got that much time available, put it towards other things now (re-building bikes, spending time with your spouse/s.o., re-arranging your sock drawer) so you have "time in the bank" when you can spend the time outdoors.

 

[wally58]

My longest race is no longer than 60mi the tempo ride I did on the trainer was about 50mi so i guess thats good enough do you guys spend more then 2hrs. in L3? It seems to me that from what I've been reading no one really does more then 1.5 hrs. because you dont get that much more out of it, is that true?

 

[Spunout]

If you had 4 hour races, you'd better be fit enough to ride at least 3 in Z3.

 

[wally58]

If you had 4 hour races, you'd better be fit enough to ride at least 3 in Z3.

Well when I did that last session on the trainer it felt like I could do about 4hrs. but I just dont have time to do that on a week night and I use the weekends for other types of rides but I almost sure if I had to that I could do 3-4hr.