I am in now way your best source in ths forum as besides the book, Dave has given me alot of info and has helped me make some great progress. Also Ric is another great source here.
But IMHO, you already answered your own question, it would seem to me with yor sports background, you did not need to work on building an aerobic engine with LSD training. All you need to do is get your sustainable watts up and that is SST training. Dave has told me over and over again how L3/SST/L4 is the key especially if time is a limiting factor.
Now if you are like my coach (now spinning on his fourth hour on the company CT trainer like 140 watts or so in the office above me ) go for LSD and make it part of your training. But otherwise you have seemed to nail it down to me. Also in the book they talk alot about the ftp test and the 20 minute effort but really get yourself on a trainer and see what wattage you can hold for one hour. That is my only test combined with what Dave showed me, the Monod test. I overestimated a little bit in the beginning based upon the ftp test but keep in mind watts is just a measuring stick and as long as you get better with each new measure uisng the same stick means you are getting better.
As for other cat 3 riders and there reasons, it can be a million from scientific to just that is what I learned and what everyone else is doing...personally I would go with the power training, simple and easy to follow and measure yourself.
-Js
But IMHO, you already answered your own question, it would seem to me with yor sports background, you did not need to work on building an aerobic engine with LSD training. All you need to do is get your sustainable watts up and that is SST training. Dave has told me over and over again how L3/SST/L4 is the key especially if time is a limiting factor.
Now if you are like my coach (now spinning on his fourth hour on the company CT trainer like 140 watts or so in the office above me ) go for LSD and make it part of your training. But otherwise you have seemed to nail it down to me. Also in the book they talk alot about the ftp test and the 20 minute effort but really get yourself on a trainer and see what wattage you can hold for one hour. That is my only test combined with what Dave showed me, the Monod test. I overestimated a little bit in the beginning based upon the ftp test but keep in mind watts is just a measuring stick and as long as you get better with each new measure uisng the same stick means you are getting better.
As for other cat 3 riders and there reasons, it can be a million from scientific to just that is what I learned and what everyone else is doing...personally I would go with the power training, simple and easy to follow and measure yourself.
-Js
mikeyp123 said:Interesting stuff.. thanks for the feedback.
I omitted some details in my previous post, I have done LSD training back in my triathlon days, 5+ years ago, it was really in vogue back then. Granted I sometimes competed at much longer durations, and needed to acclimate to such efforts, LSD probably made sense in that scenario.. 1/2 ironman was my longest. After spending 3 years as a competative age-group triathelete, I ditched it all for running. I was never a fantastic runner, but was capable of a 20 min 5k. But cycling always came naturally to me. I'm light, currently 66kg (146 lbs at 5'11"), and have very strong legs for my build, I think it may have something to do with my lifting obsesssion prior to my triathlon phase.. sets at 225+lbs easy (back then I was 81kg (180lbs), but have't lifted seriously in a long time).
Last year I focused on cycling. This will be my first season racing. Last season I did lots of local group rides, it didn't take long to adjust to the fast roadie rides. So now I'm in that off-season build phase, first race is in late January (I'm in the SoCal area). I've got the power-meter on its way, I've read Andy and Hunter's book, I'm starting to follow their SST approach.. it just makes more sense for me. I don't need to accilimate to seriously long events, I'm already in good shape, I don't need to "adjust" to a road bike, which leads me to conclude that LSD won't be beneficial. Although I do see some local cat 3 riders going LSD at this time of year. That's were the confusion lies. Are their coaches not current to power-training? Maybe they have different needs? But persnonally, I would hate to exchange current aerobic fitness for saddle time. My other worry is that I'm starting too intense too early, but I will have more data when I start using the PT and CyclingPeaks.
mike