Ok ok, why not another vo2max thread
The story is that now I am in the vo2max camp . A couple of weeks of stale/stagnant power during threshold workouts and I decided to try some level 5 intervals. Still doing L4 too and L3. So the program is 2x/week L5, 2x/week L4, 2x/week hella L3
Did my 1st round of these level 5'ers this week. Used some of the tips from this post: http://www.cyclingforums.com/power-training/471139-ftp-5-min-power-relationship.html (thanks for those!!).
My format was of 5 sets of 5 minutes at 1.14 * FTP with 5 minutes of rest between (soft pedal 50w). Pacing seems to be OK because the watt range. btwn all the work sets was only 3w (first set was hardest). NP = 95% of FT for this blockThen after the 5x5, 50 min block - I did 20 min .91 of FTP.
Can I ask a few quickie q's on these?
"you can also look at your normalized power for the entire set of intervals (work + rest periods combined) - if this is significantly less than your functional threshold power, then that suggests that you may be dogging it a bit". How close? 90%, 95%, 100%???
The story is that now I am in the vo2max camp . A couple of weeks of stale/stagnant power during threshold workouts and I decided to try some level 5 intervals. Still doing L4 too and L3. So the program is 2x/week L5, 2x/week L4, 2x/week hella L3
Did my 1st round of these level 5'ers this week. Used some of the tips from this post: http://www.cyclingforums.com/power-training/471139-ftp-5-min-power-relationship.html (thanks for those!!).
My format was of 5 sets of 5 minutes at 1.14 * FTP with 5 minutes of rest between (soft pedal 50w). Pacing seems to be OK because the watt range. btwn all the work sets was only 3w (first set was hardest). NP = 95% of FT for this blockThen after the 5x5, 50 min block - I did 20 min .91 of FTP.
Can I ask a few quickie q's on these?
- Better to shorten rest interval (from 5 min to 4 or 3 or 2) ? Or increase power? Thinking a shorter rest w/same power = more aerobic sources of energy. Longer rest prolly means more AWC usage. I want to train vo2max & pull up FT, not boost AWC. Guessing 5 min work + 2-4 min rest is more ideal, right?? I like the 5 minute work interval since I get an easy check of 5 minute pwr with these.
- How high should NP be for 5x5 block? I read many posts in the archives that say it should be pretty close. How many rest periods do you include in the NP maths - 4 or 5?? User 'acoggan' in one thread said:
"you can also look at your normalized power for the entire set of intervals (work + rest periods combined) - if this is significantly less than your functional threshold power, then that suggests that you may be dogging it a bit". How close? 90%, 95%, 100%???
- From the same thread acoggan commented on about these intervals: "In addition to looking at heart rate (which generally should be w/in 5-10 beats/min of maximum at the end of each interval), " There is no HR monitor among my training eq. Yea yea, I know, we are doing power training but those were user acoggans comments. So does anyone look at HR (or care????)during these intervals?