Stochastic cycling



hrumpole

New Member
Jan 4, 2011
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0
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OK, so it was 90 degerees outside today. Nonetheless, my legs were dead.


p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }
Zone
Description
Low
High
Time
Z1
Active Recovery
0
123
1:14:12
Z2
Endurance
123
168
19:38
Z3
Tempo
168
201
16:27
Z4
Threshold
201
235
12:28
Z5
VO2Max
235
268
09:11
Z6
Anaerobic
268
336
11:12
Z7
Neuromuscular
336
MAX
11:50

If I understand this correctly, the reason is that I spent more time at anaerobic or NM than I did at threshold and VO2. (Yet NP for the ride was low).

When I do 20 min intervals, I try to just do them, and not to think too much about the wattage. So I did do a 1x20 in here as well as a bunch of hills. When I try to do 2x20s, AP is in the right zone, but time in zone 4 is not even close to 40 minutes on flat roads. Is that typical? Or am I simply not paying enough attention to cadence and power while I'm doing these workouts? I can hold a pretty good range (10-15w) on the trainer. What kind of range is typical on the road?
 
I don't think there is a typical.

On my 3 hour rides (just a bit longer than yours by time) I spend a lot less time in Z1 (25-30 minutes) and a lot more time (60-90 minutes) in Z4 thru Z7.

I will say your Z4 range is higher than mine but your Z7 is in my Z5 range. I compute my Z numbers by the effect they have on my body not a blind percent of my LT or 1 hour test.

---

I don't think you should worry about too much. Holding a constant effort on the road is difficult. A good constant slope helps.
 
It's hard to read too much into the summary stats you posted as it doesn't tell you anything about how long you sustained the various excursions into each level, just that you racked up that much time at each level whether it was in sustained efforts or scattered throughout the ride.

But considering you did a 2x20 session somewhere in there it sure looks like you're getting a lot of L6/L7 work in during your Threshold efforts and that it averages into L4 because those bursts are offset by some L3/L2/L1 time. Again, hard to say without seeing the actual power plot during those efforts but I'd guess they were the 'burst and float' style L4 efforts as opposed to steadier efforts. Nothing wrong with that if it's targeting your goals and addressing your training needs. If you're training for crits it can be very useful to do more dynamic Threshold work, if you training for flat time trials or doing L4 one day a week and more dynamic riding (perhaps a weeknight training crit) on other days then perhaps not so much. Bottom line you did some good work, but it does lean heavily to the short bursty L6/L7 stuff which may or may not be targeting your needs right now.

What was the AP vs. NP for each of the 20 minute efforts individually, not the entire ride. That might tell you why your legs felt more worked than usual. Don't rule out the warmer temps nor it being the end of a training week where previous work may have left you a bit tired before you even started today.

FWIW, I don't typically get a full 40 minutes right in L4 even when I do a 2x20 set where both intervals came in right in L4. I might get 25-30 minutes in L4 and the rest is typically distributed between L5 and L3. Micro-interval style L4 work comes in with a lot of L3 and a fair amount of L6/L7 all averaging into L4 which sounds closer to what you saw today.

-Dave
 
Originally Posted by hrumpole .

OK, so it was 90 degerees outside today. Nonetheless, my legs were dead.
p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }
Zone
Description
Low
High
Time
Z1
Active Recovery
0
123
1:14:12
Z2
Endurance
123
168
19:38
Z3
Tempo
168
201
16:27
Z4
Threshold
201
235
12:28
Z5
VO2Max
235
268
09:11
Z6
Anaerobic
268
336
11:12
Z7
Neuromuscular
336
MAX
11:50

If I understand this correctly, the reason is that I spent more time at anaerobic or NM than I did at threshold and VO2. (Yet NP for the ride was low).





I think that for best evaluation should be know Variability index, normalized power for total work session, and relative Intensity factor.
 
Hmm. Are these the Coggan levels (which most of us use)? They look different.

If you are going to ride that stochastically, then there are two things you should keep in mind:

(1) The "time in zone" numbers are not going to tell you much about what kind of workout you got. If you do ~30 seconds of Z6 followed by ~30 seconds of soft-pedalling and then repeat lots of times in a row, you are pretty much doing a Z4 workout, but it won't show up that way when you look at time in zone.

(2) In your long intervals (e.g. 2x20s) you should use NP (for the interval) as a measure of how hard you went rather than AP. Check your NP for the interval you did that day and I bet you will see that you did a pretty hard interval -- probably "too" hard (either that or you need to reset your FTP). It looks like you are making up for it with lots of recovery riding afterward. (I assume there was very little Z1 during the interval.)
 
Dave--
Maybe this helps.
I have a 35 mile route that I ride on Sundays, which is rolling hills surrounded by 2 flat sections. So what I try to do is, after warming up, hit 20 min (or close to it) at threshold on the front end (if I hit the lights right, it's 20 minutes; if I miss the light, it's 17-18. NP and AP (or xPower, as the case may be) are within the threshhold zones and within 5w of each other for each interval.. There are some short uphills and downhills. Once that first interval is done, I just pedal as hard as I feel like it, until I get to the hills. Then I go as hard as I feel like it in that section, and rest coming on the dhill (or not). No structure--just fun. One more 20 min interval on the next flat part, then a 1 mile climb and I'm home. However, to get my fat >>> up the hills, I have to leave the comforts of the tempo and threshold zones and head right up to anaerobic. I'm working on the kg side of the ratio, but the weight comes off slowly.

At this point, I only have a few months of data, and so it's hard for me to intelligently assess my needs. All I'm really trying to do is raise my LT so that I can (1) complete a flat 40K time trial in September at a considerably faster pace than I did before, which I seem to be on schedule to do; and (2) ride 2 centuries in a week and survive (Sat and Sat) later in the summer. I'm not yet concerned about the distance, I'm trying to get the base speed up first.

Is the "solution" then to just back off and stay in z4 for these longer efforts?

lanierb-
These are the zones that golden cheetah creates based on a set critical power.
 
If your primary goal is raising FTP and your target event is a flat 40k time trial then I'd definitely work on smoothing out the power for your efforts and trying to ride more iso-power.

That probably means using a wider range of gears including much easier gears on the climbs and perhaps more actively upshifting and winding it out on the rolling descents to try to keep your power within L4 for more of each interval. Perhaps the terrain isn't ideal for that in which case I'd look for steadier terrain options for at least one of your weekly Threshold sessions if the TT is important to you.

I'd also take that connecting section a bit easier so you can really focus on a solid second L4 session instead of doing a mediocre second interval after a lot of more random SST riding unless this is really an SST/Tempo ride but in that case just ride SST/Tempo and don't call it a Threshold session. Nothing wrong with the loosely structured SST ride as part of your schedule but if you count this as a Threshold training day and specifically if the time trial is an important goal you should really do at least one if not two days per week where you do focused iso-power Threshold work. Among other things those steadier L4 rides teach you how to pace long sustained efforts and that's what flat time trials are all about.

I'd work the actual 20 minute sections at a steadier pace or find alternative training venues if the terrain and or traffic interruptions make that too difficult. Dynamic L4 riding can be very useful to prep for dynamic mass start racing but both the mental and physical aspects of steady pacing are very important during time trials and you aren't likely to race that way if you don't train that way.

-Dave
 

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