Base training

[DuncanM]

I'm honestly not that great at the really hard top end sessions.   I can do plenty of volume at endurance/tempo, though.  This is obviously the key given my main race distances.   I'll never be a great 10 rider or a pursuiter.   

I quite like the repeated VO2 work, but I find the volume at tempo so boring. I have always liked short sharp hills as well (though I've not really ridden anywhere with long sharp hills).

I'm not sure how easy it is but why not turn the tech off for a while and just go by HR/speed ?   I'm training on fixed on a magnetic turbo and leave the resistance on a single setting.   If I want to go harder I increase speed and if I want to back off I just slow down.   I just watch cadence and HR now.

Does that limit you to a narrow band of power (I assume you have the data and look at it afterwards?)? My VO2 work is 260W, and the rests in between would be ~100W - when I had a dumb trainerI could never manage the jump up/down without shifting. I guess if the majority of your turbo work is in tempo/sweetspot/threshold areas then that's quite a narrow band, though it would mean spinning rapidly at maximum power.

[rob]

I'm honestly not that great at the really hard top end sessions.   I can do plenty of volume at endurance/tempo, though.  This is obviously the key given my main race distances.   I'll never be a great 10 rider or a pursuiter.   

I quite like the repeated VO2 work, but I find the volume at tempo so boring. I have always liked short sharp hills as well (though I've not really ridden anywhere with long sharp hills).

I'm not sure how easy it is but why not turn the tech off for a while and just go by HR/speed ?   I'm training on fixed on a magnetic turbo and leave the resistance on a single setting.   If I want to go harder I increase speed and if I want to back off I just slow down.   I just watch cadence and HR now.

Does that limit you to a narrow band of power (I assume you have the data and look at it afterwards?)? My VO2 work is 260W, and the rests in between would be ~100W - when I had a dumb trainerI could never manage the jump up/down without shifting. I guess if the majority of your turbo work is in tempo/sweetspot/threshold areas then that's quite a narrow band, though it would mean spinning rapidly at maximum power.

I don't have a power meter so can't tell you.   I'm quite a simple individual.

Roughly, on yesterday's session where I set the levels early on using HR I was pushing 94-100rpm at different times and this was all within my upper tempo HR zone of 160-168.   The sessions my coach writes have a warm up and then a level setting piece.   As an example yesterday I did 20mins to bring HR up to 155-158bpm (top of endurance/bottom end of tempo) and to record the speed for the last 8mins.   This then becomes the base level for the rest of the workout.

When I was doing 6s maximal efforts last week I was hitting 170rpm at the end of the effort.

To be honest this is what you need when racing on fixed.   Once you've selected your gear you just need to spin faster in order to go faster.

[Phil W]

I just use turbo during week for the intervals and intensity work.  I do no more than one hour on the turbo in a single session.  I then try and get at least one four hour ride outdoors in a week as well.  I am getting faster but it is the long rides that help me sort out my fueling and hydration strategies as it is often getting those wrong that slows me down (over long distance) more than anything.

[Chris S]

I managed a 3.5 hour turbo session on Saturday - something I would never have countenanced before using Zwift; my first ever indoors "100".

Of course I was buggered yesterday, and had to abort yesterday's planned session after "only" 45 minutes. Fboab recovers much more successfully than me - ah the power of youth...

[DuncanM]

I'm honestly not that great at the really hard top end sessions.   I can do plenty of volume at endurance/tempo, though.  This is obviously the key given my main race distances.   I'll never be a great 10 rider or a pursuiter.   

I quite like the repeated VO2 work, but I find the volume at tempo so boring. I have always liked short sharp hills as well (though I've not really ridden anywhere with long sharp hills).

I'm not sure how easy it is but why not turn the tech off for a while and just go by HR/speed ?   I'm training on fixed on a magnetic turbo and leave the resistance on a single setting.   If I want to go harder I increase speed and if I want to back off I just slow down.   I just watch cadence and HR now.

Does that limit you to a narrow band of power (I assume you have the data and look at it afterwards?)? My VO2 work is 260W, and the rests in between would be ~100W - when I had a dumb trainer I could never manage the jump up/down without shifting. I guess if the majority of your turbo work is in tempo/sweetspot/threshold areas then that's quite a narrow band, though it would mean spinning rapidly at maximum power.

Roughly, on yesterday's session where I set the levels early on using HR I was pushing 94-100rpm at different times and this was all within my upper tempo HR zone of 160-168.   The sessions my coach writes have a warm up and then a level setting piece.   As an example yesterday I did 20mins to bring HR up to 155-158bpm (top of endurance/bottom end of tempo) and to record the speed for the last 8mins.   This then becomes the base level for the rest of the workout.

When I was doing 6s maximal efforts last week I was hitting 170rpm at the end of the effort.

To be honest this is what you need when racing on fixed.   Once you've selected your gear you just need to spin faster in order to go faster.

You're the authority, but surely hills (or headwinds) decouple the spinningness from the power requirement? On upslopes I can do much more power at 80rpm than I can do on a downslope at 120rpm (which ought to be fine, because more power at a slower speed is better value for effort). Clearly that's a very different requirement to using erg and spinning at 95rpm whatever the power required, so at some point I'm going to have to either turn off erg or deliberately vary my cadences much more (you can erg at whatever cadence you want, if you sit there for a while and let the turbo adjust). 
I can understand track riders needing to produce more power as the speed goes up, but for riding on the road I would have thought there are more factors to account for. Or am I just overthinking it? 

[rob]

You may be trying to overengineer something that I chose as a simpler option or one less thing to think about.

In general I don't race hilly courses but headwinds can be a killer.   Getting the effort out into a headwind is fine, but the ability to really spin comes in handy on fast, tailwind dual carriageways.   Doing some of your drills at high cadences really help with this, particularly in race position.

[Frank9755]

I'm honestly not that great at the really hard top end sessions.   I can do plenty of volume at endurance/tempo, though.  This is obviously the key given my main race distances.   I'll never be a great 10 rider or a pursuiter.   

I'm not sure how easy it is but why not turn the tech off for a while and just go by HR/speed ?   I'm training on fixed on a magnetic turbo and leave the resistance on a single setting.   If I want to go harder I increase speed and if I want to back off I just slow down.   I just watch cadence and HR now.

I think I need to do a bit more of that.   So I replaced the hour of VO2 max intervals session TR wanted me to do with 90 mins of 3 x 20 sweet spot.  I'm finding 90 mins a bit of an upward limit on my turbo tolerance. 

I might turn the data off when I get out on the road on Wednesday and Sunday; remembering what I could do from 2013-16 is a bit demotivating!

[Chris S]

...remembering what I could do from 2013-16 is a bit demotivating!

You and me both! 

Well. 2013, anyway.

[Phil W]

I'm honestly not that great at the really hard top end sessions.   I can do plenty of volume at endurance/tempo, though.  This is obviously the key given my main race distances.   I'll never be a great 10 rider or a pursuiter.   

I'm not sure how easy it is but why not turn the tech off for a while and just go by HR/speed ?   I'm training on fixed on a magnetic turbo and leave the resistance on a single setting.   If I want to go harder I increase speed and if I want to back off I just slow down.   I just watch cadence and HR now.

I think I need to do a bit more of that.   So I replaced the hour of VO2 max intervals session TR wanted me to do with 90 mins of 3 x 20 sweet spot.  I'm finding 90 mins a bit of an upward limit on my turbo tolerance. 

I might turn the data off when I get out on the road on Wednesday and Sunday; remembering what I could do from 2013-16 is a bit demotivating!

With the high intensity stuff I am  not convinced that more is better.  Does an hour of VO2 intervals bring about significantly more adaption than say 45 mins or 30 mins? At what point does the combination of high intensity and total duration just mean your body does not adapt to the stress when you have your recovery period afterwards or even worse begins to get weaker and break down?

[zigzag]

for clarity sake we need to agree how we count duration. one hour may only have 20min of hard work, which isn't the same as an hour spent at vo2 level!.. my understanding is that our bodies are capable of recovering from hard 20-30min efforts within a day or so.

[Frank9755]

With the high intensity stuff I am  not convinced that more is better.  Does an hour of VO2 intervals bring about significantly more adaption than say 45 mins or 30 mins? At what point does the combination of high intensity and total duration just mean your body does not adapt to the stress when you have your recovery period afterwards or even worse begins to get weaker and break down?

Isn't it individual specific, depending on your natural strengths and what adaptations you want to achieve? Eg I'm preparing for very long events so don't have any desire for adaptation to develop the acceleration to make or chase a break in a road race. But there's probably a reason why some of us (Rob, Zigzag, etc) have gravitated towards long events and it might be that we adapt more readily in that direction than to getting very fast over 20-60 minutes, even though the latter is still very much endurance riding. Or maybe we just had too much time on our hands at some point!

Agree re definition of duration. There s a trade off between brevity /clarity and detail, but one person's high intensity is not necessarily another's.
one thing I like about tr is that when it says a session is an hour it means an hour. Last year with a coach I would get hour sessions that excluded 15 mins of warm up and cool down, which made scheduling more painful!

[simonp]

TR’s fitting into an hour sometimes does mean insufficient cool down. It helps that they added a button to extend it.

I think you need a mix of intensifies. Training at one intensity leads to a one dimensional athelete. The vo2max or higher stuff has necessarily to be of limited duration. I would say that a 1-1.5h workout once per week is not excessive. Doing more than 1 of these will soon result in dimingishing returns as you need too much recovery.

For short distance racers the base/build/speciality cycle is going to most likely feature more insensith and less duration at the speciality stage. For an ultra racer it might be that longer miles feature much more as you approach the big day (or days).

Mixing it up is a good thing IMO. Though getting close to vomiting doing 6x500m rowing machine efforts last year was not ideal. Then doing similar work on the water and actually throwing up.  But then we won way more races than in any previous season so maybe it was worth it.

My power numbers on the turbo are similar to 2017/2018 but still off 2015’s best.  It is only March though.

[LMT]

Where's Trevor when you need him?

[rob]

Where's Trevor when you need him?

Someone remind me where the ignore function is please ?

[simonp]

Been a bit off form since middle of last week. Unable to finish Ansel Adams tonight. Probably not helped by kettlebell work yesterday. Hoping to feel a bit better by Saturday for the 200k.

[DuncanM]

I've got a cold, but I bashed through Carson this morning. At least half of each work interval was in the aero bars (and without back pain), so I'm making progress...
https://www.trainerroad.com/career/duncanm23/rides/52766677-carson-4

[rdtrdt]

I've got a cold, but I bashed through Carson this morning. At least half of each work interval was in the aero bars (and without back pain), so I'm making progress...
https://www.trainerroad.com/career/duncanm23/rides/52766677-carson-4

My approach during this "turbo-season" (i.e. since the Autumn) has been to skip/delay any workout where I don't feel right. Hint of a sore throat coming on? Skip training. Bad night's sleep leaving me feeling sub-par? Skip training. Anything not right at all, skip training.

Feb '18 was my first time with TR and I was too keen to train, showing the zeal of the newly converted. I lost successive weeks where I'd overdone it a bit, was too eager to get back at it, and then just couldn't shake a cold/viral infection. Result: great big gaps in my training last Spring...

Could be just coincidence, but no gaps at all this time around following my new zero-tolerance approach to any hint of sickness (or pre-sickness!) plus a big focus on getting more sleep by going to bed (much) earlier and generally more and better recovery, which I seem to need as I age. Where I've decided to skip a session due to feeling sub-par, I've often been able to do it one or two days later having quickly bounced back from the ropey feeling, resulting in the number of workouts permanently skipped due to sickness being tiny. Big contrast to the prior year.

What allowed me, psychologically, to take this approach was commencing the prep for my target event 8 months in advance. With so much time to prepare, backed by a solid plan, it always felt like I had (have) the necessary time with plenty of contingency, so no need to be concerned about taking a day or two off. This is in contrast to last year where I didn't begin the properly structured training until the end of February, leaving me too much to pack in and hence intolerant of downtime.

[DuncanM]

I've skipped 7 workouts this year through illness or unavailability, and I've cut a number of the others short. This week and last week are shorter easier workouts to try to ensure that my back is better before I hammer it again!

[Frank9755]

My scheduled event for today was a 2-hour session consisting mainly of 3x30 at 90% of threshold.  I didn't fancy doing something so long on the turbo but it sounded like a useful session, so I bunked off at 3pm to go for a ride instead, and did the 3x30 over the course of 100km. 

It was a tough session.  I erred on the side of slightly higher power - and I think that Traineroad measures a bit higher than my power meter. 

Enjoyed it a lot more than sitting in the garage for 2 hours and legs a bit sore now.  Tomorrow is an easy day so will see if I overdid it when I do my next proper session on Friday.

[rdtrdt]

I've skipped 7 workouts this year through illness or unavailability, and I've cut a number of the others short. This week and last week are shorter easier workouts to try to ensure that my back is better before I hammer it again!

We're all different - and my approach won't suit others.

It took me quite a while (over a decade ) to twig that I needed quite a lot of recovery. Prior to taking up cycling as a sport I 'never' got colds or was sick, while afterwards they became much more frequent during the colder months, suggesting my immune system was taking a battering and unable to do its usual job.

Being unable to handle large volumes of training is a bit of a limiter, but I'm just a punter not a pro, so hey ho.

TR Low Vol plans, supplemented/swapped out with outdoor rides where possible, and paired up with a focus recovery as described above, seems to be working well and my fitness is good (roughly as good as it's been, ~3.5w/kg and rising). I'm keeping tabs on the sleep and the recovery using a Garmin watch and its HRV (Firstbeat Stress score) functionality; the numbers tie in well with how I feel but have made it easier (more systematic) to self-monitor and avoid sickness by overdoing it.

[DuncanM]

I agree that it makes sense to stop with a proper cold, and I have been doing that. This week's was just a minor one really. I'm only on low volume (and I rarely ride outside during the winter), so skipping workouts makes a massive difference. I struggle with the sleep stuff, and I need to stretch and do core work more, but I'm working on my diet and adjusting to the TT position slowly.

Today's workout was Ericsson-4, which was made up of 4x8 intervals around threshold (4 minutes at 230W, 3 at 220, and 1 at 215). I did 2 minutes in the aero bars, 1 minute of sitting up for the first 3 of the intervals, and it was OK (if I don't sit up and towel down then I drip sweat all over my phone, which is really gross and sometimes stops the workout!). The last one was tougher, so I didn't do so much in aero.
https://www.trainerroad.com/career/duncanm23/rides/52872768-ericsson-4

My back seems able to cope with it now, so I'm going to start the 40k TT speciality plan next week. Club events are just around the corner, so it's time to get on with it (and also to get outside and practise bike handling with my new position).

[rob]

I didn't fail or skip a session for the best part of 4 month and then it all got a bit hard and I started avoiding the odd session or missing the hard bits.  I think I was pushing a little hard but I also think that my top-end breathing is effected by hay fever.  I hate making excuses but the same things has happened at roughly the same time for the last 3 years.

3 more weeks to go on the current block which is a little heavy on the volume and then a weeks holiday.   I am starting to finally feel like I'm in the right place even though I still haven't entered a time trial for this season.

[Frank9755]

I think I was pushing a little hard but I also think that my top-end breathing is effected by hay fever.  I hate making excuses but the same things has happened at roughly the same time for the last 3 years.

There was lots of pollen around in london about 3-4 weeks ago, after it had been warm them became windy.  My eyes were streaming one day coming back from a meeting the other side of town.

[Frank9755]

I'm going to skip my session today. 

I had to go somewhere this morning so did a gentle 45 mins recovery ride there.  If I had felt good, I would have incorporated intervals into the return trip, but legs a bit sore from Wednesday's ride.  So I am going to leave it with 1.5 hours of recovery ride for today, plus yoga at lunchtime.

Would I have been better to have just done intervals rather than 100km ride on Wednesday so I could do more intervals today?  Not sure - I think I got quite a lot out of a reasonably hard ride on the roads, and I need to get a few of those in to sort out some questions to do with position, pedal and saddle choice.

[simonp]

I did Monitor last night and it felt really hard - 6x6m:2 sweet-spot.

My legs are still sore from gym work done on Monday - particularly left hamstring. I couldn't decide if it was this, or a drop in fitness, but my average HR was lower than in several previous attempts at this workout at similar power, so I'm going to assume the issue is the sore legs.

Got 200k tomorrow, so being a bit less sore by then would be good.