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There's another easy way - see if you can get an Avio power meter second hand. My FTP jumped from low 300s to 354 on my last ride! I'm sure it's accurately recording my fitness, and the 20 seconds or so of 2,000W it recorded was a true and accurate reflection of my awesome power.
Lol - that seems like an easy way to gain power 😘
I'm a little bit disappointed that it only reads 2kW though. I've recorded a peak of 1.8kW a few times in plausible looking readings, so if I trained really hard and beat 2 I'd be annoyed it wouldn't record it!
Did a ramp test today and bumped from 240w to 255w. Currently at 76.8kgs so a bit heavier than I have been but the weight training has also toned up / bulked out my upper body a bit so I’ll live with it.
Got a big day at Risca planned this weekend depending on the weather. Thinking 1200m+ of climbing so that’ll be a good test of my fitness for sure.
Nice!
I'm ramping up this week before starting 6 weeks of dirt destroyer, current FTP is set at 222 but I think it's a bit low so I'll do a ramp test at the end of this week, I think I'll be about 240w ish.
Did 'The Gorby' this evening which is 5x 5min @ 110% of FTP then 5 mins @ 55% of FTP. Renowned to be a bit of a ball buster! I found it tough, but not 'I'm not going to complete this' tough. Which makes me think my FTP is set a little low.
If I can be back to 260ish watts after dirt destroyer which will then lead straight into 2x weeks in Scotland, I'll be very happy.
5 x 5 mins at 110% ftp should have felt pretty hard I’d have thought - maybe the ftp you’re working to is a little lower than it should be. Have fun with your ramp test - always a pleasure 🤮
Interestingly my garmin keeps telling me my load is good but my training is unproductive.
When I go into connect it seems to be suggesting I’m doing too much high intensity but not enough base. Strava has been showing I’m trending faster on matched rides and saying I’m getting fitter - but I’ve just stopped paying the subscription as it was getting too expensive so that data is going out the window. Just have TR and Garmin going forward.
TR has the next block of training as a mixture of Vo2 and Sweet Spot…I’m wondering if I’d be better trying to reset my training plan for some more sweet spot / base sort of stuff?
I popped in a few ‘endurance’ ad hoc sessions in the last 2 weeks to chill a little bit watching tv and just ignoring what my legs are doing and didn’t find it too bad.
I think it just comes down to the latest thinking on intensity distribution.
The old description was that training ‘slow’ around 80% of your time kept you fresh for the hard days.
What I’ve now learned is that adaptations happen at the lower intensities that you just do not get when you go too hard.
From my own training, I’ve noticed as I’ve progressed through Base 1, 2 and 3 over the last 12 weeks is that I’m starting to get ‘Unproductive’ on my Garmin more often.
Although last week I was perfectly in (their suggested) balance as I did an extra easy day with a bad toe 🤣
Tempo and above counts as “high aerobic” on Garmin connect. If you’re lacking low aerobic- it is definitely worth trying to squeeze in some more time riding easy. They’re not for ‘recovery’- they are training you slow twitch fibres to be efficient.
Interestingly my garmin keeps telling me my load is good but my training is unproductive.
I've found the Garmin training status can be really finicky, if it thinks your vo2 max is decreasing because you're doing base miles and not vo2 max efforts it'll put you as 'unproductive'.
5 x 5 mins at 110% ftp should have felt pretty hard I’d have thought – maybe the ftp you’re working to is a little lower than it should be. Have fun with your ramp test – always a pleasure
Yeah exactly, which is good in that I'm closer to where I want to be, but bad in that future workouts are going to be tougher!
I did the Nino Schurter over/under workout the other day too, and knowing how much over/unders hurt me before, it was far too comfortable.
Connect your strange to intervals.icu. It’s much better for analysis, and free.
Connect your strange to intervals.icu. It’s much better for analysis, and free.
Fwiw there was a message on intervals.icu the other day asking people to connect using something other than strava if poss - there's a daily limit on the number of api calls which they were running into. So if you can connect via garmin or some other platform that'd help them out (same goes for existing users too)
There's a recent thread about requesting Zwift direct upload to Intervals site on Zwift forum.
You can go into Intervals settings and untick download/sync with Strava, then use direct upload on Intervals home page to upload fit files you download from your Strava activities, bit of faff but reduces Intervals stress.
You can download Zwift fit files from clciking activities on https://www.zwift.com/uk/feed , then clicking cog symbol to download fit file, which you can then directly upload to Intervals.
Fwiw there was a message on intervals.icu the other day asking people to connect using something other than strava if poss
My apologies I forgot about this despite having ch age my own settings to upload from Garmin Connect.
What does intervals icu do that Garmin or Trainer Road don’t do out of interest? If it’s free I’m happy to sign up to have a look but slightly loathe to buy a subscription to something else!
Trainerroad analytics are one of the only things I miss to be fair. Especially for ease of use on a mobile.
But intervals.icu is kind of like free training peaks for geeks. You can literally create any kind of chart or graph or analyse any metric you can imagine. Has a better Fitness/Form/Fatigue chart too.
It has a quick and simple workout creator that you can use to write a plan onto their powerful calendar and either export the workouts to a Garmin etc or just see your forecast tss etc.
I use it a lot on aerobic rides to measure decoupling (Loss of power/HR for the first half of the ride V the second half).
It's free with the option to donate.
Cool cheers - I’ve downloaded it but on the phone it’s not immediately obvious what it’s telling me. Needs a bit of a study later once I’ve got some time to myself (hopefully anyway)! Might try and login on desktop for a better look on a big screen and see what’s what. Linked it to Garmin Connect and it’s instantly pulled a stack of data through which was slick 👌
It's free (donationware) and is particularly useful for selecting intervals (surprise!) from your trace to look at your power curve etc. Also various models for FTP estimates.
I like the fitness plot. You can put future workouts (and sync previous ones from Strava) into the calendar and it'll plot, with the aim of managing your load to stay in the green zone, and include rest/taper periods too. Other programs have similar. Take a look https://intervals.icu/fitness
Did my first sweet spot workout with the new ftp and that was difficult 🤮
TR suggested a 1 hour session but I wasn’t feeling the love so picked a 45 min alternative - had 4 x 7 minute ladders. Got through it but you could feel it was a decent step up. Heart rate didn’t get above 160 ish but legs definitely felt it.
Got a 1 hour vo2 session on Friday then sweet spot next week. Swapped next week’s vo2 session for an hour endurance one to tone down the intensity a bit and work on a bit more base.
Got a 1 hour vo2 session on Friday
As a final training session I just did a 1.06h Zwift race at an average of 3.55kg, suggesting that I’m good for exceeding my prior 3.6wkg FTP via 20 min test. A recovery ride and 3 days rest now before the first IRL MTB XCO on Sunday.
I should be good for close to 4wkg by May I reckon, racing and sharpening lending itself to lots of threshold/vo2max from here on in.
@crosshair how are you pasting that image in?
@kryton57 Using https://imgbb.com/ and then cutting a direct link out of one of their pre-made links for the img button.
Great work on the training too. Can’t wait to see how Sunday goes for you 🤞🏻
Well done on your session Joe. Always a double edged sword training at the new ftp 🤣
I found it interesting that Crosshair and I have very similar overall profiles, with the exception I have more higher end Z2:
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And this shows my progression, coming from a max of 81 in 2021 you can see that by November '22 during which I had the 7 weeks off the bike with chest infections how far my fitness dropped by has increased since:
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...which also includes 4KG weight loss.
Not sure if that gives Joe some help / indication of other riders normality!
Cool, yes that's pretty similar! That's great work on the lack of coasting too- great zone discipline!
I've been trying to actually ride more during recovery weeks as, back in the days of using TR, I would often just have four days off the bike, so I guess that's reflected by more Z1 time, especially as my Z1 goes up to 181w nowadays 🤣
You got me interested in my Fitness chart too.
I don't really worry about CTL etc too much as it doesn't account for work and life stress but it is interesting to note that I'm kicking on towards last year's peak already.
I'm trying to peak for June but I'm not convinced I can find the energy to keep ramping up much beyond 80.
I'd also like to do a better job with the back end of the year too and try for a second peak in September.
13 months:
My 2021 peak was 80 which was when I came 9th in the 12hr national. Not sure that’s a year I want to repeat tbh!
Re Fitness scores, I wear a Garmin band on my right wrist - a Vivosmart - so that albeit not super accurate adds some stress of the day via Body battery & HRV to Intervals.icu. That might help if your into it.
Just having a little look at totals - clearly my activity is a lot lower in terms of number and distance etc - but how does this look - I.e is the load score low / high vs where it should be etc?
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Looking at this you can see the break in TR sweet spot workouts for a rest week and then an ad hoc week. Load should start to go up again now I’m back into the next block I reckon. Big Sunday coming off climbing too.
What’s not recorded here is any swimming / weight training / dog walking I do - mainly because I can’t be bothered to log it all.
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Looking at your intensity distribution Joe, I'd say your Garmin is being harsh- you're plenty close enough towards 80/20 easy/hard workouts 👌🏻
There's loads of other factors too- trying to train for longer events like Kryton and I means we need a higher volume/load than someone looking to improve FTP.
Friel recommends building aerobic fitness to 2x the length of your 'goal' event for short events, so if you're focussed on FTP (not going to open the 'Hour of Power' = FTP debate 🤣 but lets say loosely you want to be able to go hard for an hour) then you don't have to do much more than an occasional 2hr ride.
What's important is to calibrate it against your own results and feelings to look for clues as to what's working or not.
Trainerroad plans are not high in TSS so you can get good FTP gains without getting a high 'fitness' score.
while we are sharing, more or less a full reset, 1 outdoor ride from July 22 - 1st January 23 in September, and only 5hrs on Zwift sporadically in early November, down 6kg or so from 88 to 82kg, mostly all Z2, there about 5 sub 40 minute efforts in there comprising of a couple of efforts up the Epic KOM or Zwift races, and 3 laps of Sherwood
Best 20minute effort is 265w, matching anything in 2022, quite a bit below 2020's high of 319w though, which at approx 80kg at the time, put me on or around 4w/kg, which I'd be happy to get back to
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Awesome! That's base done right 😎
I wonder if the amount of time in Z1 kind of has to increase with absolute FTP.
I notice a lot of Pro's still ride alot at 180-220w even though the top of their Z2 might be 300w+.
Even my Base spell had a lot of Z1.
Or maybe I'm just lazy 🤣
might be a fuelling thing? must be hard work trying to keep on top of 1000cals per hour at 300w and maintaining body weight, 30 hour base week would have you at 30,000, drop that to 180w and you drop 10,000cal, of course most mortals don't have 30 hours a week to noodle about
Yeah that’s it I think. It’s just physiologically too hard to ride right at 75% when you’re burning over 1000kcals hour! And as you say, they can add enough volume at lower percentages to compensate.
Did a sneaky mile swim this evening - first swim in about 3 weeks I think. Felt a little slow after a few weeks off. Going to start recording swims going forward as I guess the fatigue will add up.
Vo2 session this morning - it was hard but not as hard as the sweet spot session on Wednesday I’d say.
I find these kind of vo2 sessions easier than with 7+ min sweet spot interval sessions. That said I’m at a low progression level on vo2 and a bit higher on sweet spot - so I’m on ‘my first’ vo2 session level at the moment.
Perhaps a sign that the level was too easy for you. You could nudge it up a bit until it gets hard 🙂
Just measured my W yesterday and in order to get to 4W/kg my only realistic option is to reduce my weight to 25kg (without losoing power) 🙁
@thecaptain - I didn’t feel the need to notch the % up this early in a training block - just wasn’t as hard as I expected after Wednesday’s sweet spot workout!
@DrJ - reduce your weight to 25kg? That would mean only a 100w ftp if my maths is right? Or did you mean reduce your weight by 25kg…
@DrJ – reduce your weight to 25kg? That would mean only a 100w ftp if my maths is right? Or did you mean reduce your weight by 25kg…
A joke was intended, but still, I am on such a different level from you guys it ain't funny 🙁
I completely missed that irony - sorry!
I’d have thought I’m middling fitness wise - so many people on here have so much better fitness / lighter weight or both together…