TrainerRoad – STW approved sessions

Wrecker make sure you are set up right . Have you put your turbo trainers resistance into trainer road ? Have you put a sick bucket by the bike ?

As above wrecker, do the best you can, let TR set the ftp and go from there. If you are finding your first plan a bit easy / hard use the % adjustment on screen accordingly during the workout. After that your secon for test will be way more accurate.

Beast everything, make the hour count except where instructed otherwise and remember – everything has an end 😀

In about 12 months you’ll be smiling through the pain on the drops thinking, “I am Jen Voight, yes I am too”. Lol….

Have you got your turbo and TR in sync? I.e. are they both set to the same resistance for your turbo model?

It’s a smart thingy. Do I need to do that?

Dunno – mine’s like its owner – dumb! Check with TR they are pretty quick to reply.

Wrecker, you’ll need to turn off the erg thing on a smart turbo for testing.

A custom 20 tempo and 3×5 here tonight. Got a little medal for the last 5 min interval too, which is nice. Feel like things are progressing nicely this winter for a change. Doubt it’ll last!

Feeling a little blah after a couple of hard training days and a household bug doing the rounds, so tried to sweat it out with Rendezvous tonight. one hour of increasing 10 minute blocks finishing at threshold, turned out a little harder than I imagined actually, despite a TSS of only 66.

We’ll see tomorrow morning if that was a cure or the straw that broke me. 🙄

Wrecker, you’ll need to turn off the erg thing on a smart turbo for testing.

Aha!
Sussed it. thanks!

Wrecker, trainerroad uses the erg mode for the ftp tests only for the warm up. The actual 8 minute intervals are automatically swapped to resistance or slope as they call it, so it’s fine to leave in erg. I did yesterday.

Swedish Chef, good luck with that. I decided to do an ftp test in the same way as was not feeling great, it was due anyway, maybe not a great idea as feel rough as … now. Should have stopped halfway through when HR not climbing as easy as normal. Going to use Christmas as an excuse to take it easy, maybe.. Might even have a few runs for a change.

What’s the resistance setting thing? 2%, 4% etc. It says 0% is obsolete?

Look up testing on an erg trainer in the trainerroad help, it explains it better than I would 🙂

I did get caught out in the wrong gear in my first interval and ended up hitting close to double ftp to start, not ideal ! Don’t worry about it too much, have a experiment, takes practice to get right.

Fasted over-unders this morning, that was hard mentally.

Ooh, good effort that. I had intentions of doing Palisade, which is 90mins and several sets of over-unders. It would have meant getting up at about 0515 😯 but I was feeling the effects of last night’s wine so decided not to and have ridden in to work instead.

Did Haeckel tonight, slow force efforts which didn’t feel too bad, well nowhere near as bad as Palisade which I did on Sunday.

Now just need to keep focussed and away from the mince pies for the next couple of weeks 😳

Aborted session last night and taking a night off tonight. Always seem to get hip pain after a lot of driving, and 8 hours of it over the weekend seems to have done the job 🙁

How odd a coincidence. I started work at 5am so on the way home tonight I decided I’d call it off as I’m knackered, then whilst driving got an odd pain in my quad which convinced me to leave it for today.

It’s Christmas and next week is week 4 for me, so I face 4 x12 on Thursday then I get stuck into the cheese and port as a reward.

My first ever TT awaits on Jan 1. 😯

<start waffle>

So I had a rest week at the end of sweet spot base, then just as I was about to do an FTP test, I caught the man-flu from the kids. Was quite sore throaty, and so since I have plenty of time in hand, I didn’t do the test, and instead have spent the last week and a half just chilling, couple of short rides so that my legs don’t forget what they’re for, but really just dedicated to getting 100% healthy again.

This morning I was going to do a long slow ride in to work, but the forecast was for rain, so I decided to do the FTP test instead, since I’ve been feeling nearly 100% for a day or two. So, up at 5, no breakfast (I’ve been doing the fasted training thing pretty happily, so decided I might as well stick with that despite it being a test). Did the 8 minute test. Got the pacing a bit wrong for the first 8 set, and fannied about a bit too much with resistance / gears, but held it nice and steady for the second set. Did better than I expected, despite recent man-flu and early morning start, I got an FTP of 265 (tested pretty untrained on 30th Aug at 207, and then on 28th Oct at 223).

I don’t think the previous ones were low due to poor technique – if anything they were better paced than today, and HR was damn near exactly the same across the three tests. I do wonder if upgrading the turbo trainer a few weeks back is a factor though… could have effectively shifted its calibration. Anyway, this confirms what I suspected – that for the last few weeks I was underdoing it on intensity (I had manually bumped up the FTP a bit, but was quite cautious). I was finishing sessions feeling like I was underworked. I suspect that will all change now…!

Finished lacing up my Powertap last night too. Just a final tweak / true needed, then I’ll switch over to using that. I’ll do a comparison between the two, and adjust my FTP settings accordingly, then I guess I’ll let the Powertap drive TrainerRoad and hence the turbo’s resistance.

I find that if I’m starting to struggle and thinking about giving up on the next to last interval in a workout then the FTP setting is about right. I can usually tough out the last interval and hang on in there 😀 You can always adjust the FTP setting on your profile page if you don’t fancy doing another test.

I delayed starting this year’s sessions due to having some sort of lurgy so can sympathise with your decision. In my case this now means that next week is, and I quote: “perhaps the most varied and complete week you’ll find in the Sweet Spot Base training plans”. So that’s a Scooby gulp then!

I do wonder if upgrading the turbo trainer a few weeks back is a factor though.

If you’re using virtual power then all bets are off!

Hit a bit of a wall of CBA here and missed a couple of days. A few aches, a touch of manflu, some crap nights. At least it’s a nice day today so get some easy outdoor miles in hopefully.

If you’re using virtual power then all bets are off!

True! My plan is to essentially reset using the Powertap in the next week or two, then everything will be based on that (assuming it works).

For me, if I have some CBA, then the best thing is to indulge it for a couple of days, then dive back in with renewed vigour. (Same goes for dieting actually.)

I’m feeling quite motivated now, and planning to give it some welly in the new year. I also have a big ride booked on Boxing Day, and potentially another on New Year’s Eve. After that I’ll slot properly back into the TR plan, and I’ll be a monster in a few months! 🙂

Ha Ha. I’m starting as I mean to go on. I’ve a time trial (my first) on 1st Jan, then an XC race on 3rd Jan. 😀

Cue XCO plan from then until my first eastern league race in March.

A kill or cure ride outdoors seems to have helped here. Felt rotten with jelly legs for the first hour or so then started to come good. If I was on the turbo I’d have probably abandoned!

Good worked for you. I’m coming off the back of some sort of bug as well, for the past week and a bit just basic commute and even that was hard work. Trail centre play today with wife and friends woke me up but no turbo til after Christmas now.
All the best to everyone and good luck for the New Year.

Glad I’m not the only one with bugs and the like. Having an enforced rest week due to a chest infection. Rapidly thinking it’ll be 2 weeks at least. Planning to just pick up where I left off as an ftp test really doesn’t count as easing back into it gently in my book.

I’ve had various colds and bugs since early November, so never actually started properly 🙁 fingers crossed I’ll shift the man flu for jan, and start the sweet plan.

One more, just one more then its time to stop counting the calories for a few days… 🙄 😯

Good god, just had a spin on a wattbike at the gym just to see what they are like. How can people ride without fans? 10 mins at z1 and i was sweating buckets! Back to my turbo cave for tonight.

Was the power accurate? I’ve tried a couple of bikes at the gym and the power has seemed off compared to my P2M. Either way easier or much harder.

All done, with an extra little effort vid for TT position / helmet set up – I’ll be moving my TT bars off the turbo bike onto the one I’ll use next week – thrown in. I would post it but seeing as I was only wearing bibs some might find it offensive. 😀

B*gger! I somehow seem to have managed to grab a large dram of Caol Isla 😆

Merry Xmas folks and don’t fall too far off the wagon!

Was the power accurate?

Hard to tell really as I was in floppy shoes, position a rough guess, and no cooling. Didn’t feel too far off though.

Xmas day Galena done here 🙂

Right! Holiday break over so back to work 8)

I should have done Jepson on Xmas Eve but the whisky got in the way. I wasn’t sure whether to do Jepson or simply skip that part of the plan. In the end I decided to skip them so did Clark. Six sub FTP intervals with high power stomps to start. A lot of sweat!

Will need to see how much flooding is around us before deciding whether to get outside tomorrow or just do a long steady turbo session.

You know you have those days when you feel good? A shortend club ride (70k) wasn’t doing it for me so I cam home and did Carson 45. 4 x sweetspot 2 of which were at 75rpm with transitions to standing.

I feel worthy of a beer now!

Expecting an “overdone it and feeling crap” post tomorrow 😉

Back on Traineroad after brief flirtation with Zwift. FTP test went quite well – I have had a weeks rest but lots of alcohol – especially yesterday. TR works better than Zwift as I’m located in the shed at the bottom of our garden (wi-fi is a bit in and out). Liked the new OS interface on my phone – no need for a computer now. Looking forward to the Tour of Sufferlandria.

Textbook stupid training mistake here. Abandoned a TR session at 8am this morning, knackered after a bad night (cold, kids, bloody wind) and a couple of hard-ish sessions the days before. Should have probably just spun out an hour at z1 and put it down as a recovery day. Instead, in an even more knackered state having looked after two small kids all day, at 8pm I thought I’d have another bash at the session. The result was predictable 😳

^ Understand what leads to failure and adapt. Overcoming a desire to give up is good racing psychology. It’s quite akin to starting out too fast?

I’d agree when it’s a case of pushing harder than you’re capable of. This really was just tiredness and fatigue and should have been something I was otherwise quite capable of.

On the plus side, I feel grrrrreat today! 😀

I put it down to he massive quantity of protein I down after yesterday’s afternoon effort.

Just had a quick 30 minutes on this using my new iPad, lots more convenient than using the laptop.

Bluetooth picked up my Stages without any bother but obviously won’t pair with my Ant+ HRM

So question is, if I buy one of the Ant+ dongles for iOS is that all I need to pick up heart rate…and will the power meter then default to Ant+ or continue with Bluetooth so long as it’s enabled?

Might it be cheaper to get a BT HR strap?