TrainerRoad – STW approved sessions

think turbo drift is largely responsible

At MSP levels of power I’d also not be surprised if there was quite a lot of wheel slip on the roller. Power meter if serious is the answer.

He’s 3.2w/kg. Hardly huge, thats less than me and I’m the least powerful rider I know – just being factual not willy waving…

Though it’s easier to lose kg than it is to gain watts.

So now it’s time to reduce the recovery interval

First intervals block is hideous. Personally I would up the power and keep the interval.

My winter never had the volume of Z2 from previous years but kept some intensity. As a result I’m about 15-20W up on FTP but my foundations may be a bit shaky. Plan is to do a couple of weeks Z2 training camp closer to A event mid May.

Managed 91% of my 20minute FTP over my 3x 20mins Z4. 700TSS week.

Nice work adsh. What’s the A event? Something marathonish?

Re recovery, I had to push this up to 5 mins, which is too long really. I’ll try 4 mins now then I might try upping the power, but for me I think reducing the recovery further is the way to go.

Kryton57 – Member

Large numbers there MSP

He’s 3.2w/kg. Hardly huge, thats less than me and I’m the least powerful rider I know – just being factual not willy waving…Absolute power is the name of the game in a lot of situations, though – particularly at the amateur level. You would murder a crit at 400W+ if you had the skills to sit in, crushing the 4.5W/Kg merchants, bitter tears of defeat cascading down their pointy cheekbones.
Or a dry cyclocross track with good technique, you would do some damage with 400W threshold at your disposal. Admittedly, MSP would prob need a tractor to tow him out of a muddy course.

Please post more, at 3.56w/kg myself i could use the advice 😀

In the UK absolute power is the name of the game in most situations. I’d love another 100W even if it meant a small reduction in W/Kg.
Although even with another 100W i’d still get crushed by MSP on the flat 😥

Was the Gorrick 100 but as that’s not on I hope it will be Erlestoke 100 – 6hr. If that doesn’t happen I’m stuffed and will try to get some miles in for a quick SDW or something.

Coming towards the end of sweet spot base 1, been riding the recovery week outside just to HR. Can’t remember how my legs should feel at the end of it but definately still feeling training in my legs. Don’t know if I should back off even more tomorrow?

A general recovery/training question. I don’t often get sore legs, tired yes, but not sore. This week my legs have been feeling very hot/burning at rest and a bit achey but not tired. What’s the difference/cause? Its more the heat I’m curious about. My training hasn’t changed, power and HR data still the same/good/hitting the right watts, sleep and diet the same/normal, I’m in my second week of this block, the hot feeling started on Tuesday after a split session (9 vo2 efforts in the morning, weights in the evening) and the heat is much worse after a 2.5 hour tempo ride yesterday. Shouldn’t be overtrained as I’m coached (coach on holiday hence asking on here) and follow a 3 week on 1 week off schedule with structure.

Hydration?

Are you coming off base and doing more intervals? That sounds like quite a training load in 2days.

No, been doing intervals since November, this is a fairly typical week so it shouldn’t be any different, slightly higher TSS yesterday because I was outside instead of turbo but then the heat started on Tuesday and TSS/IF was same as usual. Aside from the heat, I feel great, and I’m usually very good at knowing when I’ve had enough or need an unplanned rest day having been coached for nearly 6 years. Dehydration might be it though.

This may be a general question rather than a TR question, but is anyone else struggling to lose weight?

I’m about to go into my first race 2lbs over race weight. I’m not panicking as this year my racing starts a month earlier. I’m thinking/hoping this is becuase of reduced volume due to winter weather despite the intensity as I’ve now come to the end of SS base / build x 2 / speciality intervals since September.

With calories in I’ve been a bet less diligent than I should but on a weekly basis my net average is hitting my 2000 per day goal.

Lack of volume or just the physiological winter adaptation…?

I haven’t lost any this week, and I’ve had a very strong week, good sessions, and disciplined eating. don’t stress about 2 lbs. it will go in good time.

got to say I am loving TrainerRoad this year. using it with a Wattbike at the work gym, and the improvement from a turbo is incredible. finished all the sessions I’ve done this year, which for me is a big improvement. looking forward to racing this year now, after taking a year out last year.

It’s still winter!

For me there’s many more things than weight that make more difference. 2lb could be increased muscle. When I start to do hill repeats I get motivation to lose weight but now I want to be fed to do hard intervals and gain power

DGOAB – burning legs sounds a bit scary, and possibly inflammatory. Not a doctor, physiologist or coach but if I was getting the same sensations I’d be cautious with it and either stick to low-zone training or even take a couple of days complete rest.

Kryton – I always have the same thing as you this time of year. If you’re less than 1kg over your target weight and it’s still winter then you’re probably on the right track.

Well I decided to stick to the plan last night despite the burning legs. No idea what is going on, but hit my 5min threshold-vo2 efforts spot on, no lactic acid build up or pain during the efforts and hardly breathing hard at all. Post session legs hurt to foam roller (don’t normally) but felt better after riding. Very odd but not complaining.

Kryton, yes I’m struggling with dropping a little too. Having ditched 1-2 turbo session mid week in favour of riding outside that is beginning to help.

@Kryton,
For me, my weight never shifts much more than a couple of kg anyway, but never actually comes down to ‘race weight’ until I start to get in some longer interval sessions (3×20@SS, 2×20@LT) combined with the weekend rides getting a little longer.
Of course that may or may not be training related, could be seasonal as those sessions always start around the same time of year.

I wouldn’t worry about it too much, as from what you’ve posted your training and numbers have gone quite well over the winter.

My ftp didn’t go up, my hill climbing and vo2max medals in TR improved, and this happened:

View this post on Instagram

Boom. End of winter power build. #xco #xcracer

A post shared by Steve Hanks (@velo_stan) on Feb 16, 2017 at 11:12am PST

Eye bleach alert…

Gonna have to follow you to see that as your accounts private.

Back on the bike after 10 days running including a cross country race whilst I was in the UK.

Felt pretty good but I’m finding the 90 minute sessions damn hard to do at 100%.

Its a pic of my quads, which seems to have developed extremely well. Ill spare you…

Re weight, im inclined to agree then. I think once the longer 3000cal weekend rides kick in ill be able to shift the last bit.

As the default training whinge thread… annoyingly poor week here, not enough volume even for an easier week. Kids being home for half term and them and mrs B being full of cold, and rather a busy spell at work, have all disrupted my routine. Even had to cut short last nights ride with a light charging fail that had me riding the last half hour home to the light of my iPhone torch!

Back on it with a vengance next week 😈

Oh and Kryton, get the razor out and sort out those legs!

The 6×7 makes much more sense at 20min power rather than FTP. Makes it a very similar session to MrBlobby’s 4×8 which I can confirm is brutal

Taken me a while to get my head around the 4×8 sessions. Think hard sessions are a real mental game and you can often be beaten by them before you even start. Got the recovery down to 4 minutes and I was almost tempted to have a crack at a 5th interval today!

Got this week and next of 4×8, then it’ll be longer outdoor race pace efforts.

Got Lamarck on the schedule tomorrow, 4 * 10 at bang on FTP with 2 minutes recovery. IF of 0.92, nice.

Agree that mentally I find these sessions way harder than the VO2 max ones. Ooh well just knuckle down and get it done.

Starting to firm up the races now for April and May which is helping with the motivation, as is the ever increasing amount of daylight over here.

What you up to now Chef, more XC?

Yup, back on the bike after a short flirtation with running last year.

Couple of marathon distance events early on and if they go to plan then i’ll commit to the national series with an aim of placing top 10 in vets 40.

4th week of my 6×7. Same power, lower HR and less pain. Need to retest and recalibrate post rest week. Thought I would have to flunk the last session but beyond aches was power once I got going. Ate like a pig so really couldn’t face failure.

The Swedish Chef – Member

Got Lamarck on the schedule tomorrow, 4 * 10 at bang on FTP with 2 minutes recovery. IF of 0.92, nice.

Agree that mentally I find these sessions way harder than the VO2 max ones. Ooh well just knuckle down and get it done.TR’s sweetspot base II seems a bit of a misnomer – plenty of those sessions (e.g. Lamarck) are v hard.
It’s all good stuff, but I like sweetspot sessions because I can do them whenever, even if I’m feeling tired or out of sorts, without it being a big deal. Doubt I’d get through Lamarck if I wasn’t feeling good beforehand.

adsh, be interesting to hear what happens when you re-test.

I’ve likely made some progress, having failed at the first 7 attempts at this session I’m now managing them just above target power with the right length of recovery. Hopefully this translates to overall gains and not just session specific! Some of it is certainly getting comfortable with the intensity again after a winter of much plodding.

I think this is going to be my last cycle of these 8 min sessions. I’m tempted to do a round or two of 5 min based sessions next (something like 6 x 5 @ 110%) before a move to longer, more specific, race pace efforts.

If I can ever recover!Supposed to do 90minutes tempo tonight. 2 large slices of toast later and I’m on here with my eyelids drooping. Must not nap……

I did Errickson this morning, as part of the sweetspot base plan.

as with the last two workouts my HR hasn’t got up to sweetspot range, until I whacked it up to 110%.

as such, still feeling good, so going to go and do gendarmes 30 now. some nice short sweet VO2 max efforts….

If I can ever recover!Supposed to do 90minutes tempo tonight. 2 large slices of toast later and I’m on here with my eyelids drooping. Must not nap…..

Recovery is tricky when doing those sorts of sessions. When not doing the hard session I’m pretty much only doing z1 or z2. Don’t do much at all in z3 or z4. Even bumping up the hours a bit I’ve had to take a hit on weekly TSS (I’m on about 600 off 12 hrs.)

(Though I did have quite a FTP setting hike early Jan that’s taken a while to get use to, 700 TSS suddenly became 600 TSS 😐 )

gendarmes 30

Have fun warton, that session is anathema to me!

Well I made it through Lamarck but had to dig deep mentally.

30 minute spin tomorrow than back at it Saturday before a week of trying to make the best of it in hotel gyms halfway across the world.

gendarmes 30
Have fun warton, that session is anathema to me!

Didn’t actually find it that hard. I think I need another FTP tbh.

wrong thread

Well I couldn’t face a proper session so did 2hrs on the rollers to Danny Howard alternating Z2/3 according to tracks.

Didn’t actually find it that hard. I think I need another FTP tbh.

Could just be the problem with a workout that bases your 30 second effort capacity on an estimate of your 60 minute max based on a fairly uncontrolled 20 minute (or 2x 8 minute) max field test effort. Or you need to do another test 🙂

Massive motivation struggles here. Cracked on Huffaker on Tuesday, was within a whisker of cracking on Donner last night. Riding outside over the w/e and then having a taper week (not that I’ve really be training enough to taper) before race next sunday. Am hopin race will kick my motivation into gear. If not I’m giving TR a rest till autumn and jsut doing what i can outside. Any suggestions of other similar simplistic training plans (HR only) that I can use outside? IF not I’ll make a note of the rough form of the TR plans and replicate that as best I can

Ride outdoors! Spend a few days unstructured just riding for the fun of it.

Both those look tough sessions, especially if tired and not up for it.

Any riding is better than no riding. If TR saps your motivation to the extent you don’t want to ride then do another sort of ride instead.

Things to try – Strava hill smash fest, hill repeats, ride out for as long and fast as you can then have to ride back.

My current motivator is SS – it’s a hoot.

Definitely head outside.

I’m doing the low volume plans as it leaves me the chance to get out on the bike a rip it up once or twice a week to keep my head and technical skills in shape.

I’d be fitter doing the mid volume plan but I know that I’d never be motivated enough so this seems like the best compromise.