TrainerRoad – STW approved sessions

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

It’s funny, I always think the sweet spot base plans are ‘easy’ but actually there’s a fair amount of stress hidden in there.

Outside riding it is for a while – but maybe not today, it’s rank outside!

Just did Truuli as a loosener for tomorrows race. It felt too easy but with that im off plan, only repeating the last few weeks of build or speciality including a long ride at the weekend, deferring to outdoors where possible between monthly races. .

Mid week TT or from April-July XC races will replace the turbo.

Whoop.

East Vidette.

Just ugh!

Deerhorn – Another sweetspot / Over-under type workout that was surprisingly tough.

Yup, over and unders are hard work, more so than simply keeping at one power level, still I think they work well and much better replicate actual XC racing.

In China on business at the moment and trying to perform sessions on random hotel gym bikes, with varying success.

First fail of the season. Rest week after hard 3 week block that’s left it’s mark with cramping at night and some DOMS. My rest weeks have one interval session. Aimed to do 3x20minutes high sweetspot this morning, not feeling it while warming up so modified to one 20minute FTP effort. At 10minutes power drained away (and I had eaten beforehand) and I warmed down. S’pose it’s good I’m empty but I hate failure.

Doesn’t sound like real failure to me. 20 minutes at FTP isn’t really resting, is it? May not be a high volume, but if you’re that fatigued from the last three weeks then that does mean you’ve really been putting the effort in. Maybe lower intensity maintenance for the week would be more effective.

For a bit of sanity regarding this, its worth reading the first 20 pages of Friels book again. It address age, ability motivation and experience. Its a good reminder of the expectations we have of ourselves, our age and experience and how that effects us.

After bemoaning my weekend race results and on Tuesday struggling through a 5x 6mins @ 105% effort, its pretty obvious i was tired with 4 months training in my legs, 48hrs from a race effort and am only 3 years – still physiologically developing says Friel – into racing, pitting myself in that state against people who know far better and have more experience that I. Common sense says that a 45yo who started serious racing and training at 42 is way behind the curve of someone training and racing for the last 20 years in the same category.

Ive reset my profiled “low ability high motivation tendancy to anxiously overtrain” mental goals from “being the best i can at every race” to “trying to imorove my performance every year”.

Cest la vie.

on a similar note, I’ve reser sims even further to just enjoying myself this year as I don’t have time to train and (I now realise) am not getting enough sleep to recover properly. Even though I’m not as fit, part of me wonders if I’ll do better as I don’t feel any self-made pressure.

With that said – Bird, smashed!

Well done! I was going to do a session this evening, but I feel tired so I’m going to drink wine instead.

Spent the last 8 days in China using TrainerRoad on my Android phone. It’s been reading my Ant+ HR strap and I’m able to use the hotel gym bikes that have power to match my plan!

Managed to string together a couple of good sessions as well as a number of 45 minute recovery rides. Much better than I’d expected.

One more hotel night to go then I can look at kicking off a build block when I’m back home.

I did Morgan 30 to supplement week 4 of sweetspot base, on Thursday evening.

my god it was tough, managed to get through it though

So the plan calls for 1:30 of Kaweah (5×10 mins at 95% of ftp with 5 minutes rest). I don’t have time for 1hour 30 so am looking for an hour.

Choices I can find are Marion (3×12 with 5 minute rest) or Rogers (4×7 with 7 minutes at 50% ftp for recovery).

Much of a muchness? Any others people might recommend?

Lamarck or Darwin would be close.

I kicked off short power build this week and managed Grassy Ridge tonight.

Darwin – 4×10 with 3 minutes inbetween.. ouch or Lamarck – 4×10@FTP with 2 minutes inbetween. 😯 Sometime ignorance is bliss. Wish I hadn’t asked….

Lamarck’s a bugger.

Did Gould tonight. Oufff!

So I just did a search for the word “plateau” in the TR Blog, which revealed 2 pieces of insight I’d not put into practise before:

A) If you can’t complete a sub threshold workout, dont move on to the next workout. Do it again until you can. Otherwise you are continully working up to harder workouts, wont complete them and wont progress. Just repeat, complete, and progress at a slower rate.

B) For VO2max steadily lower the intensity but not below 110% FTP, and do it again. Now continue the vo2max components plan at the reduction you can – just – complete, becuase everyones VO2max levels are different.

The Science Behind Getting Faster and Breaking Through a Fitness Plateau

Unfortnately that mean Shortoff +1 again for me on Monday. I always struggle with vo2max over about 2mins.

Has anyone previously completed sweet spot Base and able to share hoe it affected their fitness later on?

Currently near beginning of the 2nd 6 week block and the intensity is much higher than what I’ve been used to doing previous years so concerned I’ll be tired once I get to the build phases!

@Jase. Roughly how old are you?

Depending on age rest becomes ever more important and so the TrainerRoad rest weeks should be taking it easy and not an excuse to ride hard the rest of the time.

I’ve always found the programs are well designed and so if you follow them fairly faithfully then shouldn’t get to tired and a lot fitter. It’s when try to add in other fun stuff as well that risk of over doing it appears.

The build phases are eight weeks long but have a rest week in the middle.

Darwin ended up being my choice for the evening and it was reasonably grim.

@ jase
The last week of SS base is a recovery week, so you should go into the build phase, which starts with an FTP test, quite well rested. That’s the theory.

I assume that you’re doing the low volume plan?

Are you doing anything else like gym work, football, normal riding that is causing excess fatigue?

I found the 90 minutes sessions hard in the second block, and there is a subtle move towards higher intensity VO2max work in that plan too.

I’ve done their SS base a few times now and do feel that that by concentrating on the specific aspects of base fitness I can then move on to the more VO2max work and really push myself.

Good work there sweaman2 😀

I’m 43, doing the high volume but as soon as clocks change will switch to riding outside so won’t actually complete Base 2.

Bit of a general question…

New to TR and I’m currently in week 5 of General Build – Low Volume (didn’t do a base plan as I figured I had a reasonable base for a recreational MTBer already), finding it quite useful and thinking about what to move on to once I finish this 8 weeks.

Not a racer – been riding MTB for 20-odd years though and just looking to build some better structured fitness for general MTBing (trail centres, natural stuff in Wales / Peak / Lakes).

Hopefully, I’ll start to get more proper rides in as the weather and light improve, but any suggestions as to a good TR plan to move on to next that will ‘fill in the gaps’?

Interesting day today. after racing at the weekend, and finishing the base phase I had an 8 minute test to do today. i was wrecked, but gave it a go, and actually finished it quite well.

jumped from 211 FTP to 247. assuming because I didn’t go as hard as i could the first time. I think this build phase is going to be tough though. sticking to low volume this phase, as I will be racing as well.

Nice work there Warton, that’s a significant gain in FTP, be interesting to know how hard you find the sessions now in comparison to your previous plan

@colournoise , the TR podcast, (excellent listen), advice would be to say do low volume base. Its not traditional base and is hard work based on sweet spot intervals. As you’re not racing then these sessions would give you the most benefit. Else marathon XC plan or rolling road race seem good general plans for long days on the bike.

just about completed with the 20minute power accelerator (archived plan). which is the best ‘base’ for me over the winter months.

I definately felt stronger this weekend; 4 days of welsh hills. 😀

20 minute test on sunday. what workout(s) for thursday/ friday to prep for the test. Thinking sphinx or lamarck. Any thoughts?

Lamarck and Sphinx are too tough for a pre-ftp test workout to my mind. I’d be looking for something more sweetspot; less prep and more rest 🙂

@swedishchef, yeah looked at some of the numbers i need to hit for the first V02 max session on Thursday, and they are ‘interesting’ 🙂

The Swedish Chef – Member

@colournoise , the TR podcast, (excellent listen), advice would be to say do low volume base. Its not traditional base and is hard work based on sweet spot intervals. As you’re not racing then these sessions would give you the most benefit. Else marathon XC plan or rolling road race seem good general plans for long days on the bike.

Cheers. Will look at those.

Currently on an enforced week off TR thanks to bashing my knee stupidly hard climbing into the van yesterday and it coming up like a egg. Now very stiff and sore (bending it enough to get over the top of a pedal stroke is deeply unpleasant in a that’s-doing-more-damage-than-good way) so I think best to lay off pedalling completely for a few days.

TR releasesd a big update on their plans earlier this week.

Build seems to have got quite a makeover.
http://blog.trainerroad.com/training-plans-update-newly-revised-build-plans/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+trainerroad+%28TrainerRoad+Blog%29

If you’re on the build plan then you’ll need to stop that plan and start the new one.

First 3 interval clock session. Much pain. Gaps are getting of the bike (in order, stretching, get gel for later and nearly puking)

Clock by [/url], on Flickr

Clock session?

15s, 30s, 1min, 2mins, 3mins,2 mins,1 min, 30s, 15s flat out hard as with 1minute rest between each effort. 5mins recovery and repeat x2.

😯

Could I ask an for an opinion(s) please?

After a crap race on Sunday I fell ill which probably explains my lack of performance. I believe it was/is a stomach bug – very achey, elevated HR by 10BPM and running slightly hot Monday and yesterday with the shits. I feel much better today.

Me being me, I’m worried about loss of performance/training but have kept away from a bike / turbo so far. I feel OK today. I have Battle on the Beach Sunday – result slightly irrelevant more for craic – so my thoughts are to do a good VO2Max session tonight (Pigsah) and a 30 min race start intervals (Dorr) Friday – but should I have another day off the bike and miss one of those?

My next set of racing is Scott MTB on 9th April – so I can get a week of intervals and a week taper in before then, then a race on the 29th, with a mix of training and mid week 1hr races before the next Scott MTB on 28th May – what I’m saying here is that I have plenty of time and relevant effort to get back up to speed…?

I would do nothing till Friday/Sat personally. I spent most of last cx season dragging out a virus by not resting when i started to feel better.

Spend the next couple of days rebuilding your hydration and energy stores

You have forced yourself into a taper – hurray!

If Battle on the Beach is a serious event for you then a couple of 10 minute z4/5 intervals tonight a couple of 10minute tempo intervals on Friday and Saturday a gentle bimble on the race bike to check set up with a couple of 2minute threshold efforts followed by a can of coke or carb drink

You did your time in the winter, now don’t screw it up

I spent most of last cx season dragging out a virus by not resting when i started to feel better.

I want to avoid that, the serious racing is just in front of me.

You did your time in the winter, now don’t screw it up

I didn’t have a good winter (flat FTP) but still yes, I’m learning slowly 🙂 Although I had a bad race Sunday I equalled last years result, and the prior week was 5 places up. Probably carrying a virus, getting a poor start and equalling last year can’t be a bad sign

If Battle on the Beach is a serious event for you

Not really, but red mist and all that and if I don’t do better than the 75th Vet I got last year I won’t deal with it well mentally, although I appreciate thats a mentality I need to tone down for my own Sanity.

I noted in mt forum history this time last year I posted a “Is Racing without podiums worth it” type thread, whereby I explain much the same issues I’ve experienced over the last 2 weeks, a year ago. So there’s a pattern – I obviously come off 4/5 months of winter turbo in a slightly fragile state and probably need more rest/taper than I am applying at the end of the plans to avoid mental and physical issues.

30 minutes easy tonight, nothing more. If you’ve been ill and raced then you’ll almost certainly still battling through this despite feeling better.

If OK then a sweet spot session tomorrow.

Race as planned.

IMO