TrainerRoad – STW approved sessions

Despite the fact your FTP did not improve over winter it was still a period of training that’s given you the foundations for your season.

Only you can decide if you want to sacrifice BotB for increased training for the 9th. My advice – do either or and not a half arsed fudge.

Results aren’t really a valid way of judging the success of your training. Are you fitter – apparently not (though FTP isn’t all IMHO), are your skills improved, can you dig deeper, is your pacing better. Unless the answers to these are positive you’re racing for your experience and the event is part of the long term journey to your goals. That means you should be setting event goals such as:-

1. Best possible start
2. Hold position along the beach into the single track
3. Maintain position while recovering
4. Manage pacing
5. Always racing for position
6. No crashing

Judge yourself on these not some arbitrary position that depends more on what others have done than what you have done.

Are you fitter – apparently not (though FTP isn’t all IMHO), are your skills improved, can you dig deeper, is your pacing better.

Things have actually changed in two fronts:

Fitness – my VO2max efforts show improvements, by ability to cope with pain / bury myself has improved and my muscular endurance/strength it greather than before – I’m improved pace & ability on climbs. Yes my FTP is flat but I’ve not gone less than 5w under on a test either, and I’ve been doing the 8min tests which because of my vo2max issues aren’t my preference.

Strategy – now starting my 3rd year I’m much improved. I can “see” whats going on, know what to do, when to holdback/overtake, who to aim for,how to watch strengths and weakness aligned with defense of my own. I’m very much more comfortable with pacing and can “see” the race in a non panick way far better than before.

I believe both of the above are outcomes of experience and my own relative ability and overall comfort about myself on and off the bike.

Thanks all three for the training guidance this week. Scott MTB on the 9th is more important.

any idea WHY your FTP hasn’t improved.

I had a period of no improvement, actually dropped FTP whilst training. I followed a training plan of 2 x 20 @ 90%. After several weeks of that my FTP dropped to ‘90%’.

Obviously i needed a different stimulus – I was gutted at the time. Got back into a program that works for me and i returned a 11% increase. Happy with that.

any idea WHY your FTP hasn’t improved.

Can’t speak for Kryton, and he probably has his own ideas, but he’s time crunched and has 3 years training under his belt. Its entirely possible that with those constraints there’s only very marginal improvements still to find.

I’d consider his return of increased muscular endurance and ability to dig-in/suffer to be a reasonable return.

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.

No surprise there. 5 months of structure and intensity is a long time.
At 5 months many people would be approaching a mid season break before rebuilding to secondary set of objectives, and you’ve only just started racing for the season.

Its entirely possible that with those constraints there’s only very marginal improvements still to find.

Possibly. I seem to have improved weaknesses (VO2max & climbing) which ultimately was my aim. I’m also crap at FTP tests, and have little choice but to perform them after work PLUS I’ve had issues with stress at work over that training period. Viewed retrospectively, I’m completing 95% of my intervals only failing a little on the final bits of Vo2 Max but am flat on tests.

I also missed a TR instruction to a)repeat Threshold sessions until I’m able to complete them before I move on and b) lower the intensity of Vo2max if I wasn’t succeeding, so in some workouts I may have been pushing at a closed door!

rebuilding to secondary set of objectives

After the Scott MTB Marathon I’m starting a Torq plan leading up to the next one on 28th May. The planning stage of that allowed me to specify more closely the time/when I have time available. Its built me a nice looking plan which is akin to TR, can be replicated by finding the matching TR workout indoors of performing them outdoors now that summer is here.

For example, Thursdays are pretty much Threshold workouts, which I can achieve indoors, through my road club “hills” training ride which happens Thursdays, or by taking my MTB to my locale and riding a familiar testing loop.

End April through May has Wednesday might MTB races (1hr) as well so I’ll get some decent intervals there. 🙂

I would just add this isn’t just self certified – I’ve had comments from my road club colleagues that I am stronger than before on lead outs, sprints & climbing.

You do seem to place a lot of pressure on yourself Kryton57.

Racing every Wednesday with a threshold session the next day in the build up phase to a major race. This does, with the base information I’ve gleaned from this thread, kinda feel like it might not have the desired ending. Sorry.

At what point will you free yourself of the mental shackles of a plan and just go out and ride and recover for a bit?

Racing every Wednesday with a threshold session the next day

I wasn’t clear, one will replace the other 🙂

At what point will you free yourself of the mental shackles of a plan and just go out and ride and recover for a bit?

I have been doing that lately!

I would just add this isn’t just self certified – I’ve had comments from my road club colleagues that I am stronger than before on lead outs, sprints & climbing

FTP (8MP, 20MP or 60MP) is only a point on your power – time curve. It’s entirely feasable that your curve has changed shape whilst your 8MP hasn’t increased.

FTP (8MP, 20MP or 60MP) is only a point on your power – time curve. It’s entirely feasable that your curve has changed shape whilst your 8MP hasn’t increased.

That’s a very good observation.

Glad to hear it. 😆

As others have said, FTP is only one part of the picture. If you have a way of comparing your critical power for other durations (I use TrainingPeaks to do this) then you get a better picture of other improvements. This is useful for spotting and monitoring limiters too.

Well, z2 30 minutes complete’s OK last night and seems no ill effects.

So, Sweet Spot indoors today, or an outdoor loop consisting of 40 minutes of perhaps power measured climbs with a 20 minute cruise back home for lunch?

Good to hear you’re on the mend.

Sounds like a plan. Outside for that session seems more logical if the weather permits.

First ‘Criss Cross’ session coming up. 5minutes threshold with 5minutes sweet spot ‘recovery’ and repeat x3. Much dread.

Can’t manage threshold 😯

Can’t manage threshold

Not a particularly encouraging sign
Clock session hangover?

Jesus. Sure you’re not ill?

adsh – do you have a new FTP? if so it might be worth completing the workout with the intensity dialled down and having a crack at 100% the next time.

Kryton – mimicking the TR workouts exactly is pretty hard outside, but it’s usually possible to get the gist of the workout, and riding around in nice weather is better than coating your garage in sweat. I have a screen on my garmin that has %ftp and lap power showing on it – this helps to get the interval in the right ballpark.

I did Tyndall (15/15 anaerobic repeats) on the road last night and it felt GREAT.

I did go out on the basis of riding sweet spot which, with variations of traffic/wind I managed for an hour…

…albeit at FTP. I swear outdoor FTP is different from indoor FTP. Cruising around for 32km’s for an hour at “FTP” should have had me quivering.

I swear outdoor FTP is different from indoor FTP

Many coaches would say the same thing.
Indoor FTP is probably lower.

Climbing FTP can also differ from flat FTP due to differences muscle recruitment.

Not ill just a lot of fatigue in legs. Week 3, last interval and a day off hasn’t cut it. Will retry tomorrow – joy.

Taken an easy week so far due to work/live/fatigue.

Two one hour sessions at around 80% and two 30 minutes sessions.

First blow out tomorrow, I’m doing an 80km gravel ride with 8 marked out segments, uphill, and a 5km handicap race to finish. Nothing serious but it should give me a good indication as to where I am fitness wise.

Finished hard 3 week block took 4 days off to recover and despite cramp most nights (always on recovery) managed a very good ftp test today with a 10w increase on best and more on end of last season. Vindicates the pain of more intervals.

Solid progress adsh!

I’m working my way through the new short power build plan, which is pretty hard work but seems to be paying off. Starting to simulate TR rides outside now that the weather has improved and the trails are drying up nicely, which makes a pleasant change from riding the rollers.

A sanity check please, if I may… Between Scott Marathons, I’m using Torq’s plan generator to provide a plan to the next race, based on XC Marathon. However, I set up a plan to 28th May last night and aside from one Saturday morning full of sprint sessions, it consists of Tempo, Sweet Spot and recovery rides only – theres no Intensity. FWIW its knocking on 8hrs a week volume.

I will be replicating the workouts outside as much as possible, if I have to default to the Turbo due to time/weather I will use a TR workout to simulate the required efforts.

BUT – this appears to go againts the grain of TR’s low volume = intensity ethos albeit who am I to question Torq?

I’m worried about doing the wrong thing, and my performance at the recent Marathon wasn’t good so would apprteciate any comments on this.

What wasn’t “good” about your last marathon performance? Was it an endurance or intensity weakness?

I’d always want to see some intensity (VO2Max type intervals) in a plan as I think that this is needed, especially in MTB racing for those want to race/be competitive.

8hrs a week of true quality is a solid plan.

Unless you repeatedly climb/ride flats at threshold before recovering on single track you are probably better off with tempo and sweetspot.

True sweetspot is very tough. Torq (coached) had me doing 5x 15minutes at 90-93% of FTP. That nightmare session is enough to give good gains by itself. I proved this by racing well having only done that one quality session for over a month. One more interval session and some tempo (or base if you’re too knackered) and you’re good.

The critical thing is to make that key session the highest quality – you need to be well rested, well fed, feed on the bike and truly dread it. It should take every ounce of self discipline to complete.

Ok thanks.

‘Chef, the good bit was finishing tbh. Usual for me I wasn’t strong on the climbs, and I got really tired and my focus was lapsing on the downs with the addition of taking the wrong bike – carbon HT on hard dry ground – for the distance. Due to noisy camping I did have a poor nights sleep. I’ll download the results later to see where in the percentile of vets I came, but I would expect to be poor as I’m not a strong climber and this has lots of hills.

Duriong this plan period I will have “accidentally” performed once a week race intensity as I will be racing weekly (London Beastway) from April 29 onwards,

ADSH – thanks, I’m sure they klnow what they are doing, so I will follow diligently. Your perspective on quality rings true and I’d rather be outside so I may buy a power pod to give me some accuracy for SS – did you use power or HR/RPE?

The Torq plan also allows me to genarate a climber plan for strength, maybe I should try that between May and July for the 3rd round.

Given you said you got really tired, i’d say tempo and SS sessions sound like exactly what you need. I don’t like them long term, but they are great for 8 weeks or so of building the engine.

As adsh says, once you get up to 60+mins of SS in a session you really know about it and it starts to become a mental game as well as a physical one towards the end. I’ll echo the advice to fuel well to ensure its a good quality session.

Interesting. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water after one poor result, it may have been down to a 1000 other things not training related.

That said, if the tiredness was felt from the middle of the race onwards then certainly the suggestions to look at tempo/SS type training makes a lot of sense.

Did you start too quickly? There is a fine line in getting to the first single track section in a good position versus blowing yourself up for later?

No, it was a neutralised start, and i didnt hammer the first climb alhough it was big and a bit of a shock to the system.

I looked back over my winter training and the sessions or opportunity’s ive missed have been the longer SS and weekend rides due to weather. My short course xc pace and management has improved, so im thinking im training ok for 90 mins but lacking volume/stamina for more. So, ill stick with the tempo/SS plan – theyll be more long club rides now as well – and see how i go in the chilterns for the next round. Ive crunched the numbers and im in the top 3rd /62nd this time so now i can compare the next round.

From your other thread:

Time crunched training doesn’t do anything for your core, arms, shoulders and Mental state which all come in to play hugely. If you’re core is done and you still have half the race to go, you are going to feel beat up regardless.

How often do you just go out for long mtb rides when you push at pace in technical terrain. Now that my training plan is as simple as ‘ride my bike as much as possible, in whichever way i feel like on the day’ I’m really noticing sore shoulders after faster rides. I’d ditch the club runs for a few hours on the mtb

To repeat what I said in there, I wasn’t expecting to do these events so trained only for XCO, within which I have improved my pace.

Even within my XCO place I’ve missed some SS/Tempo weekend workouts & longer winter rides as life took over.

So in reflection, well underprepared. I’ll focus now on longer rides, and the SS/Tempo Torq plan.

I’ve cancelled my trainer road subscription so can’t find out, but does anyone know if there is a scientific reason why TR tended to put the higher intensity intervals work in the week and then the weekend is longther threshold intervals etc. Despite my ‘I’m not training anymore’ mantra i still roughly structure my week (rest monday, hard tues, short easy weds, hard thurs, short easy fri, hard sat, longer and easy sunday.

Tomorow I has been planning on doing some hill intervals, but i really don’t feel like it, so instead think I’ll blat around the local mini trail centre for my threshold stuff and incorporate some sprints on Saturdays ride.

I’ve cancelled my trainer road subscription so can’t find out, but does anyone know if there is a scientific reason why TR tended to put the higher intensity intervals work in the week and then the weekend is longther threshold intervals etc.

Thats what caused my issues – I should have moved the Threshold workouts from Saturday to Thursday to avoid missing them.

but does anyone know if there is a scientific reason why TR tended to put the higher intensity intervals work in the week

Don’t know if its TR’s reasoning, but there are 2 reasons for doing this.

1) Generally the higher intensity sessions are the shortest, which ties in well with time crunched athletes squeezing in sessions before/after work/family commitments.
2) You are likely to be fresher during the week than after a week of intervals, putting the most intense intervals first makes you more likely to be able to hit your target powers for all sessions

ferrals – Member
I’ve cancelled my trainer road subscription so can’t find out, but does anyone know if there is a scientific reason why TR tended to put the higher intensity intervals work in the week and then the weekend is longther threshold intervals etc.

The only reason why they schedule anything in a weekly format like that is that they (probably rightly) assume that most people have more time at weekends and are more time constrained every other day. Monday off to recover from increased TSS over the weekend and/or from races.

Personally – I commute monday to friday with the odd day WFH, so I fit the workouts into the commute, and will either do trainer work outs on the WFH and weekends, depending what suits. The only important thing is to be consistent and understand that the bigger TSS workouts usually have an easy or off day prescribed before them for the reason that you need to be rested and ready or the quality may suffer, or worse, the session may get binned.

Just finished the last big week on Sweetspot base phase 1. Would echo the above statements about the difficulty. Two 130+ TSS rides in two days is tough.

First block of training I have ever made conscious decisions about fuelling training rides before, during and after.

cheers, fifeandy & barrykellet, I though that was the case.

For me I’m fairly flexible around work time but saturdays is family time so actually I’m probably more time constrained on the w/e.

A lot of the time I am similar so usually base the week round my day off, saturday in that case.

So… i flunked a 20min test Monday, badly. such was the extreme dull leg pain couldn’t keep going for more than 5 mins at a time, despite completing the 5 mins vo2max warmup no probs.

As its effectively invalid, do i lower my ftp according to TR as i obviously struggled, and use my next few Ss sessions to gauge back upward?

I have been carrying a quad strain for some time, but it didnt hurt or strain during the test – would this have affected it?

How tired were you going into the test… i.e a week of limited to no riding and a few gentle spins or after a lot of riding over the long weekend?