trainerroad / sufferfest – which workouts for general improvement

signed up for trainerroad the other week and did the 20min FTP test last night (found that tough!). Anyway am wondering what trainerroad or sufferfest workouts to look at for improving my mtb and road biking fitness.

I dont race or do TT’s but I enjoy riding hills on the road bike, and on the MTB i find i often run out of energy to ‘attack’ steep sections or obstacles. I’ve downloaded suferfest angels but not ridden it yet, just wondered what to search for in the trainerroad workout library, or should i just pick a few random ones?

I’d go with one of their plans to get a better overall effect.

If you’ve paid the money for a subscription and all the ANT+ stuff then you really ought to do it justice and follow a plan rather than dip in and out.

However given your description then anything that is classed as tempo/threshold/sweet spot would be good. Longer intervals not at 100%, so in Sufferfest terms the hunted and angles would be two good ones.

i’m back into it due to bad weather at the moment and have plumped for Inter Build 1 http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/plans/93-intermediate-build-i
Just trying to roll through the workouts currently, if it goes well I will drop into Build 2 in time for my big race in Jan or if the weather gets good probably cancel for a few months and then panic nearer the time…

i like the 20 minute power accelerator plan.

BUT, and it’s a big but. i think it would be worth adding in some more high end work (sufferfest type stuff) as you can lose the peaky stuff.

😀

Gray and Starr King are good bread and butter threshold workouts I reckon. Can always knock down the intensity a few percent the first few times. For harder shorter intervals I like Kaiser and The Thumb, which may help with the hills. Galena and Ericsson are probably quite good ones for longer sub threshold workouts.

I don’t really bother with sufferfest much as I just watch some on-demand telly.

Be interesting to hear what other people do as I could do with adding a bit of variety.

2x20min (or 4x10min) is all the pain you need. If it’s not hard enough then you too the FTP test too easy and need to input some bigger numbers, I found it was possible to set the FTP 10% higher than the first test, it made subsequent tests/workouts hell, but they were still achievable.

Unless you want to attack really short sections, in which case find them on strava to get an idea of a good time, and search for intervals arround that time e.g if you race enduro, unelss the climbs are really tight, your 30s power (i.e. a short flat sprint mid stage) is probably far more important than your 20min FTP.

Bear in mind that working on one interval will affect the others too, so doing 20min intervals at FTP will lift your 10min, 5min, 1min, 30s, 5s power by incrementaly smaller ammounts, and the reverse is true, hitting the gym and working on your 5s (neuro-muscular) power will do the opposite and slightly improve your FTP. Winter’s a good time to work on FTP as it’s the slowest to decreace when not training it, so you taper towards events with shorter intervals, peaking with really short ones just before the event which give you the top end, but those gains will be lost within weeks, so no point doing them in the middle of the ‘off-season’ whereas FTP will stay high regardless.

For keeping it simple then 2 * 20 is as good as its gonna get for an hour’s workout, so +1 to thisisnotaspoon

this site has quite a good overview of the principles

How to Increase Your Threshold Power

For keeping it simple then 2 * 20 is as good as its gonna get for an hour’s workout, so +1 to thisisnotaspoon

Yeah, for this have a look at Gray. You may want to do a bit more of a warm up though. Starr King is a 3×15 which is also good. Galena is a 3×20 at a slightly lower power.

There’s a button in the bottom corner to knock the intensity up and down during a workout. May be worth giving these a go and then tweaking the intensity so you find you can just about finish them. After you’ve done a few go back and do the threshold test again when you can better gage your effort (which I think is probably just what TINAS has said!)

Any recommendations for some good over/under workouts?

Angels. Twice a week. Add The Hunted to taste. Tempo is for the road. Itervals is where you’ll see improvement.

I have considered Trainerroad (plus maybe sufferfest vids) for the winter but my concern is a bit like The Swedish Chef mentions in that it probably makes sense to stick to a plan rather than dip in and out…

The concern is how flexible are the various plans to taking in to account two outdoor rides per week? There’s no way I would want to do all of my rides indoors so if there are plans allowing for some useful low intensity time outside that would be great. How does it all practically fit together?

At the moment I work on the basis that pretty much all cycling efforts (even the hard ones) have a large aerobic content so a reasonable amount of low intensity time on the bike is helpful. Add to that some very short, very hard intervals to build speed,longer slightly less hard intervals to build power, and some longer lactate tolerance intervals (mixed and matched depending on goals and the time of the year). Is that pretty much what the plans would help give you the structure to achieve and help time the various components correctly throughout the year? Of course the attraction of Trainerroad is doing all of this to “power” relative to a FTP test rather than some HR zones which are pretty variable…

For 2 x 20 take a look at Hell Hath No Fury…

http://www.thesufferfest.com/video-sufferfests/hell-hath-no-fury/

I find Angels good for helping me stay out of the saddle for longer.

The concern is how flexible are the various plans to taking in to account two outdoor rides per week? There’s no way I would want to do all of my rides indoors so if there are plans allowing for some useful low intensity time outside that would be great. How does it all practically fit together?

I am just doing them in order, if I go outside then the next session slips a couple of days. If I can get 4 instead of 3 done in a week then I catch up.

I am just doing them in order, if I go outside then the next session slips a couple of days. If I can get 4 instead of 3 done in a week then I catch up.

i’ve done this. and i’ve also replaced trainer rides with out side rides:
If a trainer ride is peaky i’ll sprint up hills etc. if it’s a tempo ride i’ll hold back a bit uphill.

you can also dip in and out of plans. I’ve used the 40TT plan like this – i just use it to pinch rides i like the look of – rather than follow the plan as such.

Any recommendations for some good over/under workouts?

Is there a rule about answering your own questions? Anyway, just tried Scylla. A 3×12 OU. Could do with the overs being a bit harder than prescribed but other than that it was pretty good.

By the way, there is also a workout builder thing if you want to program your own.

I’ll investigate the plans in detail after the cross season finishes here, (mid Dec).

I’ll hope to replace the two weekend trainer sessions with like for like road sessions until the snow hits, then its a case of riding inside or XC skiing.