Trying to get to 4w/kg

Assuming your outdoor FTP is likely a little higher than your indoor one, may be worth reducing your indoor FTP until you can hold it a little longer? Assuming (again) that your ramp test was performed indoors.

Yeah, I don’t train at my indoor FTP, I knock it back nearly 10 watts for ERG mode.

Joe – I rode really hard in 2018 & 2019 when re-discovered the pleasures of an XC bike at the same time as I finally took up monitoring myself electronically. I don’t know what my power:weight was back then, but I’m unlikely to match my Strava times again. But, bearing in mind the work and wider family stresses I was under at the time, I was probably overtraining. It’s perhaps an obvious explanation in hindsight for the series of unexplained urinary tract infections I had at the same time. I later changed my mindset when it comes to work and fitness from the end of 2020.

I still keep my performance in mind, but I regularly ask myself: to what end? Ultimately I want to be able to take on any ride at the drop of a hat, and to enjoy good health for the benefit of me & my family. Some of your own motivation will depend on whom you ride with – maybe you need to ride more with @ianpv if you want to be able to use 4w/kg. 😉

I’ve found my stats to be quite deceptive anyway in that I probably have quite a low FTP for the people I match up against in real life. Some of this is probably down to my pedalling style, lightweight XC bike etc.

I try to focus as much on wider factors than just those that influence FTP. You mention your busy life and I can relate to that very much from my own experiences of family. At one time my philosophy was to “lean on the soft bits” of my life – e.g. getting out at 6am to ride the long way to work up hills regularly. I still do that sometimes, but I am much more inclined to take things easier now. Most importantly, I am sure my health is much better than it was despite undoubtedly lower stats.

I still fancy my chances in an uphill race though. FTP be damned. 🙂

I was probably overtraining

unlikely

@ben_h

I’m sure Mr PV would still hand my behind to me on any kind of bike fitness measure no matter how well I do.

At the moment I feel like my fitness is flying – I’m lifting the heaviest weights I have done in a few years whilst also pushing on my cycle fitness again.

Vs you I have memories of chasing round Leigh Woods and AC absolutely breathing out of my behind trying to keep you in sight. I’ve no doubt it would likely be still the same – although hopefully I’d be a little bit closer these days!

Really well put by @Ben_H!

A couple of other points from me:

– I disagree with @dirtyrider that it’s unlikely that you were ‘overtraining’. Perhaps true by some narrow definition of the word but putting yourself under too much stress is possible even with very modest workloads. All of life’s other stresses also contribute.

– More broadly I find the comparative power discussions really uninformative. Talking about your watts is a bit like talking about your dreams – really intersting to you but not really to anybody else.

I guess for me the 4w/kg is a random figure I picked out the air to aim for – and have a structured ish training plan to push on.

As I mentioned a few posts back it’s all really to make mtb more fun where I can blast up hills and not be last to the top / not be too knackered to enjoy the downhills.

Ben will know some of the lads in our WhatsApp riding group are either really cycle fit / technically very good or both. I’ve really had to uk my game since riding with them to keep up on the uphills and not be so far back on the downhills! I’ve ended up pushing onto far more difficult trails in the last few years as a result – I’d never gone near Risca before or Staunton or any other difficult off piste stuff. I’m even contemplating having a look at some network R stuff – although the exits of the trails sound terrifying with steep chutes etc.

Risca particularly needs the fitness to get more than a few runs in – the climb is mostly quite steep and about 300m of climbing a pop I think.

One easy way to get to 4W/kg is to use a garmin watch and go for a run. Apparently I did 515W for 38 mins on my last 10k race. That’s well over 6W/kg, so suck on that, losers.

Sadly I don’t think it does watts for cycling, or I’d be a zwift god.

lol had a polite argument with DC Rainmaker about just that – he’d done a (just) sub 20 5K, and apparently his average power was well over 500W. At my current level of fitness I’d rate a sub 20 5K as just slightly over my FTP, say around 250W… Certainly not double. And I did a very easy run yesterday, average power according to my Garmin? 350W.

Rode at Cwmcarn today for the first time in a few months – first time ever I haven’t been almost dying in a couple of parts of the Cafell climb. Just the very last bit at the top hurt a bit. Down Pedalhounds and then up the tarmac road to the top of the Twrch and riding a bit of off piste.

Garmin says my training status is ‘unproductive’ but high load this week.

Strava says I’m in danger of overtraining.

Trainer road is fine with it 🤷‍♂️

There’s another easy way – see if you can get an Avio power meter second hand. My FTP jumped from low 300s to 354 on my last ride! I’m sure it’s accurately recording my fitness, and the 20 seconds or so of 2,000W it recorded was a true and accurate reflection of my awesome power.

Lol – that seems like an easy way to gain power 😘

I’m a little bit disappointed that it only reads 2kW though. I’ve recorded a peak of 1.8kW a few times in plausible looking readings, so if I trained really hard and beat 2 I’d be annoyed it wouldn’t record it!

Did a ramp test today and bumped from 240w to 255w. Currently at 76.8kgs so a bit heavier than I have been but the weight training has also toned up / bulked out my upper body a bit so I’ll live with it.

Got a big day at Risca planned this weekend depending on the weather. Thinking 1200m+ of climbing so that’ll be a good test of my fitness for sure.

Hey that’s awesome! Well done mate.

Nice!

I’m ramping up this week before starting 6 weeks of dirt destroyer, current FTP is set at 222 but I think it’s a bit low so I’ll do a ramp test at the end of this week, I think I’ll be about 240w ish.

Did ‘The Gorby’ this evening which is 5x 5min @ 110% of FTP then 5 mins @ 55% of FTP. Renowned to be a bit of a ball buster! I found it tough, but not ‘I’m not going to complete this’ tough. Which makes me think my FTP is set a little low.

If I can be back to 260ish watts after dirt destroyer which will then lead straight into 2x weeks in Scotland, I’ll be very happy.

@ta11pau1

5 x 5 mins at 110% ftp should have felt pretty hard I’d have thought – maybe the ftp you’re working to is a little lower than it should be. Have fun with your ramp test – always a pleasure 🤮

Interestingly my garmin keeps telling me my load is good but my training is unproductive.

When I go into connect it seems to be suggesting I’m doing too much high intensity but not enough base. Strava has been showing I’m trending faster on matched rides and saying I’m getting fitter – but I’ve just stopped paying the subscription as it was getting too expensive so that data is going out the window. Just have TR and Garmin going forward.

TR has the next block of training as a mixture of Vo2 and Sweet Spot…I’m wondering if I’d be better trying to reset my training plan for some more sweet spot / base sort of stuff?

I popped in a few ‘endurance’ ad hoc sessions in the last 2 weeks to chill a little bit watching tv and just ignoring what my legs are doing and didn’t find it too bad.

I think it just comes down to the latest thinking on intensity distribution.
The old description was that training ‘slow’ around 80% of your time kept you fresh for the hard days.
What I’ve now learned is that adaptations happen at the lower intensities that you just do not get when you go too hard.

From my own training, I’ve noticed as I’ve progressed through Base 1, 2 and 3 over the last 12 weeks is that I’m starting to get ‘Unproductive’ on my Garmin more often.
Although last week I was perfectly in (their suggested) balance as I did an extra easy day with a bad toe 🤣

Tempo and above counts as “high aerobic” on Garmin connect. If you’re lacking low aerobic- it is definitely worth trying to squeeze in some more time riding easy. They’re not for ‘recovery’- they are training you slow twitch fibres to be efficient.

Interestingly my garmin keeps telling me my load is good but my training is unproductive.

I’ve found the Garmin training status can be really finicky, if it thinks your vo2 max is decreasing because you’re doing base miles and not vo2 max efforts it’ll put you as ‘unproductive’.

5 x 5 mins at 110% ftp should have felt pretty hard I’d have thought – maybe the ftp you’re working to is a little lower than it should be. Have fun with your ramp test – always a pleasure

Yeah exactly, which is good in that I’m closer to where I want to be, but bad in that future workouts are going to be tougher!

I did the Nino Schurter over/under workout the other day too, and knowing how much over/unders hurt me before, it was far too comfortable.

Connect your strange to intervals.icu. It’s much better for analysis, and free.

Connect your strange to intervals.icu. It’s much better for analysis, and free.

Fwiw there was a message on intervals.icu the other day asking people to connect using something other than strava if poss – there’s a daily limit on the number of api calls which they were running into. So if you can connect via garmin or some other platform that’d help them out (same goes for existing users too)

There’s a recent thread about requesting Zwift direct upload to Intervals site on Zwift forum.

You can go into Intervals settings and untick download/sync with Strava, then use direct upload on Intervals home page to upload fit files you download from your Strava activities, bit of faff but reduces Intervals stress.

You can download Zwift fit files from clciking activities on https://www.zwift.com/uk/feed , then clicking cog symbol to download fit file, which you can then directly upload to Intervals.

Fwiw there was a message on intervals.icu the other day asking people to connect using something other than strava if poss

My apologies I forgot about this despite having ch age my own settings to upload from Garmin Connect.

What does intervals icu do that Garmin or Trainer Road don’t do out of interest? If it’s free I’m happy to sign up to have a look but slightly loathe to buy a subscription to something else!

Trainerroad analytics are one of the only things I miss to be fair. Especially for ease of use on a mobile.

But intervals.icu is kind of like free training peaks for geeks. You can literally create any kind of chart or graph or analyse any metric you can imagine. Has a better Fitness/Form/Fatigue chart too.
It has a quick and simple workout creator that you can use to write a plan onto their powerful calendar and either export the workouts to a Garmin etc or just see your forecast tss etc.
I use it a lot on aerobic rides to measure decoupling (Loss of power/HR for the first half of the ride V the second half).

It’s free with the option to donate.

Cool cheers – I’ve downloaded it but on the phone it’s not immediately obvious what it’s telling me. Needs a bit of a study later once I’ve got some time to myself (hopefully anyway)! Might try and login on desktop for a better look on a big screen and see what’s what. Linked it to Garmin Connect and it’s instantly pulled a stack of data through which was slick 👌

It’s free (donationware) and is particularly useful for selecting intervals (surprise!) from your trace to look at your power curve etc. Also various models for FTP estimates.

I like the totals chart for example.

I like the fitness plot. You can put future workouts (and sync previous ones from Strava) into the calendar and it’ll plot, with the aim of managing your load to stay in the green zone, and include rest/taper periods too. Other programs have similar. Take a look https://intervals.icu/fitness

Did my first sweet spot workout with the new ftp and that was difficult 🤮

TR suggested a 1 hour session but I wasn’t feeling the love so picked a 45 min alternative – had 4 x 7 minute ladders. Got through it but you could feel it was a decent step up. Heart rate didn’t get above 160 ish but legs definitely felt it.

Got a 1 hour vo2 session on Friday then sweet spot next week. Swapped next week’s vo2 session for an hour endurance one to tone down the intensity a bit and work on a bit more base.

Got a 1 hour vo2 session on Friday

As a final training session I just did a 1.06h Zwift race at an average of 3.55kg, suggesting that I’m good for exceeding my prior 3.6wkg FTP via 20 min test. A recovery ride and 3 days rest now before the first IRL MTB XCO on Sunday.

I should be good for close to 4wkg by May I reckon, racing and sharpening lending itself to lots of threshold/vo2max from here on in.

@crosshair how are you pasting that image in?

@kryton57 Using https://imgbb.com/ and then cutting a direct link out of one of their pre-made links for the img button.

Great work on the training too. Can’t wait to see how Sunday goes for you 🤞🏻

Well done on your session Joe. Always a double edged sword training at the new ftp 🤣

I found it interesting that Crosshair and I have very similar overall profiles, with the exception I have more higher end Z2:

Screenshot 2023-03-09 at 08.37.31

And this shows my progression, coming from a max of 81 in 2021 you can see that by November ’22 during which I had the 7 weeks off the bike with chest infections how far my fitness dropped by has increased since:

Screenshot 2023-03-09 at 08.35.18

…which also includes 4KG weight loss.

Not sure if that gives Joe some help / indication of other riders normality!

Cool, yes that’s pretty similar! That’s great work on the lack of coasting too- great zone discipline!

I’ve been trying to actually ride more during recovery weeks as, back in the days of using TR, I would often just have four days off the bike, so I guess that’s reflected by more Z1 time, especially as my Z1 goes up to 181w nowadays 🤣

You got me interested in my Fitness chart too.

I don’t really worry about CTL etc too much as it doesn’t account for work and life stress but it is interesting to note that I’m kicking on towards last year’s peak already.

I’m trying to peak for June but I’m not convinced I can find the energy to keep ramping up much beyond 80.
I’d also like to do a better job with the back end of the year too and try for a second peak in September.

13 months:

My 2021 peak was 80 which was when I came 9th in the 12hr national. Not sure that’s a year I want to repeat tbh!

Re Fitness scores, I wear a Garmin band on my right wrist – a Vivosmart – so that albeit not super accurate adds some stress of the day via Body battery & HRV to Intervals.icu. That might help if your into it.

Just having a little look at totals – clearly my activity is a lot lower in terms of number and distance etc – but how does this look – I.e is the load score low / high vs where it should be etc?