Periodisation, i get that.. along with were others train for specific peaks and events. For me, i don’t target particular events or races so peaking for a specific event doesn’t really matter to me. In the same way that if i have form for April but not for May, it doesn’t much matter.

This month i’ve ‘rested’ a lot more than usual, i’ve actually had 7 days where i’ve not ridden at all and 4 days where they’ve been <30mins for the 1 lap WBR races.
The downside of this is that my distance for Nov is only currently 605km, which is likely to make it to about 670km by the last day of Nov, but that’s 100-150km down on the usual month.
Whether any of the rest or the shorter and harder efforts have been responsible for any of my ‘form’ i don’t really know.

Periodisation, i get that.. along with were others train for specific peaks and events. For me, i don’t target particular events or races so peaking for a specific event doesn’t really matter to me. In the same way that if i have form for April but not for May, it doesn’t much matter.

This month i’ve ‘rested’ a lot more than usual, i’ve actually had 7 days where i’ve not ridden at all and 4 days where they’ve been <30mins for the 1 lap WBR races.
The downside of this is that my distance for Nov is only currently 605km, which is likely to make it to about 670km by the last day of Nov, but that’s 100-150km down on the usual month.
Whether any of the rest or the shorter and harder efforts have been responsible for any of my ‘form’ i don’t really know.

See my last post too ^^
Periodisation works because it cycles between the two systems. You spend so many weeks training your fat burning system and then build a sugar burning one on top. But that only last so long and then you need a bigger fat burning one to lift your level higher again.

To complete the circle as it were Weeksy, that’s also why racing on a fast day is bad- less sugar for the fast twitchers.
And also why I was able to drop Nath the other day. He’s currently forcing his body to make its own glycogen by not giving it any- so until it learns, he has no fuel for his fast twitch muscles (or at least slightly less fuel than me) 😆

Recovery is a major part of physical exercise so I’d suggest the rest days have probably helped you Weeksy. Especially since you race so hard.

I haven’t raced much lately partly because there hasn’t a race that has been on that has suited my time available, but also because I have realised I am not really strong enough yet to race consistently. The races I have done have just destroyed me.

My recent rides have been hilly efforts to try and work on this.

I am pootling around the road to ruins loop from the town today (well tomorrow morning for me) which I find to be a great work out with a bit of everything.

In terms of technique, power is how hard you push x how fast you spin so I would recommend for a thirty second effort going +10rpm on your normal cadence at least. Then you have to push less harder, use less Fast Twitch muscles and burn less sugar.

Yeah that’s pretty much how my hills go looking at Cadence on the other days ride, round about 10 higher on cadence.

This for example shows one of the earlier kick ups.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/H3QnoV]cadence[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

What’s interesting to me is to see that the power increase in the kick up isn’t necessarily that consistent. There’s up down up down.

The below pic is later in the race, you can see just after the hill i drop cadence as i’ve lost the plot after the climb

[url=https://flic.kr/p/21Wz1jq]cadencelater[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

To complete the circle as it were Weeksy, that’s also why racing on a fast day is bad- less sugar for the fast twitchers.

I’ve not done fasting for a fair while now, maybe 6 weeks… .but i honestly do need to get back on it.. .even if that means no racing at times.

It also helps explains your better form 😆

The power isn’t consistent because the resistance is being dictated by the profile of the hill. Every second, Zwift is telling the Snap how much resistance to give you. It then has to adjust and that takes at least another second.

…that my distance…

It’s about quality, not quantity.

And also why I was able to drop Nath the other day. He’s currently forcing his body to make its own glycogen by not giving it any- so until it learns, he has no fuel for his fast twitch muscles (or at least slightly less fuel than me)

It, like me, is a stubborn git too!

You need to think of it as two systems-
1. Aerobic, heavy breathing, slow twitch muscles, fat burning.
2. Anaerobic, brace yourself, fast twitch muscles, sugar burning.

If you want a graphic example of this, I have a mate who used to do Iron Man triathlons. He could sit at just below threshold for hours maintaining close to what would probably have been a higher FTP than me, but when I put him on a mountain bike and went trail riding, he was destroyed by just going anaerobic a couple of times because none of his training prepared him for that.

He was used to simply sitting just below threshold and dragging him into anaerobic efforts blew him to bits and he couldn’t recover because it wasn’t something his body was trained to do. I could barely hold his wheel on the road, but off road he was hopeless. But, with regular off road riding – in the Peak so there were lots of sharp, kicky climbs – he adapted pretty well.

You can get hung up on structured training, periodisation and such, but if you don’t want to do ‘structured’, Weeksy, why not have one Zwift ride a week where you go out and mix up short hard efforts with steadier stuff. Sprint the bottom 30 seconds of each hill or rise, recover a little, do it again. It probably won’t be as effective as a more structured session, but it’ll be more effective than just riding steady around threshold.

As a bonus, you get to watch people’s weird, chimp reactions when you go past them. Love the ones who can’t bear to be overtaken and come screaming after you. Make it fun and you’ll do it. See it as dull and regimented and you won’t. But if you just carry on doing the same old, the results will be pretty much the same regardless of how much rest you get.

As a bonus, it’ll stop the structured training mafia from nagging you endlessly 🙂

Weird thing is, outdoors on an MTB i seem far better at the hard efforts/recover/efforts/recover than i am indoors on Zwift. I guess that’s because i’m able to recover to a lower HR on the recover sections, whereas on Zwift racing, you only recover back to just below your Max.

That’s a good example BadlyWiredDog and something I tend to do too much of i.e. threshold and below for long periods. I think I’ll give the sprint intervals a try at least once a week and see how I get on.

Weird thing is, outdoors on an MTB i seem far better at the hard efforts/recover/efforts/recover than i am indoors on Zwift. I guess that’s because i’m able to recover to a lower HR on the recover sections, whereas on Zwift racing, you only recover back to just below your Max.

Exactly! And that’s why intervals/hill reps work 🙂

I have to do some work for a bit but the next logical topic is power profiles/curves I guess.

It’s basically what I figured out Crit racing last year- you don’t get dropped because you can’t do 25mph in a bunch for an hour. You get dropped because you can’t do 27mph for four minutes 😉

Nice post BWD 🙂

If you can’t spend 30minutes a week out of 7hrs doing something that’s going to radically improve your races then fine- but you’ve lost the right to bleat on it about it repeatedly 😆

It’s not your bike, not your pedals, not your trainer, not your laptop, not your wifi, not even really your cadence or HR- it’s your stubborn refusal to be proactive in changing 😆

😉

I am just going to leave this here while i figure out how i managed it.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=29738

You’ve got to move to A now 😉

well done fella.. .Congrats.

Nicely done!!

My power curve is flat as a pancake right now, I think I’d actually get dropped on Saturday – I’m not even exaggerating!!

Still too many B’s that can kick my posterior but i might try an A race next week to see what i lack.

Todays race was reasonably entertaining with quite a small field but i know at least 2 of them normally beat me by a fair margin (one of them beat me yesterday by a couple of minutes). We were a decent bunch for the first lap but 1 guy got away at the start of the 2nd and then another guy amazingly caught him up and they had a 35 sec lead. The bunch really didnt do much to catch them and we had a couple of wheelsuckers which was annoying. We went into the last lap (lap 4) still 30s behind but one surge through the tunnel and we had rounded them up but mainly thanks to a C rider on zpower who came hurtling through us and the bunch chased him. Then 1.5 miles to go one guy sprinted off for a long one i guess so we went after him at quite a pace. There were 3 of us at the front but we were each seperated by a second or two and going pretty damn fast, with 0.4 miles to go i was at 175 hr so knew a sprint for me was going to last only a few seconds so with less than 0.2 to go i put the hammer down and strangely the other 2 must have run out of gas as well and i over took them with 100 meters to go and even then i blew up with 50m to go but managed to freewheel over the line for the win.

My power curve is flat as a pancake right now, I think I’d actually get dropped on Saturday – I’m not even exaggerating!!

It’s definitely worth sticking with over winter as you can make some good gains. But then your stubbornness is well publicised so I’m sure you will 🙂

Nice work! I wouldn’t move up until I was podiuming one of the headline races i.e. KISS to be honest. Even then I would probably race B still on the hilly races.

Just to clarify, under most organisers rules, it’s FTP w/kg that defines cats so if you’ve never been 4w/kg, you have no obligation to race A’s and can chop and change.

Of course pride suggests that Cat A is actually where the real racing begins 🙂

(think I asked this before but don’t recall an answer – sorry if I missed it)

What’s the ultimate intention in Nath’s plan, weight loss or some kind of power gain ?

Presumably nobody races in that sort of state, right, so what happens when you glug carbs for racing ?

What’s the ultimate intention in Nath’s plan, weight loss or some kind of power gain ?

Presumably nobody races in that sort of state, right, so what happens when you glug carbs for racing ?Actually people do race like that, but generally for much longer events.
Someone can correct me if i’m wrong, but I think for shorter events where you are going to need big carb powered bursts you do the bulk of your training in your new fat burning state which forces the adaptations to use fat as fuel, and then you switch back to high carbs a couple of weeks before a target event.

Try googling periodised nutrition.

I assume this is about right then, given its marginal gainsy provenance:

“Essentially, certain low-intensity sessions are performed with low glycogen stores, and high-intensity sessions with high glycogen stores,” explains Dr James Morton, Team Sky’s head of nutrition and reader in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition at Liverpool John Moores University.

“The idea is that by restricting carbs around certain training sessions you can actually enhance training adaptations. This increases the number of mitochondria in muscles, improves your ability to burn fat for fuel and, potentially, increases metabolic flexibility [muscles’ ability to switch between burning fat and carbohydrate], as well as your body composition and performance.”
So on days that nath is crushing puny humans with ossom power he should still be eating carbs but maybe fasted slow rides ?
(I’m guessing that a 10 mile fasted commute 2-3 mornings a week would be worthless in this respect ? 😳 )

Edit: sorry, that was rude. Here’s my sauce

No Scaredypants, what you suggest is a perfect way to create some better fat adaption. I don’t think there’s a lower limit on triggering the effect.

If you can work out the night before and go to bed afterwards with no carbs, you can get an even stronger effect but will be at slightly higher risk of bonking.

(I’m talking about encouraging your body to get better at fat burning here, not going full Keto….)

Sounds like Nath is taking it a step further and going full carb ban (possibly for medical as well as performance) reasons. In theory once adapted he shouldn’t see much change to his FTP as he just becomes much better adapted to using fat as a fuel. I’m a bit sceptical how it’ll work out in the 1-15min power range.

(I’m guessing that a 10 mile fasted commute 2-3 mornings a week would be worthless in this respect ? )

It’s certainly not going to hurt, but ideally would want to be longer and more steady than the typical commute I think.

I took small steps in this direction last year (i need to be careful not to cut calorie intake too much as i’m prone to weight loss). No carbs on my easier rides up to 2hrs, and ‘low’ (100-150kcal/hr) carb for easy rides in the 2-5hr range.
It certainly seemed to make a positive impact on my endurance (and by extension cruising speed).

took small steps in this direction last year (i need to be careful not to cut calorie intake too much as i’m prone to weight loss). No carbs on my easier rides up to 2hrs, and ‘low’ (100-150kcal/hr) carb for easy rides in the 2-5hr range.

Much the same here, but on a diet with much reduced carb from usual (though far from no carb.) Never really had problems with it, just got to get the intensities right. Needs a lot of volume to balance that out. Improved endurance and a bit more power. MFP to make sure I was still getting enough cals and having the right balance of macros.

Past month has been getting back up to speed. Will do the above again Dec, jan and Feb.

Well, im deffo going to blaze the STW trail for as long as i can at 4.30pm in the weird name race if anyone else fancies a bimble. Don’t expect miracles though.

Well that mostly went well…

Group of 11 of us went off hard at the front, 10s lead, 20s, 34s, next thing you know we’ve got a minute. We’re now on the 2nd lap proper and we’re cracking on. The HR was 174 at the kicks, but for some reason that felt OK. Onto lap 3 of CCW and we’ve dumped a couple and picked up 1 A and 1 B guy who had a head start, they’re now riding with us. Nice feather and onto lap 4 in the bunch of us, we’ve now got 1min 30 over the next group. Sadly over the line i got NOTHING in the PUs, damn. Up the kicker in a decent position but as we crest the hill we’ve split. The A guy tries to go with the lead 3, so i try and get on his wheel hoping he’d tow me…. but he can’t… Another fella comes from behind over the line and gets after them, but he’s at 5.3w/kg on the screen and i can’t match him.
Starting lap 5 we’re 3s behind, which isn’t a lot… but we’re dropping slowly, me, the A and 1 other C guy… He’s not really taking a turn… we end up losing ground on lap 5, so it’s now a 3 way battle..
Onto the kick up and i nail it, then over the line i pick up an aero and hit the power, suddenly i’ve got 20m on them 2 riders and going up… 4s, 5, then 10s…. I gradually pull it out to 15s by the time we hit the little snakey downhill and i sit at 280w churning it out to the hill…. he pulls 2s back so down to 13s, but i wasn’t losing that on the hill…. So i crusied to 5th place in C with a cracking 283w average which i’m darn well happy with 🙂

I’d have liked a trophy and depending what happens in the mix-up later i may end up with one.. but it was at least a decent race, result and finish 🙂

with a cracking 283w average

I appreciate I was guilty of this myself yesterday, but we’d all be better off quoting w/kg for a general understanding of effort. 11 and 5.5 for reference to yesterday’s intervals btw…

Sadly, being a Jabba means my figures are not too different. 280w is only 2.9w/kg.

Still a good result though!

see, even just discussing it wih crosshair has made you faster up the kicks 😀

3.8 for my 1 min I’m pretty happy with and 4.5 for my 15s isn’t bad either. Minor regret I didn’t go with the others, but they’ve hit a DQ anyway as usual.

I’ve just noticed on zwift power that from Friday afternoon it looks like you can race either London or watopia. Some of the races are at the same time e.g. 510 WBR three laps hilly on watopia and WBR four laps on the London classique course. Seems to be WBR races only at this stage.

I would check the app rather than ZP to confirm although there are a variety on there too. Selectable courses for race/event organisers is coming so perhaps this is a low key test launch….

BTW – that plan I posted was this summers plan, that I followed to the letter and moved from 4.5 to 5w/kg. It really worked I promise! What I didn’t plan on was moving from 70kg to 68kg which was too much and I caught flu for the 3 targeted races!!

What I’m doing right now is reversing all that hard work, hopefully temporarily. I’m moving away from carbs/sugar to fat, in the ratio of 5% carbs (50g max) 20% protein 75% fat. This has KILLED my top end, I really mean that. Tonight for instance I was at 190bpm to keep to 20mph on my commute home. My resting heart rate is up from 45bpm to 57bpm. I think I’d struggle to keep up with a B race at the moment, CH was walking all over me at Hillingdon the other day.

Ultimately I’m sure once I’ve reached ketosis, my intended state, I can attempt to start rebuilding again with a proper plan. But right now I’m just trying to hang on to what fitness I have left with Z2’ing and traffic light sprinting until I’m over this hump.

P.s. Final point is I’ve gone into this knowing it will probably damage my cycling, but hoping the medical benefits (coming off omeprazole) will far outweigh it. I’m planning on TT’ing next year with my pancake power curve 😆

Somewhere up there ^ I linked to the league that CVR are launching.

I finally clicked on it myself and it’s the first event I’m aware of that is using CVR Divisions as race Categories. E1,2 are all in Cat A so I would have to race it as an A.

https://cvrworldcup.com/cvr-league/

There are 8 races a day (Tuesdays) to make sure all time zones are catered for and you have to register for one of those and stick to it for the duration of the series.
The winner of each A race gets a ticket to the live final!

The winner of each of the B,C and D race ‘brackets’ get prizes too.

Frank is definitely pushing the Zwift racing boundaries….

Signed up, 7pm one.

Interesting – but I’m oot, for now at least

(I thought you were a cat4 CH ??)

I’m signed up for the 10pm one.

Not ideal, but if i’m going to be sure that i’ll make it it’s the only option