50 rpm – ouchy! Nice bump! 🙂

Presumably that’ll be Alp du Zwift ‘cause that’s a lot of reps of Mott St! 😊

I’m buying a house and have got a much busier role at work, which tells me adding any goal other than entering races would be too much stress. As such I’m just going to do the MSG series and Beastway with goal of smashing out a hard ride. After that (end of July) it’ll just be long club rides in the sun. Bit bored of training to be race fit from January – September.

@twowheels: That looks painful. Did you do it in the race?

I rode the MSG race at Thickthorn on Sunday. I don’t know what anyone else thinks but putting on a national race at a course like this seems a bit inappropriate. Surely better courses must be available to test the best? Don’t get me wrong, regional / local race fine; simple flat course with the odd technical feature make entry into the sport easier, but for a national race I’m not so sure. People may travel hundreds of miles to attend and deserve more than 1.5hrs flat out round and round a field. Don’t want to have a pop at the guys organising MSG races because they work damn hard and put on good events but this just seems wrong.

I’m going with some mates in July. Been three times in last four years. It’s fantastic imo. Stay in Cymmer and you can do a day visit to BPW which is totally different kind of kick. Afan for me is MTB at its roots; natural, scenic and somewhat epic.

@twowheels: Yes that’s the nice thing about doing a weekly race, you start to really dial in your riding through the twisty stuff and your fitness just grows. I was happy with my result – good start and a bit of luck at the end when a rider who passed me punctured right before the line. Proves it’s always worth pushing right to the end so you can take advantage of opportunities like that.

Due to lack of competition in SOM I got 1st. So, quite bizarrely, simply by turning up and riding consistently (but not quickly) I am top for the series in SOM so far!

Haha! Brilliant! Well worth coming back for more after your previous trials! Still can’t believe you rode on speed SLs!

As I said to Kryton after the race, that wasn’t his usual performance by a long shot so I’m not surprised he felt disappointed with the result. I’ll be curious to hear how his coach explains it. I can only think to say its your target events that you’re training toward that should educate how well you believe your training is going and based on Kryton’s last marathon it’s going well.

On the other hand, for me, it was another race that proves the Joe Friel lesson of 90% what you’ve done up to the day and 10% how you feel on the day. I was feeling a bit jelly legged but my NP ended being the same (+/-2%) as it has been for last four flat races I’ve ridden! I feel like I have a glass ceiling that I never seem to get through. Having said that, I enjoyed the race so who cares.

Anyone going Carver Barracks this weekend? I personally struggle with flat twisty courses as you have to keep pushing your mind to push hard (as opposed to a hill when you just have to go hard) and keep pushing out of the corners (which I invariably take too fast or too slow to get through efficiently). Sigh.

Still, looking forward to the big drop off that I didn’t ride two years ago. Fully expect to ride it this year.

‘Twas I. It sucks when things don’t go your way but stick with it. However unmotivated you feel now, I always feel worse when I look at the results or Strava rides of races I’ve missed!

It certainly did get a bit dark at the end didn’t it? Tbh I wasn’t sure it was safe to be riding in the dark like that…there were a lot of places where you wheel could get caught up and flip you off. However, I suppose that’s also part of the challenge!

Yeah, I like to imagine they’re in a special separate Vet race…come to think about it, they are!!!

I’ll be there tonight – 406 Jack Curzon. I didn’t get a gurning photo on Saturday only one of my bottom! Javier is like the terminator on his single speed – relentless!!!

It costs what, £25 to enter, x petrol/hours to get to race, favours to the family to actually be allowed to go, time spent ‘training’…if I puncture I’m ****’ fixing it and finishing the race. Plus even if I come last, I’ve had a good workout. No way I’m wasting my day and going through the mental anguish of an avoidable dnf. 🙂

What’s with all the hate toward Stages power meters? Yes, sometimes the batteries go flat over the course of a few weeks…or days…or overnight. Yes, sometimes they stop working if you ride your bike in mild precipitation…or if its cold…or dark. And yes sometimes the battery cover tabs snap off when you change the batteries. But I tell you what, they dry out a treat on radiators and a CR2032 battery is cheaper than any other power meter you care to name. I’ve got three and I’m not a mug!!!

…oh hang on mo…

I’ve used one on my carbon norco hardtail. Currently have a dropper fitted and difference in comfort is massive. The carbon leaf design really takes the edge of the trail. I bought a chinese one on ebay for about £40. Only issue I had was making sure to use carbon grease between the two halves of the post to stop them slipping. Once I did that and cranked down the fixing bolt never had a problem again.

Funny, the Gen 1 Stages PM on my road bike has started playing up again – seems totally random. Sometimes lasts weeks (months?) other times it can die in days. Never seems related to how much I use it. Very annoying. Like a gen 3 but maybe the 4iii is the way to go.

Interesting, I always remember reading Joe Friel saying you should always finish intervals feeling you could do one more. I probably remember that because it suits my mind set!

Although the idea behind 4DP sounds really good, the test to validate it sounds too demanding and probably (would for me) result in less frequent testing. Such intense tests are also more effected by mental / physical condition at time of test and skill of pacing. This is where a simple ramp test wins imo – no pacing, not so effected by physical / mental state, accurate ‘enough’ and doesn’t hardly impacts training schedule.

Also, i imagine experienced users of structured training tweak their workouts based on their strengths and weaknesses anyway so the main benefit is a bit ‘meh’.

@Kryton57: No need to do that.  Build it in Zwift.

Workout: 5 minutes at 46% ftp then add an interval at 6% higher intensity every minute. Ride until failure. Your FTP is 0.745 of your best one minute power. No warm ups and no standing up allowed.

@Kryton57: That sucks.  If you’re feeling off mentally or physically you know it’s probably going to be disappointing, but 25% drop? That’s not right.  From your workout history what did you estimate your ftp would be? Most ftp test tests I’ve done have been with 5w of what I’d estimate and you have plenty of workout experience to go by.

Perhaps try the TrainerRoad ramp test (can be done on Zwift).  I understand it can highlight a relatively low VO2 max component of your fitness if the test scores you a lower ftp than you know you can sustain. It’s also harder to mess up than a 20minute test.

You know what you can do, don’t sweat it.

I’ve had 125mm Brand-x dropper on my race HT on / off for the last year (125mm is waaaay to much for XC).  On / off mainly because I’m a weight weenie and 100% of the XC racing down here in the Eastern region doesn’t need one.  However, for recreational riding it’s much more fun and makes the race bike much more versatile for all the reasons already listed in this thread.  The only negative I have is one of comfort.  I had been using a Chinese knock off of the Canyon carbon leaf spring seat post (VCLS?) which really helped dull impacts coming through the rear triangle.  The dropper post has no give whatsoever.  However, I have decided to MTFU, ride out the saddle more and bought some XTR bits to offset the weight gain (the bike’s not mine!)

HUNT XC Wide wheels ~£320 and ~1,600g.  All non-proprietary parts. Oops, you asked just about the rims…no idea then!

It’s also worth mentioning that if you decide to do a 20 minutes FTP make sure you do the prescribed 5 minute all-out pre-fatiguing (followed by 5 minutes recovery) effort first.  This reduces the anaerobic contribution to the 20 minute effort and will give you a truer estimate of your sustainable power.  I think a lot of people skip the pre-fatiguing effort to get better numbers…

I subscribe to TR and Zwift.  I  create my TR workouts in the Zwift workout creator and ride them there.  I just cant bare watching numbers tick by.  I like Zwift’s interval arches, climbing the hills and passing other riders while I do my workouts.  I also do the odd race and sometimes even freeride – manly just up Alp du Zwift to see how hard it is. Personally, I’d find it impossible to get on TR and probably very hard to get on Zwift without some sort of overall goal for why I was doing it.  Neither is really fun enough to just ‘go for a ride’ on.  Having said all that though, if I had to pick one though I’d pick Zwift. You can make any workout you like and its less boring to look at.

Trainer Road Podcast #182 had an interview with a US national masters XC championship winning rider who asked more or less the same question (it was reassuring to hear even a guy at his level had these sort of concerns).  Chad’s advice was back pedal for a ten seconds or until you feel just recovered and then get back in.  It’ll still be hard so don’t feel like that is cheating.  The key thing with the VO2 was not to drop the intensity – you’ll still be getting benefits, just not as much.

I’m hoping Langdon Hills is going to be one of the mid-year unannounced MSG venues – I think its a cracking course, i.e. it has lots of elevation changes, and I have unfinished business with it!

I think if you have an interval session that specifies six intervals, you will loose some of the benefits of that workout by not doing them all in one go and so will need to adjust another variable to derive a worthwhile benefit i.e. do the intervals harder or reduce the rest times (or both!).  It won’t be exactly the same adaptation (lets say lactate tolerance / muscle endurance) but it will be an adaptation (maybe more VO2 max).

The shorter the session the harder you have to go which is why I hate really short sessions.

Interesting thoughts being shared here.

I came in to the start of last season (my second doing XCO) as strong as I’ve ever been: 4w/kg and a ‘real’ ftp of almost 300w. Was counting my calories and hitting the workouts to schedule.  But by March the wife going back to work and my little boy waking 2-3 times a night broke me.  Did not have the mental strength or the time to fit in consistent training, so I sacked it off and just kept a base and did skills riding whenever I could.  This led up to a trip in Afan & BPW where I was able to ride all day and tackle trails with far more aplomb then ever before – now that was mountain biking!

Did the last two rounds of the Eastern MSG series with an eye to peaking for the killer Langdon Hills round, but got some sort of virus in the two weeks leading up to it and just got smashed on the day, massively underperforming – I couldn’t ride the full 7 laps, let alone try to ‘compete’.  So racing wise, 2018 ended up a damp squib.

Several things have become apparent to me. (1) there’s a load of guys who are much, much faster than me. Although I can improve (I’m mid 40s) I’m not going to get 10-20% faster, so unless those in front of me don’t turn up or have a really off day I need to happy with watching them vanish into the distance every race. (2) I like training. I like the structure and challenge of it. Its also easier to fit in to family life than going out for a ride!  (3) racing makes me stressed and takes up a lot of my thinking (without that actually helping), but I do enjoy being part of the scene. (4) If I’m going to accept my first point I really better start enjoying racing for sake of doing it (easier said than done it seems).  (4) I wish I lived nearer Afan, Surrey Hills or anywhere with steeper terrain.  (5) Wish I could do a wheelie and clear a tabletop. 🙂

I’ve started ‘training’ again but don’t really have a plan as such. Lots of sweet spot whenever I can then more VO2 stuff next year.  With 8 hours a week to ride I don’t think one can really do much in the way of TSS building, tapering and peaking – its more just keeping fitness up over the year and not getting burned out from doing too much riding above threshold.

Slight hijack – but im on zwift, so what would be a good base training approach on that? Don’t really want to spend much more than a hour though.

Do date i’ve just been logging on to whatever world is on at the time and chasing people around until i feel i cant do it any more – which is probably not the best approach.

I manually re-create my TR workouts in Zwift.  Bit tedious but works a treat.  There is a web tool called ZWOFactory that you can use to create workouts and transfer across.  Much easier than using the Zwift workout creator.

It’s funny isn’t. My wife and her family don’t drink alcohol so I’d say I average 30-40 units of alcohol a year! Crazy low.  But they all have a sweet tooth so I’m surrounded by my weakness – ice cream, cakes and chocolate year round. If only I could keep sweets out the house I swear I’d be 2kg lighter without doing anything.🤨

The current episode of the TrainerRoad talks exactly about some of this – difficulty of loosing weight or operating on calorific deficit while trying to improve fitness and crucially the importance of power to weight vs raw power.

My take is you need find a sustainable balance of reward vs discipline.  Abstainence from vices has resulted in a highly fluctuating weight for me as I overindulge on the rebound, which makes me miserable and thus training harder. Going forward I’m determined not to repeat this mistake and will just learn to endulge responsibly.

As to impact on performance, well if you’re already gunning with the big boys and ride steep hilly races then I guess every little helps but I’ve had plenty of V40 guys with a bit of timber smash me even when I was lean and at 4 w/kg.

Lack of resistance on the flats is a common problem when freeriding or racing in Zwift. There are numerous requests been made for a way to increase the base resistance for occasions when your bike is under geared. However, at the moment, unless you have 50+ chain ring on, you’re going to spin out pretty quickly.  38t is fine for non-specific Erg mode riding, ERG workouts or if you spend all day going up hill.  Annoying.

Yesterday’s MSG course at Henham was really good; up, down, twisty, loose it had it all.  Bit cold and bit windy but not wet! Definitely worth the 4hour round trip to get there.

However, something that came up for me was tire pressure. I’m 75kg and usually run ~21/22psi F/R for comfort and grip.  Yesterday I ran 23/24 as the course had lots of fire road track sections and I thought lower rolling resistance would be worthwhile.  At the finish I chatted with another rider who runs 28/30 (finished about a minute ahead of me).  I’d had the front tire wash out from under me on the practise lap and put it down to my higher than usual tire pressure and so was pretty cautions round corners in the race. BUT seeing as others may run theirs much higher than me it reinforces my thought that my technique, not tire pressure or tire choice (Rocket Ron/Racing Ralph), is the limiter.

What are your thoughts and experiences with tire pressure with regards to the trade off between speed and grip (especially on flat or loose corners)?

Haha! Just worked it out!

If you can afford a top end FS bike (i.e. 3k+) and it has suspension lockout of some sort, then you won’t regret your decision.  However, my HT is lighter (22.5Lb vs 25.5lb) and has less on it to go wrong than my FS bike so I generally race on that.  Last summer some of my races were on hard, dry, cracked ground and I could’ve done with the comfort of FS but it never got to the point where I needed it enough to switch.  However, as pointed out already, any event over 2hrs or if your courses are very technical a FS would be better.

I’ll try and find it but I saw a twitter video from a spectator – from a side view it looked a lot more like Nino was coming back and almost level before his foot came out.

Oh to ride outside…my life is Zwift in the bedroom, except when I get out for a race or commute to work.  Suffer from serious Strava envy these days.   Oh well, price of a family and at least when I race I feel competitive enough for a top ten.  Maybe I’ll have more time to ride/train/rest when I reach Grand Vet!