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Race The Training Thread

baribari

Maximum Pace
May 28, 2010
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It's amazing what consistent and structured training can do. Before I bought my smart trainer and starting doing workouts on Zwift, I was afraid I'd "mikka bozu" and then I'd have a $900 paperweight, as was the case with my Minoura rollers. Nope. Turns out I actually love training as long as I get real numerical feedback on my effort and progress.

Now I wish I had got a power meter or a smart trainer years ago. Let's just say that the wattage that was hard to do for 10 minutes when I started is now roughly the top end of Z2.

After I drop a few more KGs I plan on racing. I might already be ready for a pancake flat race, but those are far and few between in Japan.

I have actually almost entirely stopped riding outside because indoor training is so much more convenient. I guess I need to buy a power meter.

Anyway..... anyone else is doing structured training of some sort? What sort of gains have you made?
 
I did a "free ride" on Zwift last night and I was shocked how many watts I was pushing out.... as long as I was going uphill. I almost wonder if I am more fit than my performance in ERG-driven workouts suggests... or if I need to grind instead of spin.

Maybe I'll actually be able to stay with the main pack in a crit this year.
 
I wonder if maybe I was overtraining, since I took one day off and now I feel much stronger. OTOH, my smart trainer might just be inconsistent....
 
I am a little disappointed that my first uphill TT in a while was 30 seconds slower than a few months ago even though I am lighter and stronger.... maybe I didn't get enough carbs today.
 
It's amazing what consistent and structured training can do.

Totally agree. I've recently changed my training so I'm putting more km on Zwift, especially doing intervals and SST, vs long km where I spend too much time dodging traffic, stopping at lights, and getting to and from a good climb. Also seems to be better for weight loss. Beat my PR on a short climb today by 10 seconds. I guess it shouldn't be surprising but it is nice to see improvement.
 
Could be the wind also. How does the power compare?

Not so bad. I don't have a power meter on my bike, just my smart trainer. I probably could have gone harder and paced myself better with a power meter. For sure, my ~20 minute power is higher than what it was before. Or maybe my old time was actually a few minutes faster than it was supposed to be (times can be a bit wonky with my Chinese GPS), this has actually happened before.

Totally agree. I've recently changed my training so I'm putting more km on Zwift, especially doing intervals and SST, vs long km where I spend too much time dodging traffic, stopping at lights, and getting to and from a good climb. Also seems to be better for weight loss. Beat my PR on a short climb today by 10 seconds. I guess it shouldn't be surprising but it is nice to see improvement.

I know, right? I usually like Zwift workouts to be a rainbow of colors, but SST is arguably the most bang for your buck.


Today I tried to tackle a local climb that I haven't set a personal best on lately, but I was completely out of gas 90% the way up. After thinking there were just a few dozen meters to go about three or four times, I finally saw the trees adjacent the parking lot that marks the peak, and I was like.... yeah, nope. Not today.

I have to wonder what part of it was my lack of glycogen (the only carbs I had were a seven-eleven sandwich at the very start of the ride, and the climb is a 30 or 40-minute ride from the 7-11) and what part was the altitude. Low-carb diets are a great way to lose weight, but terrible for power.

On another note, it might have been a tailwind, but doing 28-30 mph on flat ground feels amazing.
 
Not so bad. I don't have a power meter on my bike, just my smart trainer. I probably could have gone harder and paced myself better with a power meter. For sure, my ~20 minute power is higher than what it was before. Or maybe my old time was actually a few minutes faster than it was supposed to be (times can be a bit wonky with my Chinese GPS), this has actually happened before.



I know, right? I usually like Zwift workouts to be a rainbow of colors, but SST is arguably the most bang for your buck.


Today I tried to tackle a local climb that I haven't set a personal best on lately, but I was completely out of gas 90% the way up. After thinking there were just a few dozen meters to go about three or four times, I finally saw the trees adjacent the parking lot that marks the peak, and I was like.... yeah, nope. Not today.

I have to wonder what part of it was my lack of glycogen (the only carbs I had were a seven-eleven sandwich at the very start of the ride, and the climb is a 30 or 40-minute ride from the 7-11) and what part was the altitude. Low-carb diets are a great way to lose weight, but terrible for power.

On another note, it might have been a tailwind, but doing 28-30 mph on flat ground feels amazing.

It's worth bearing in mind that it takes the body 2 to 3h to turn solid food into energy.

This is why you don't need to worry about breakast if you are going out for an hour or two in the morning.

And why it's advised to eat 3h before your race start time.

Keep up the good training!

Andy
 
Indeed. I know it takes a few hours, but I didn't decide to ride until about noon since I had work to do today. Also, a single ~300 calorie sandwich isn't nearly enough to fuel a relatively intense 2000-calorie ride. Haha. The other day when I was making those great numbers, I had some bread, potatoes, and soft-serve ice cream a few hours before. As for my time trial yesterday, I don't think I had many carbs but half a cup of instant ramen the night before.

Carbs feel like rocket fuel when you're on a low-carb diet. Haha. But it's hard to give up the fat-burning effects of ketosis...

Also, I'm 3-4 kilos lighter when glycogen-depleted. Hah.
 
I signed up for a crit next month. This is the first race I'll be anywhere near prepared for. The laps are SUPER SHORT, though, so I suspect just keeping up with the pack will be hard since the strong people will be powering out of the very frequent corners. I'm pretty sure it will be pancake flat, which at least doesn't punish my weaknesses. HAH.

OTOH, given the terrible lack of local races or even semi-local races, I don't see how anyone who isn't already good enough for JCRC or JCBF can race themselves into shape.
 
Possibly more evidence that training by heart rate zone might not be useful?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/lif...ile-exercising-not-if-you-want-to-get-fitter/

The problem, Bonafiglia explained, is that when you tell a group of people to exercise at a given relative intensity – for example, 65 per cent of the maximum work rate they achieved in a cycling test to exhaustion – it's clear some people are working harder than others.
<SNIP>
For some people, 65 per cent of max was very hard, and they got much fitter; for others, it simply wasn't challenging.
 
I am glad to hear the idea of "non-responders" might have just been a badly-designed study.

OTOH I am *clearly* not a non-responder given the gains I have seen over the last seven months. My current power would actually be respectable if I had a single-digit body fat ratio. And it's not just power, either. I don't even see the need for rest days given the current intensity of my workouts, either, so long as I eat right. That might change if I keep cranking up the difficulty (baseline power setting) or the intensity (IF / TSS) of my workouts.

Pacing by heart rate is clearly a bad idea, since you can easily be +/-10 beats for a given power even when you otherwise feel the same. Not to mention how slow HR is to respond to effort.
 
From the article:


"The underlying assumption, which continues to guide heart rate-based exercise recommendations, is that two people exercising at a given percentage of their max are working equally hard."

This is not true in cycling.

Much as cyclists don't train at power values as a percentage of 1 min max power, they don't train at heart rate values as a percentage of HR max.

For power training, the FTP is the value around which training zones are set. And the value around which specific training workouts are decided.

The HR equivalent is LTHR. This should correspond with your FTP. Likewise training zones and workouts are set around it.

The advantages of power over heart rate in terms of consistency is clear.

Heart rate can tell you a little more about condition and freshness.

In an ideal world, ie. if you have access to both, they compliment each other nicely.

The only difference in zones is that threshold HR zone 4, is divided into power zones 4 and 5. So Vo2 max HR zone 5 is power zone 6 .

Two photos of my HR and power zone distribution for a recent TT.

Here the zones match up quite closely, which tells me I did a good taper and was fresh on race day.

Andy



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What exactly is tapering except "train less and less leading up the event and stop training a few days before the race while also making sure to get lots of food and sleep?"
 
What exactly is tapering except "train less and less leading up the event and stop training a few days before the race while also making sure to get lots of food and sleep?"
Basically yes.

If you are training hard you have a high level of fitness. But also a high level of fatigue.

The idea is to drop the fatigue, while keeping as much fitness as possible.

This is possible as you can get rid of fatigue quicker than you drop fitness.

So during a taper, you drop the volume but keep some intensity. This "brings out the form".

In training peaks, this form is known as Training Stress Balance (TSB). Basically fitness minus fatigue. This will be a negative value during hard training. Then as you taper, you bring the TSB positive.

However, like anything in training it's best to experiment and to find a taper routine that works best for you.

This is my usual run in to a race.

Working backwards:

・race
・the day before is pipe openers (1 min x 3)
・two days before is rest
・three and four days before are short rides of high intensity
・five days before is rest

Andy
 
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Basically yes.

If you are training hard you have a high level of fitness. But also a high level of fatigue.

The idea is to drop the fatigue, while keeping as much fitness as possible.

This is possible as you can get rid of fatigue quicker than you drop fitness.

So during a taper, you drop the volume but keep some intensity. This "brings out the form".

In training peaks, this form is known as Training Stress Balance (TSB). Basically fitness minus fatigue. This will be a negative value during hard training. Then as you taper, you bring the TSB positive.

However, like anything in training it's best to experiment and to find a taper routine that works best for you.

This is my usual run in to a race.

Working backwards:

・race
・the day before is pipe openers (1 min x 3)
・two days before is rest
・three and four days before are short rides of high intensity
・five days before is rest

Andy

This is related to but not the same as periodization, right?
 
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