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Race The Training Thread

No, I read the text, but I read your text the other way: I thought you may not have realized that this scale may (and indeed does) connect to your smartphone, because you prefer to graph things by hand. I spent way too much time in Japan ;)

How much did you pay for it?

Start price was 7500, decision price was 8500 (free shipping), so I just pulled the trigger on 8,500.

Discontinued but they go for up to 25,000 it seems.

Andy
 
That's a great price. I checked a few weeks ago on Amazon and depending on the model they cost between ¥16,000 and ¥20,000+.
 
That's a great price. I checked a few weeks ago on Amazon and depending on the model they cost between ¥16,000 and ¥20,000+.

A friend contacted me about a 3h time sale 10% off on the R907 last night.

Amazon product ASIN B01N53K99T
So I was going to get that. But then I found that one on yahoo. An older model which only works with iphone, but it also measures muscle mass.

Will see how it works out.

Andy
 
To my surprise, I weighed nearly two kilos lighter than three days ago despite polishing off a bottle of wine in one night... bodies are weird.

Maybe I'll even get under 200 pounds (91 kg) in a few more weeks...
 
The tanita scales arrived today. An impressive piece of kit.

I'm interested in trying to bring my body weight down by reducing fat and not muscle so having these parameters is good.

Also visceral fat is good to know and provides motivation to stay off the beers.

And body water composition will also be useful for keeping hydrated and checking I'm drinking enough on the bike with before/after comparisons.

I wrote a little about my current condition and my targets below.

Cheers, Andy

 
I'll just leave this here. The guy makes some good points.





Personally I've found the Build Me Up training plan to be very good.

The workouts are becoming progressively harder in terms of volume. But most importantly in terms of intensity.

The overall focus of the plan is to improve FTP, but there are pedaling drills, form drills etc.

Cheers for the link, I jotted down some notes on the points as he brings them up.

What the guy picks on as random, eg. a block of sweetspot at the end of high intensity intervals, is arguably the best thing about some of these workouts. I would never dream of adding that on at the end. So you are pushing yourself beyond your imagined limits both physically and mentally.

He talks about VO2 max with tempo. Which there is. But the tempo usually comes after the VO2 max so I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.

On the workouts where the high intensity comes at the end, few in my experience, but not in his, they are like he says, badly designed.

The reason there are so many blocks, as the guy says, is to keep things interesting. It's easy for me to go out and do 15 minutes x 2 on the road but on the trainer, having cadence variation, over unders etc makes it more bearable. But the overall training effect is the same.

The point about peaking too soon is a very valid one. But when do you want to peak? The tour de france is in July but in Japan the summer is void of races (Niseko being a wonderful exception) so May and September are probably when most riders want to peak. So build up from now, peak in May, back off, build up again and peak in the autumn? That could be a very valid plan.

For me personally I think I can handle the load. And I'm adding to it where I feel necessary.

But a beginner may want to take a more cautious approach. Follow the plan closely in terms of rest days etc. 3 hard 1h sessions each week is arguably beneficial. Hard, recovery, hard, recovery, hard, recovery, rest.

The lack of base training in zwift, high volume & low intensity is the big downfall for sure. If this kind of training is necessary, then youtube is the way to go.

Zone 2 watching videos.

So the fitness of a rider, as they enter a training program is important. As he says, there is no assessment of this, other than basing workouts around your FTP.

This is something zwift should address, a kind of screening process for different workout plans.

Specificity is very important as he says. I agree totally with that. So if you are doing the FTP booster for example, you should have the timing planned so that after finishing the plan, you can do more specific workouts to meet the demands of the events you are targeting.

That threshold development workout is bad for all the reasons he points out.

"It's easier to put out power while riding outside" is a big over generalization. Definitely different depending on the person and the type of interval.

The planning in training peaks is good. Again zwift should look into this area of specificity. Again a simple screening would do it. How many hours do you have for training on each day? A step by step planning process would be good.

Ideally, as a focused athlete, you should be planning out your week like this anyway. Plugging in rest days, zwift workouts, recovery days, cross training etc. into a calendar.

So yeah, good points.

I'd say like anything, don't let zwift dictate you.

It is a training tool to add to your training and should be treated as such.

Andy
 
I think he has a point, but it's important to keep in mind he's trying to sell you training plans.

I do like to have somewhat rainbow-looking workouts if only to avoid getting bored. I'd burn out faster doing 90+ minute at Z2 every day than doing 60 minutes of random intervals every day. I don't follow the plans strictly anyway, and find often it's better to just choose a random workout that suits your mood from one of the old workout programs. And then resting or doing recovery-type riding outside on the weekends.

The benefits of *not* using the new workout plan feature is that you don't lose anything because you don't finish the last block or the cool down, you don't have to wait for workouts to unlock, you can redo workouts that were fun, and you can choose to rest or ride for fun whenever you want.

I mean, shoot, if you're only doing one-hour indoor workouts once a day every day you're getting enough TSS to become overtrained, anyway.
 
Did 90 minutes at zone 2. I am starting to see why this forms the "foundation" of endurance. You need to be able to do this wattage for hours and hours if you want to be a fast rider, and it's not as easy as it sounds. OTOH I need to make sure not to completely ignore my high-end power, even though it's really hard to do without carbs.
 
Did 90 minutes at zone 2. I am starting to see why this forms the "foundation" of endurance. You need to be able to do this wattage for hours and hours if you want to be a fast rider, and it's not as easy as it sounds. OTOH I need to make sure not to completely ignore my high-end power, even though it's really hard to do without carbs.

Looking at your data from today's ride (2nd screen in zwift), your power is a steady 220, 225W and your HR steady around 150.

Based on my LTHR of 174, for me 150 is the number to lock on to for zone 3 tempo workouts (I would lock on to 120HR for zone 2).

So I was surprised. I thought maybe your LTHR is higher and therefore your zone 2 range is higher?

But if you look at the 4th screen, the ride has you almost exclusively in zone 3 (1h but probably the entire ride as your HRM looks to drop out on the 1h03 mark).

I don't know what values you have your FTP and LTHR set at but from a HR point of view, that looks like a solid zone 3 ride.

As a rule of thumb, zone 3 feels like a manageable but hard and concentrated effort. Zone 2 is an intensity that you should be able to keep while watching youtube or chatting to someone.

So maybe look into your settings?

Andy
 
My HR meter stopped sending accurate data about halfway through, so the average HR is actually quite a bit higher.

Being on a low-carb diet I suspect all the rides I do feel about one power zone harder than they normally do. The HR I hit at Z2 seems to fluctuate on a daily basis recently depending on how strict I've been on on my diet (less strict = lower HR). And I suspect it tends to run high relative to the power I make anyway. I am not exactly blessed with a high vo2max. Haha. I basically operate on a pretty narrow band between 130 (z1) to 185 (max).

FTP is set to 309, which is.... optimistic in my current state.

I pretty much watch youtube/videos whenever I Zwift, even during the hard stuff. Haha. Today I binged on The Expanse.
 
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The local ice rink are doing an "excite series" where they turn on the disco lights and play 80s classics.

We've been a few times this winter. Good little workout for sure.

Quite a bit of snow here this week. But still managed to get out on the coast a couple of times.

The weekly blog below.

Cheers, Andy

 
I haven't road my own bike outside since early November... although I did get two group rides in while in the states on rental bikes. Currently fighting a mild cold but I am going to try convince myself to get into the saddle sometime today. Haha.

Funny thing is that there's only two rinks in the area, but they're within 600 meters of each other an hour away. Sigh.

BTW, do you happen to know what the Euroamerican equivalent of the JBCF's E3 class is? C / Cat 3? Or is it not entirely comparable? I think there's actually a team about an hour away that has a few people in JBCF races, though I don't know if they welcome walk-ons. Maybe someday. I wish JBCF had a Cat 5 equivalent to start from.
 
Had too many full-carb beers over the last two days so I was fairly well carbed up for today's workout. It shows how much of a difference in my heart rate glycogen depletion makes (50 watts more for the same heart rate).

My left shoe keeps popping off when I try to do maximal springs lately... guess its time to adjust it.
 
I haven't road my own bike outside since early November... although I did get two group rides in while in the states on rental bikes. Currently fighting a mild cold but I am going to try convince myself to get into the saddle sometime today. Haha.

Funny thing is that there's only two rinks in the area, but they're within 600 meters of each other an hour away. Sigh.

BTW, do you happen to know what the Euroamerican equivalent of the JBCF's E3 class is? C / Cat 3? Or is it not entirely comparable? I think there's actually a team about an hour away that has a few people in JBCF races, though I don't know if they welcome walk-ons. Maybe someday. I wish JBCF had a Cat 5 equivalent to start from.

I've only ever ridden competitively in Japan so can't really compare it.

I've ridden all levels of the JBCF though.

I'd say the E levels are quite similar although beginners are in E3 and those with more experience are in E2 and E1. E1 has some very strong riders who aren't affiliated with a top tier team. The gulf between E1 and the pro tour is very big.

For the JBCF you need to join a registered team, get a UCI licence and will have to pay an annual fee.

Some people love it and will roll up at races just to earn points. I got bored of it a few years ago. But if it interests you, you should give it a go.

Alternatively, you could focus on the Link Tohoku series, which many see as a breath of fresh air compared to the JBCF.

Andy
 
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