wktmeow

Anyone listen to the empirical cycling podcast? They were making a pretty good case for high cadence during vo2 work, which coincidentally I have scheduled today. The suggestion is high cadence (like 110), hard start, max effort, don't worry about target power. More short intervals are ok if you can't handle longer ones. Something about the muscle pump effect creating more preload on the heart and encouraging more cardiac output leading to higher stroke volume, which is the primary desired adaptation.

Anyway I'll try it later today and report back.

TheKillerPenguin

I appreciate the perspective, thanks (you too gsteinb )!

TheKillerPenguin

Kolie coached me for a bit and still coaches some teammates and friends of mine. He definitely knows his science. Prepare to suffer, is my only suggestion.

Hermes

Trackies do not know anything but high cadence. I have been doing high cadence work for the last 12 years. I think the podcasts are great. I do not think it is so simple as increasing cadence is a silver bullet for better performance. If that were the case then all crit racers, who were also trackies, would dominate. And of course, some do but many do not.

My current coach, when we are not in a effing pandemic, uses motor pacing and 30/30 a lot. He claims to have stolen the techniques from the Russians and East Germans back in the day.

My first coach, who was Russian, loved high cadence, and uses it today. My wife was using him again last year and he had her doing high cadence for an hour on the trainer but she was putting in some real juice.

Annectdote...beware...The Russian coach ran group rides and one Sunday it was raining and none of us wanted to ride in the rain so we went to his indoor cycling gym. He wanted us to ride for 2 hours at 105 rpm. I thought he was joking and he was not. We all did it but...we never asked to forgo another outdoor ride again.

Here is a video from a couple of years ago. 8 laps of motor work by 3 sets. As I remember maybe 375 to 400 watts off the front leading the motor and a couple of hundred sitting in. 115 rpm. I should be an absolute monster. Alas, I am not.


Here is another video of a flying 150m where I am the second racer. We make the riding at the top look easy but it is anything but easy and ramps up the HR such that the dive off the rail and acceleration results in a gonzo heart rate.


Having said all that, I think high cadence is a great biohack along with low cadence work and the isometric strength training (Another thing my first Russian coach had us do) to increase myofibril density I.e. more myofibril elements, more ATP potential. I think all ELITE racers should be able to ride behind the motor at 120 rpm for some period of time doing drills.

wktmeow

I don't think it's being sold as such. The takeaway for me was more that specifically Vo2max intervals can benefit from high cadence because studies showed that when doing maximal aerobic effort, raising the cadence from 90 rpm to 110 rpm made a very significant difference in the stroke volume and amount of blood pumped per minute (I think something along the lines of 33%), which should help drive the desired adaptations to improve vo2max. Other studies cited showed that increasing blood volume only works to a certain extent (tested by infusing trained and untrained/detrained athletes - the untrained improved with the additonal blood, but the trained did not, suggesting that they had all the blood volume they could use already), and a single vs dual leg experiment which suggested that muscle consumption of the oxygen was not the main limiter of vo2max, leaving stroke volume as the main target for improvement. They went on to talk about the role of the muscle pump in causing cardiac preload as opposed to afterload (like what you'd have in weight lifting, etc), which causes eccentric hypertrophy of the heart muscle and can improve stroke volume.

So - I'll switch my vo2max work to high cadence and see if it makes a difference. |'ll likely still keep the low cadence z2 stuff, but not entirely sure if I want to do my sweet spot/threshold efforts at high, medium, or low cadence. Maybe I'll mix it up.

burnthesheep

Last night I did a Zwift VO workout. I think I was 100 to 105 rpm during each rep. Overall, I got the time in at the zone. However, it made me think the Powertap hub on the exercise bike in the gym I used to use at work as a super optimistic liar.

My power was setup per the workout based on a realistic hour ftp figure, but man.......I just couldn't make power.

Diet wise, I didn't setup for success yesterday. Not many carbs all day long. I know folks say you should be able to do under an hour with nothing, but personally.......I need something those days. I'll do a better job preparing next time.

wktmeow

I did 4x4 last night at the high cadence. It's a new kind of suffering for sure. Power was relatively low by the end but the lung burn was real. My max heart rate seems to have dropped off a lot since I last checked though. I got up to 174 with difficulty, otherwise mostly plateauing around 72 . Used to hit 186 when I first started riding in 2012. Let's see if it goes up as I get in better shape.

Slept like a baby last night. My heart and lungs felt exhausted, had a little bit of track hack too. Hoping these are signs of the right kind of training stress

topflightpro

I've run PowerTap, Quarq and SRM over the years. They were not comparable with each other. The Powertap was the most generous of the three. The SRM the least generous.

burnthesheep

Agreed. I'm going to finalize my setup for my bikes then toss them all on the Kickr. Then run it in ERG at like 150, 200, and 300w and note the difference for each meter. Not super scientific, but for outdoors would give me an idea.

For now, I just need a week or two of consistent VO2 work because I think lately KOM efforts have been my only VO2 stimulus of any real kind for months without racing and weeknight worlds. So, shouldn't be any surprise my "one and done" power in that range is still good and even higher than before. But my repeatability is way way down. As I haven't been doing that.

TMonk

Z race yesterday, Sand and Sequoias, 1 lap for about 30 min. 15/100 something starters, about 20 other "A's".

Kept a steady ~3.8 w/kg during the opening Fuego Flat stages, figured everyone was saving it for the hilly Titan's Grove, which ended up being the case. I got ever so slightly distanced after the Titan's KOM, and had a 2s gap with two others at some point. I wanted one of them to close it down, but they didn't, and soon we were 10s behind the lead 14 riders and about 30s ahead of the next big bunch.

Fast FWD a little bit and we're not working super well or very hard either, for which I was partially to blame. Some solo rider bridged up to us after holding 5.3 w/kg for a long time, so I knew he was strong. The main group was starting to edge closer too. I didn't want to give that other rider much chance to rest so I sprinted with like ~1.6 miles to go and solo'd in.

I should have dug a little deeper to get to the lead group, there were a few "hangers on" that finished in it with less effort than me (AP and w/kg). I guess I'm still shellshocked from the last couple races I did that were stacked with "A+" riders and didn't want to go deep for a few moments to stay up there. This gave me some confidence, so maybe next time depending on the quality of the field.

TMonk

WTRL series TTT tonight. Our team/roster for this is pretty different every time which puts more or less work burden on me as one of the stronger ones, but I never know how it's going to go. Always fun! We chat over discord and have one rider who typically drops half way through and plays DS for us, watching our power and HR data and instructing us on pulls, pace and rotation. It is VERY helpful when getting cross eyed towards the end, and feels pro too haha.

hubcyclist

well the heat/humidity broke me today, it was 80F/75% humidity in my basement, but I was trying to do 4.5min sets of 20/15's @ 127/88%, made it through 3 before I broke, finished off with 90min z2 which was miserable but not unbearable. Will try this again next week in a more temp controlled environment, it was just a bit too much for that much sustained difficulty for me

Hermes

Fiesta time trial bike solo. Partner in all day meeting. Boo. What to do. I reached back several years and did a workout from the S&A period. Sprinters warmup with accelerations, seated and standing start. Then 4x(4' low tempo, low cadence and from low cadence in the aerobars sprint for 10 seconds) 2’ RBI. I thought it was a good compliment to my high intensity strength workout yesterday.

Nice day on Fiesta cool temps with lighter winds. One oddity was a guy on a skateboard being pulled by a German Shepard via a leach attached to the guys chest. I put a couple of laps into that duo.

burnthesheep

Free ride last night on Zwift. Did the Duchy loop a few times. Hit it a touch uphill, super easy downhill.

This skinny boy got the sprint jersey yo. Woot!

There were a LOT of freaking flagrant cheaters on last night. Not real power, and absolutely tearing ass past me like I'm sitting still. I'm holding about 3.2w/kg steady, but somehow they're passing me while only doing 2w/kg steady. And by pass, I mean like going 10mph faster.

Anywho. I'm tracking my water intake and coffee consumption for a few days. I have a mild concern I just want to assuage. Probably nothing. Or maybe the family all had Covid in the past months and are still living with weirdness. I dunno.

Either way, about 2 months ago wife and I got food poisoning off of some Indian takeout. Both felt crummy. I had some solid amount of beers to go with it, so I puked my brains out.

Since then I almost can't touch alcohol. I used to have a beer at night or glass of wine, or two. Now, like just one per week. Not a bad thing. Drinking alcohol late evening means for peeing at night or not as good a sleep. I mean, usually you slide back into the norm after some food poisoning or something like that. But I seriously don't have the want of it anymore.

I thought stopping the night time beer and wine may stop the "middle of night pee". I still pee at night. I'd like to not.

I like coffee, and maybe need to dial that back some. Amount and time of day. Like, no more 1PM coffee. Coffee can affect your bio clock for night pee. Dialing that back may get it.

TMonk

I cut back my afternoon coffee a while back, no real reason other than I thought it would be good for me. I do green tea now instead, and the once or so per week that I do have coffee in the PM it's really effective, instead of just baseline. I still do coffee every morning though to perk up and get things moving, so to speak. Splitting a bottle of red with my wife and cooking has to be one of my favorite ways to spend a weeknight however. I can do up to that much and not have it negatively affect my training, for now.

Yep

I wanted to do some FTP work today, but I wanted to mix up, so I decided to shoot for between 100 and 105% on a 20ish minute segment that averages 3%. What makes it really devilish is that the first part of it is rolling, so holding consistent AP is really challenging. Had to stop for some sheep in the road, which meant then I hit it harder (mistake) for the last 11 minutes at 105, which left me pretty cooked. All in all, felt good.

I've been trying to do efforts on flatter or rolling roads this year. It's more challenging, I think a more accurate gauge of what you can really do, and more specific to racing.

rubiksoval

My G3 hub has always been ~1% lower than my C1, which has been on par with Power2Max and a wired SRM.

Until recently, when I'm getting all sorts of dropouts on the G3. Not sure what the story is with that. Probably because...SRAM. Eek.

hubcyclist

Solid couple of weekend workouts, yesterday was 4x15 “race starts” starting with 30sec at 150% then settle at 90%. Bonus to me for nailing it despite having enjoyed a little too much wine the night before and being hungover for the first time in 20 years lol today was 4x20 at 90% which was solid too, my HR stayed mid 150s so maybe a good sign, I was also in my parents basement which is more climate controlled than mine and stays around 70 degrees.

wktmeow

You're giving me some hope for today's workout. Lifted weights a day late on Friday, rode 3 hours yesterday and then had some beers and a little bit of rum with the neighbors last night. 4 drinks total which is about 2 drinks more than it takes to make me feel like crap the next day. Had some threshold work scheduled today and weights tonight. Might kick the weights can down the road til tomorrow since I'm still sore.

TMonk

Fun WTRL TTT last week. Not as stacked as we'd been in previous weeks, started w 5, ended with 4 (minimum) and one of the riders was not having the best day and three of us had to wait up a couple of times. The court (Innsbrucking) has a pretty steep hill that takes a couple minutes, and he was getting a bit distanced on the last 2 of 3 climbs even though we dropped down our w/kg target vs the rest of the course. We even passed a team before the climb of lap 2 of 3 but got caught passed again before the top of the climb. We caught them again before the final climb and the same thing happened, so it was a bit awkward.

Next week we will have a couple more local hitters joining us, so IDK if I should be excited or scared. wktmeow , Adam (Schepps) and Cody are tentatively jumping in. I imagine I'll be one of the finishing four (along with Zack), which means I need to be careful not to overextend myself as I'm one of the slower ones. Kind of like our real life TTT Team .

TMonk

Today was a couple hours of MTB with a friend today, mostly easy in areas surrounding PQ west. We actually backtracked quite a bit and checked out the Eucalyptus forest at UCSD, pretty fun in there.

Next week it looks like I"ll be putting in some good efforts on the stationary and might have decent TSS even though I'm formally in off-season mode. I'm going to ride the Uber Pretzel Saturday (~5 hr ride), WTRL TTT on Thursday and maybe a double race day Tuesday morning, where I get up early and go for 2 Zwift races with some spinning in Watopia in between.

I haven't ridden the TT bike in weeks so I think I'll head out to Fiesta on Wednesday for some SST by feel, 30-40 total minutes worth (nothing crazy).

TheKillerPenguin

Today is the last day of my rest week. Did an 8min effort at what felt like 10-12min effort pace to see if I am recovered, and I am. Think I'll do the local ITT on Tuesday. Debating whether to do it Merckx or full aero.

wktmeow

Thats a lot of horsepower! (Which I believe is pretty much the main factor in a zwift ttt?) Good luck!

Do you have to actually use a TT bike?

TMonk

Yeah it is a lot of horsepower!

I use my road (race) bike, the Venge. The drafting feature doesn't work at all in Zwift on the TT bike, so at least all the teams (us included) ride road bikes in Z.

At some point I could see myself doing some workouts with the TT bike hooked up, but Fiesta is close enough so it's not urgent. I might try a ITT or two eventually in Zwift and maybe ride my TT bike to make it more realistic.

Hermes

Coast ride and Camp Pendleton endurance rides. The coast ride featured the most cyclists we have seen on the road in NorCal or SoCal. It seemed like one big charity ride with 10,000 starters. We kept getting hung up with small groups that swarm their way along the road. We did not want to draft and did not want to hang out at traffic lights.

Camp Pendleton is always worth the drive. We did the Camp to San Clemente and back that is 37 miles in under two hours of pretty much uninterrupted TTT with few stops not many cyclists or cars. Great weather.

Generally, we do the ride with long pulls tied to a 8 to 10 minute segment with power varying from SST to VO2. My wife likes the opportunity to get the longer duration on the TT bike. Today, we decided to use 1-1.5 minute pulls. Our time was about the same and we did have a stronger than usual head cross on the outbound leg. Of course, we were faster on the way back but we never get back the time lost in the wind.

TSS and Kjs were typical for both of us for that ride as well as time in various power zones. However, we both felt less fatigue during and at the end of the ride and had a lot more energy later in the day.

I have always felt that 100 TSS for a time trial does not equal 100 TSS for a group ride. Metabolically they may be the same but they sure feel different during and when its all over.