burnthesheep

Ended a 500 TSS week, no running inflating the total either.

Just chugging along with nothing really to look forward to yet.

Would have had a good SS pace practice 10mi run, but cars blocked my path twice and cost me a little time.

furiousferret

I could only manage 25 minutes yesterday, too wiped.

I did 2 hours of yardwork in 100+ degree heat killed me. When my wife isn't looknig, I roll my face in the mud to make it look like I really really worked hard. I also add a slight southern accent which helps sell the blue collar facade. Probably didn't need to act tho!

14 hours on the week.

big john

I did 2 hours of yard work the week before on Thursday and I swear I felt it on Saturday. I think I've been living in a constant state of dehydration.

What's your yard work suffer score?

furiousferret

Pretty high. Its all clay so I had to use a pick ax just to dig. Tore a callous in my hand. I have to go buy mulch to fill it in, but was just too wiped out to bother yesterday.

big john

That's tougher than the stuff I was doing.

TMonk

Big weekend last week, rode up to Vista (~45 mi) for the "VistaCrits" practice crit, lapped the field almost 2x with two other youngins before we attacked eachother and finished separately in the final laps. I got third and rode the last 2 laps solo in no man's land. God that was hard. I know these kids (17 and 19) from road and track, even with an optimized warmup and without the trek up from San Diego, best I would have done was lose in a sprint.

Rode home from my parents' place the next day and packed up for Mt. Laguna where I tacked on a few hours of MTB over the weekend.

Double Zwift race day this morning, both on the Crit City courses and good for a bit over 20 min each. On the first one (6:35 AM) I got dropped from the front halfway in and finished 15/25 A's, but I had only like 10 min of warmup (still sleepy) and it was taking 4.5+ w/kg to sit in the front group so there were some hitters. On the second, there were less A+'s and I was feeling good and warmed up so I got a top 10 in the A's front group with like a 4.1 w/kg total effort.

Hermes

TTT Tuesdays at Fiesta. Consistently logging 10:30 lap times via tempo power and did another 20K TTT. Once again somewhat ideal weather conditions for fast times - higher humidity, higher temperature and lighter winds although we are under high pressure. Low pressure is better.

One somewhat interesting occurrence was my wife losing her power readout. Losing power for a power junkie is not good. I heard her say stop stop my power meter is not working. The beauty of training is being able to stop and trouble shoot the problem. The Garmin needed the windows rolled up and down. Of course, in a real race, you just keep going.

TMonk When are we going to see a new TTT lap record at Fiesta?

And what happens during a Zwift race if one momentarily loses indicated power? Is Zwift smart enough to effectively give a free lap to fix the problem or make an adjustment or are you dead in the water. I assume your race is over.

wktmeow

They got it last week! I think they're going for the short lap tomorrow


I think they caught a car at the end and would have shaved a few more seconds off otherwise

TMonk

Yep, as wktmeow mentioned we got it. Well, Kevin got it . Cody and I got dropped before the finish of the lap, Cody lasted a little longer. Kev had to do the last minute solo and he got slowed by a car at the end... I think with better execution and no car we could take > 5 seconds off that.

Speaking of execution, it's so important for an effort like this... The power disparity between sitting in and being in the wind is huge and you really need to ride it as efficiently as possible. Going over 5, 600w needs to be kept to an absolute minimum. Also you need to remember to save some horses for getting back on the train, which is the hardest part IMO.

I think doing a TP on the track would be totally awesome. I love how there is no luck, circumstance or chance like there is in mass start racing. It's 100% pure execution. You do have the banking to help you get back on though, which probably means you can put a few more watts into your pulls.

Short lap attempt tomorrow. Should be good for < 5 minus of hell.

caloso

2x20s before work. There was ash all over the patio furniture from the Solano fire, but the AQI readings weren't terrible. I'm guessing those big flakes don't really register. Anyway, hit my wattage targets so that was good.

TMonk

We got it, 2.50 mi in 4:36 for 32.6 MPH. Full TT setup of course, four riders. All top times are TT rides, the Thursday night "world champs" ride is 20s slower. But it's windier in the evening too, conditions were great this morning: warm, low wind, low air pressure.

hubcyclist

today was 5x11min, starting with 30sec @ 140% and settling into 10min at 95%, HR was nice and steady on all of them, the legs were getting heavy on the last round though! I did the same workout last week except the start was at 130% and next week it'll be 150%

Still debating where to take my training from here, my original plan was to do a CX specialty plan regarding of whether there is a season (which there won't be, at least not in MA). I figure there's some more vo2 work I could benefit from doing, since I'm plenty good at sweet spot. But I've also been thinking of doing a massive base phase and work on extending sweet spot intervals to 45-60-90 and maybe even 120mins of uninterrupted work. I still have a couple of weeks to think it over.

Hermes

TMonk Your team is now king of Fiesta.

Assuming we are racing next season, podium at Elite Road Nationals TTT and Elite Track Nationals team pursuit seem like good goals. Team pursuit at SD Velodrome would be great training and certification at Velo Sports Center with some training sessions and you are good to go for Elite track nationals team pursuit. Easy peasy.

TMonk

Would love to try me some TP on the track. Up next on our list for 2021 (also assuming we have a season) is to repeat our district (SCNCA) TTT elite title, and to get the 40k TTT record at the Fiesta Island TT series which will be no easy feat. Then maybe we can consider national level stuff .

It takes a lot of fitness and focus out of me to be able to ride with these guys and contribute. I quite enjoy the challenge. Going into the season, I was more excited about my TTT goals than regular road goals, and at this point it will probably be even more so going into 2021.

burnthesheep

Look away if triggered........Strava shennanigans:

I took the TT bike out for some revenge last night. No other goal than to hammer one rolling segment. I didn't see the notification a bit ago, but some US pro dude was in town and went on a joy ride and decided that one of the three or four segments he'd bomb was mine. Not a super popular segment, but one folks do use sometimes to cut across town. Usually I'm on my last 15min of a 3hr ride at that point. So I thought it was game-on if I was fresh.

I didn't go full nuts with the race level TT kit, just road kit and the TT bike. Did some tempo on the way out, then some Z1 and "centered" my thoughts in a cul de sac a bit up the street. Zero wind, super calm. So a very "fair" effort if that's your thing.

It's about a mile of little 15 second long rollers. Net elevation is pretty much nil. It's all about the short rollers. I originally did it at 25mph and he upped it to 27mph. His HR was pegged, so it wasn't a half hearted effort. I went ahead and put that segment to freaking bed. 33mph and I cut 20 seconds off of a single mile segment. At the bottom of each little roller I'm pretty sure I was breaking the speed limit pretty bad.

No vomit. Yeahhhh.....

I looked at my Wahoo and TP afterwards......TT bike or road I'm pretty sure that's a 2min PR for myself. This was all in the extensions.
20sec: 600w
1min: 500w
1min 30: about 450w
2min: about 420w

Only reason I got a 2min number out of it is the lead-in for the segment. I wasn't going to leave it to chance.

caloso

Triggered? Shoot, most of my training this year has consisted of Strava shenanigans. Good job!

ridethecliche

Without any real racing this year there's no hope for strava if they can't make money in this environment!

burnthesheep

I was letting the "uh oh" emails go ignored most of this summer. I kept grabbing volume and doing other stuff. One local guy similar in road bike strength grabbed a few and I tossed him some kudos and a nice comment or two of encouragement. I didn't really care super much for those. I was having fun just riding solo and riding the TT bike quickly for training rides.

That segment was the straw. Not that I had it out for that dude because I saw a pro badge by their name either. I just liked that little segment so wanted it back. When it's a shorter one like that, even if it was a super strong dude on a road bike...........TT bike levels the playing field by a good 20% of their power.

I saw him do it at 27mph from my original 25. So, idea was hit it hard first little bit over a roller then keep the speed over 27. Take a glance to be sure then hold the pace. When I looked down from that first roller it was in the 30's and I never let up.

I rolled into the parking lot of an office building at the end of that road to catch my breath. I saw 33mph for it and I just started chuckling.

I think for me a game changer for some of my Strava hunting on the TT bike would be going electronic. There's some areas you just can't stay aero. It's a tight slower turn involving some braking up front. So, with mech, I'm having to deal with reaching or planning that mess out. If I had Di2 I could be optimizing the gearing into and out of that stuff.

One night doing my personal 4mi TT lap by the house, I had someone beside me in a car yell out "holy crap dude, what the fk!". It's a 4-lane with almost no traffic that time of evening. Speed limit 45, solid downhill. I was doing about 50 or so. I only do that because it's really wide lanes and good pavement. I'll usually do a warmup lap first a lot slower anyway.

furiousferret

I don't think I have any KOM's left. My 'friends' aka teammates took them all. They're all younger and stronger than me. Some could be DPros if the world cared about racing these days (IMO, I think there are a lot of racers out there like that right now). If I got one they'd straight up take it.

There are 4 types of KOM's

• The known routes (i.e. Oak Glen, the 38, Sunset, Mt Baldy, etc.)
• The local routes (i.e. the Bike Path, Practice Crit Course, Main Commuter Roads)
• The obscure routes (i.e. Bob's Driveway, Weird Pattern only one guy does, etc)
• The routes that shouldn't be (descents, ones were you have to run lights, etc)

I really only care about the first two, but so many people fish for KOM's that they're all hard to get around here now.

EDIT: I actually have two, one on a descent (because its my commute route and there's no traffic at 5 am) and another I got during a storm with a massive tailwind. TBH, I'm prouder of my times on the known routes, even though I'm not even in the top 10 (but usually fastest 45+).

hubcyclist

Better to screenshot than to describe. Assuming a workout toward the end of the training block like this one is supposed to be really hard, the fact that I got through with virtually no difficulty is encouraging.

TMonk

Variety is the spice of life they say, so I rode MTB (hot) this morning with a buddy and then a Zwift race in the early evening for 2 and 1 hrs, respectively. Z race was a bit under 30', 4 laps of volcano CCW. I finished 8th out of 10 A's for like 13/80 something total, out of the front group. I didn't really want to sprint up the final mini climb and instead stayed seated and hoped I would just motor past people who burnt out before the finish, but it didn't really happen. You get what you pay for I guess.

ridethecliche

Trainer road vs sufferfest?
Thoughts?

furiousferret

I've been doing nothing but easy TR since my sickness. Functionally, it works because I can work on my Spanish watching videos, as you need roughly 1000 hours of input to be fluent. I'm halfway there, and can understand 95% of a show in Spanish with subs but that drops to about 80% without. I do really need to start putting in real efforts though. My CTL is mid 70's but its misleading because that's off of massive amounts of volume.

ridethecliche I like Trainer Road, never tried sufferfest.

TheKillerPenguin

I've been toying around with not using power on rides just to see what happens, because I think I've gotten used to being able to do x watts for y minutes and when I get close to what I know my PB numbers are I subconsciously bug out. The first couple of rides doing this seem to indicate that this is the case. RPE is significantly lower for a given wattage than I would have thought, especially uphill.

big john

That's interesting. So you don't look at the power until a certain point and then just to see if it's where you feel it might be? Did I ask that right?