TheKillerPenguin

Yesterday's intervals were 10W higher than prescribed on rolling roads which puts me well ahead of my best form from last year. It was also 25 and windy out so I'm excited to see where I am at when not dressed up like a cossack!

Today is 5hrs. Tomorrow we get somewhere between 1-2 feet(!) of snow, so it is a well-timed rest day.

TexMac

Sadly my Rouge Roubaix 100m RR ended at mile 17, when my chain dropped, caught between the frame and crank snapped my rear and front derailleurs, spent 80 miles in sag vehicle enjoying guys eat mud

rideaz

Yes! I was there, it was a fun weekend! How did you do?

caloso

-24.5 tsb after my ride (2x30' @ 90%) this morning. Tomorrow's day off is going to be just fine.

globecanvas

8x3 @ 120% today. I am certain this is the most Z5 intervals I have ever done, by which I mean it's half of what TKP does.

johnybutts

I put in 4.5 hrs last week. That's my best showing since last June.

Someday I'll be fast again.

TheKillerPenguin

3.5 with 2x45 tempo. Derailleur stopped working half way thru the second one so I finished it off single speed style. I was aiming for 5hrs today but decided it was better to not destroy my knees and took the short route home.

Less hours than planned but I guess I still put in a decent amount @19 / 931TSS, and I did all the intensity prescribed. I also feel fresh which is really ****ing weird given all the intervals.

dmotoguy

Super inconsistent training, but ftp is coming back 275w at the moment .

I've been trying to balance gym and bike do to the gloomy weather and lack of trainer motivation. Trying to get my sprint power up for crit season.

scheibo

been really sluggish lately, 14h and 15h the last two weeks but only 835/787 TSS which is on the low side for that volume for me. my quads have been super sore for like no reason and i haven't done a workout on the bike since last monday. part of me thinks I should just soldier through it, suck it up and try to crank out a workout anyway, but the more sensible side of me that i'm trying to cultivate tells me i should probably just back off and the power will come back eventually (hopefully in time to race for this weekend).

i find it funny - i always tend to get about exactly the TSS/intensity i deserve out of a ride vs. what i actually want. the downsides to this are a) not being able to target specific zones as well (the extra, unintended intensity gets spent in unstructured ways) and b) not being able to guarantee my form on any given day (though mainly only for workouts, i usually get psyched and deliver a decent performance on race day). i think part of this is due to the added variable of my running habit, as both sports tend to mess with each other, but its something im hoping to improve going forward

mike868y

2 hours inside watching the snow fall with 5' vo2, 2*10' 30 on/30off, 5' vo2.

racing allegedly starts this weekend.

wktmeow

2x8' @ 110% scheduled for today. I'm lazy and don't wanna do it. Can I just go back to long z2 stuff again?

Oh well, just two more structured days before I hit some dirt.

aaronmcd

2:45 with 6 sprints followed by VO2: 4 on 2 off 3 on... roll around a bit... 5 on 30" off 3 on... roll around a bit... 5 on 5 off 5 on

mattm

I think you do too much vo2 stuff. Train your weakness, not your strength! (at least at some point in the year)

Ttoc6

Raced this past weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Put last week up to abotu 110 for ATL and 105 for CTL. Monday was an hour on the rollers just noodling. Today was an hour on the rollers with middle 30 minutes being 30 on/30off. Racked up 79 TSS in an hour on the rollers. Pretty happy with how the intervals went. I've done higher power for 30/30 but never indoors. 2 finals tomorrow so will probably not have time to do anything of high intensity.

Also, selling old trainer and buying a kickr2 today. Pretty excited to not be using tires anymore!

aaronmcd

I agree, I do too much VO2. It's super useful especially with a low ftp so I'm not gonna give it up. But I did completely abandon VO2 for a full month to focus on threshold (last block before chico). And look I'm actually doing sprints!

This block is sprints plus VO2 and sprints plus threshold. Next block is AWC if I can stand to give up a bit of longer stuff.

TMonk

I'm happy w my performance. I rode a 11:30 TT at 322w which I'm happy about. It was on a road bike so it was good for 14 (out of 17 ).

I rode supporting roles in the next two stages, attacking and chasing bridge attempts to our rider(s) up the road. We didn't podium individually but won the team competition so that's cool.

How was your race?

TMonk

2x20's on Fiesta this morning, 98 and 99%.

globecanvas

Holy jeebus there's a lot of snow out there. I broke trail on skis for a couple of miles through more than knee deep snow, so exhausting. It makes everything tired, even rarely used muscles in your arms from having to lift the poles so high. Then another couple of miles in a snow machine track. I'm calling it 120 TSS for 1:45 of moving time.

mattm

Don't get me wrong, vo2 is good - it just seems like you do a LOT of it.

From racing with your a little so far, I think your weakness is jumping/sprinting. Sprint workouts, but also stuff like accelerating from ~stopped to sprinting all out is the kind of stuff you should really work on.

But I'll admit it's a lot easier to tell someone to train their weakness than to train mine.. I enjoy doing 5' efforts and sprints, the two things I'm decent at. HATE HATE HATE doing 20' intervals more than anything.

scheibo

I don't think VO2 is really a weakness of mine per se, I just don't like doing it if I don't have to (it hurts!). Well, I don't think I really like any workouts all that much (they all hurt!) for that matter, but I think if anything VO2 will help my threshold the most.

Anyway, I had a short and quick workout today where I got to ride up some climbs without any BS navigating through 45min of traffic lights beforehand (OMG i think id get like 50% more quality in my riding if I didn't have to deal with all the garbage foreplay all the time). Instead of riding the climbs steady I did them as sort of 1'/2' O/Us by feel, where the unders were probably a little low and the overs maybe a little high. Either way, probably more beneficial for me than just doing the climbs straight with no variation as I'm wont to do

mattm

so true! When I do rollers 100% of the workout is meaningful. When I ride the first and last ~30 minutes are a waste due to traffic & stop signs/lights. Sometimes I at least try to spin high cadence in that part just to get something out of it.

As for vo2max, I just feel like it's not hard enough. It's hard to do sure, but in the races I do (crits), I'm either going all out or soft pedaling. Rarely are you somewhere in the middle. There are other uses for vo2max, but it's not something that translates directly to racing it seems.

rideaz

Nice! I was 5th in the TT (also on a road bike) and pack finish in the next 2 stages, avoided several crashes...barely! It was a fun weekend

globecanvas

Interesting, I was thinking about exactly this yesterday, right after doing a vo2max workout What's the point of doing threshold or vo2max when a race looks like this?



I guess I take it on faith that a bunch of repeated all-out intervals sort of average out to vo2max in terms of the stress on the body. Like, 2 hot laps might be 50% Z7 and 50% Z1 but as far as your cardio system is concerned it's just like 5 minutes of Z5. But I don't really know. I do think the first 90 seconds or so of a 3 minute interval can feel like a race-relevant hard snappy effort, but the last 90 seconds is just awful gasping.

aaronmcd

VO2 translates well to surviving the typical 3-6 minute flurries of attacks, or those several minute stretches of crosswinds in road races, or the gradual climb at the bump and fort ord circuit races, or countering after a few attacks, or suriving a lap or two (or maybe more if I went all TKP and trained for 45' VO2 in a single ride) of Winters, Berkeley, Pesky, Wente, Winchester, etc. VO2 initiates the break pretty much always and it won me CCCX hotdog course that one time.

OTOH I've lost more races in sprints, but so does 97% of the field. And without VO2 I'd never lose a sprint cuz I'd never be there!

mattm

Exactly!

My race power profiles look like a half-pipe (WKO/TP shows them on a horizontal axis) - pretty much all z1 & z7+.

I'm not saying vo2 is worthless, but it shouldn't be the priority either.