johnybutts

2 hrs of endurance today. ran into our town's art car festival... saw some old friends who had a model T build up with a trailer which was pretty cool.

Apus^2

7x3' @ somewhere in the VO2 zone. 75 minutes total. Goal is to ride every other day to maintain fitness. Luckily I'm here for only 9 more days, then I take the next full week off for a mini camp.

umd

5x8 climbing repeats today, supposed to be at 103%-107% of FTP, but I couldn't do it. I think my FTP may have dropped a bit.

I also realized I was revving way too high (~100-110) and when I dropped my cadence down to ~85-90 I had an easier time making power but still too low.

kudude

I raced a crit this morning, and then my wife (who drove there with me) took off for a bridal shower (she was NOT happy about it) and I rode the 42 miles home. It was a good day on the bike, but I'm beat.

you don't ride clinchers above 30mph? Am I reading that right?

arexjay

Ended up breaking my personal record up a 3 mile/6-8% climb by 30 seconds today, and was over a minute faster than any time I've done it this year.

mollusk

Sure I do. But the mind starts acting a little funny deep into a 20 minute interval. I was probably looking for any excuse to back off a touch and cut down on the pain.

waterrockets 

Power test week this week, all four columns.

Today: 5" and 1' tests.

No download yet, but sprint max was 1628. Will probably mean a 5" power in the 1500-1530W range. Lower than I want, but I'll take it, as it will probably be my best for the last year.

The 1' test shows 757W for 1:01. Download may give me a Watt or 2 over that. That's probably my best 1' in about a year as well.

So, I'm not as strong as I was at 8 hrs/wk, but doing well for 5 hrs/wk, all things considered.

Still have the 5' and 20' tests ahead of me. The pressure is off now that the 1' is out of the way and respectable though.

I was really impressed with my teammate Jonathan today pulling a 696W 1' for his personal best too. I think he's 165-170 lbs right now. Sweet.

Bullseye

Recently I've come to the realization that my ~12-14 hours a week of riding was too intense - much L3-L4-L5, but not much L2, and not much recovery. I've shifted this to ride ~ 90% L2, and have 1-2 focused days a week where I either do excellent threshold/VO2 work. it seems to be working really well, and after only a week I'm realizing I should have done this years ago. oh well.

weight is also coming down, too; was 158 a few weeks ago, now down to 153, and FTP is still coming up.

hope to see a 10-20 watt boost in FTP over the next 4-5 weeks. will report back later.

Enthalpic

What's your Florida descending / flatland weapon of choice?

Enthalpic

Very nice. My coach wants me to test and work on 90s power this year -I'm not looking forward to it- one min is bad enough.

Apus^2

Be hitting up the camp gym for another 75 minutes of ftp work.

ZeCanon

Few days completely off for finals, and because I need a little break from the bike. Then re-basing for a few weeks to prep for some big summer races.

MDcatV

depends on the time of the season, no?

aham23

i would be interested in the specifics of how you go about these test. thanks. later.

waterrockets 

omfg yeah, that's bad news. Sorry to hear that.

Those three crazy 3-minute-all-out CP tests I did just about killed any motivation I've had for 1' intervals. That mental toughness training is good though, and I could feel my fangs crew about 2mm during my test today. It's all good.

Post up on how it goes though. I think I would graph higher on a 45" chart than on a 60" chart, so a 90" test is really unattractive to me

waterrockets 

5" test is one of the warmups for the 1' test. Doesn't hurt anything to go all-out for 7" (always go past your test duration!)

So, the first warmup sprint is just for max power. Just to see where I am. Once I know I'll be peaking over 1600W, I know I'm warmed up. So, these first sprints are maybe 4" or so.

The 5" test, for me, is always best starting around 95rpm, coming off a valley. Just as the descent ends, speed is high, and the incline is coming. Nothing too steep. It's good to be able to start at race speed, then have continuous resistance to fight once I get my speed up.

For the 1' test, a similar course works well for me. Starting on a flat just after a bit of a descent. Plowing up a hill from there. I start them off all-out, 100%. Theoretically, I should be able to get a 5" power record at the start of a 1' test, but for some reason, my legs know better. I'm usually 100W off a real test power. Anyway, starting with an "all-out" sprint, I never let up on RPE. Every single pedal stroke is as hard as it can be at that moment.

1' tests are pretty fragile. If you stop 1" early, lose focus and let up slightly, anything like that can shed a small bucket of Watts. I usually reflect on them thinking I probably could have kept the pressure up just a little better, but it seems like my tests are all extremely consistent as long as I push through the full duration and out the other side.

Bullseye

I'm not so sure. IMHO [based on my recent thoughts], doing everything you can to nail the L4/L5 work is going to pay off the most [regardless of what time of year it is]. the L2 volume is just a bonus. but certainly you wouldn't want to add more L2 at this time of year that leaves you too tired to effectively work L4/L5.

anyway, I'm interested to see what results I get from this change.

MDcatV

do post your results. i typically lump L3 and L4 together and do that with 12 hrs./week as "base" type training. When I start mixing L5+ into the fold, I ususally stop the L4 focused work and substitute L2 in there so that I can recover.

for instance, i'll do L4 as long climbing stuff, pacing workout, 2 or 3x20s, 8 or 6x5s, whatever day after day and can reasonbly recover for the following days workout as long as everything is truly <L5.

when I start mixing in L5+ i'll do a hard day (like a tuesday) followed by an L2 day, then another hard day. I just seem fresher for the hard stuff that way.

Bullseye

yeah, that makes sense. A bit more from my reasoning:

A lot of what I'm trying to optimize is fiber type usage. In my typical riding before, if I ride a lot of upper L3/lower L4, that's in the range where type 2 fibers start to come into effect. If I'm doing that on nearly every ride, those fibers will get fatigued [and require a larger carbohydrate ingestion to refuel them]. so, I try to reduce the fatigue on those fibers, hence the strict L2 guideline.

When riding L2, I don't feed at all beforehand, and have just sips of a carbohydrate drink during the ride, to optimize fat utilization. however, I do 'carb up' before and during the hard days, to maximize the type 2 fiber contribution to those workouts.

based on the changes in diet/whatnot, it makes sense to me to fully separate my intense vs. non-intense workouts. after a few weeks, I might change a few things up. will report back.

mollusk

I don't need no stinkin' hill to hit 30+ mph.

ldesfor1@ithaca

all this talk of sub 1' intervals has got me psyched for tomorrows workout. going for a CP30" record tomorrow. I want a kilowatt average in a bad way. I hope I still want it tomorrow! I also have an all out 25' TT to do on the TT rig.

this weekeknd was a 2:15 RR @ nearly 1 on the IF scale Saturday and 2:45 of JRA with 8 sprints thrown in sunday... with GF. I sucked at those.
Today was a 10' spin in to work on the TT bike. dass it.

sleeping well, eating well and feeling pretty good on the bike... i think it will all come together well for my peak if saturday's race was any indicator. After a 10' last ditch TT and a 1' hill sprint I actually wished to be racing still. Legs felt super.

euphoria

completely and utterly botched the ZCI intervals today. feels like I don't have the leg strength to stay in the proper zone when faced with nasty winds. these take mega focus!

have a 10 mile TT on sunday as part of a sprint tri relay. unsure of how to plan the rest of this week (a thursday training crit might leave me too tired, how sad is that). cousin dropped out of doing the swimming/running because of his stupid PhD so now our hopes are anyone's guess with my slacker bro filling in. I'm kind of a good swimmer and it would be hilarious to do it in a skinsuit...

Enthalpic

Your central governor knows better than to start a 1min test with your best 5'' power.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19679576
Teleoanticipation in all-out short duration cycling.
CONCLUSIONS: An all-out pacing strategy was apparent for at least up to 15 s, with indicators of dampened power in both 30 and 45 s sprints. Reduced power at the start of all-out long duration sprints support a central control of at least initial pacing strategy.


Articles on teleoanticipation are really interesting to me (especially when they include deception) because they show how much of your performance is regulated by neurological and psychological factors not cardiovascular and muscular factors like so many have blindly accepted.

“My heart and lungs gave out before my legs.” Not unless you were suffering from angina pectoris…

“My legs gave out before my lungs.” Really, let me shock them and see if they can still contract forcefully… yep they still can produce far more force than needed.

“I ran out of energy” You entered a state of rigor mortis? Otherwise you had plenty of ATP kicking around, let alone other macronutrients, which I can confirm with this biopsy…

The real reason we “get tired” and fail to perform is that your brain won’t allow you to hurt yourself so it shuts down motor neuron recruitment before damage can occur.

Training is teaching your brain to ignore the “make it stop!” messages from the body while simultaneously strengthening the body so it “complains” to the brain less loudly.

caloso

Was going to head out for a set of WRI's at lunchtime but the skies exploded with a Great Lakes style rain dump. Hopefully the system will have passed by the commute home and I can get in some work then.

Apus^2

A Raidolab episode on human limits:

https://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2010/04/16

My wife wasn't sure whether or not to send it to me because she thought I might do something stupid.