Yeah, a convenient metric would be interesting for prescriptions. I would think it'd have to be dependent on FTP, though, as a 145 lb world tour rider may be very comfortable in Z2 averaging 275-280 watts an hour and be burning 1 MJ an hour 4-5 hours at a time on endurance days.

Conversely, a 200 lb Cat 5 may struggle to do 210 watts an hour and only burn whatever that equates to... 600-700 KJ/hour maybe?

Yeah I was thinking about it on my ride, and it certainly does vary with fitness in addition to kg. So it gets complicated trying to normalize it by mass. But, having a work target for a specific rider during a large phase of their season does make sense.

I just finished up a bit over 90 min on the TT bike, one 25' SST effort and one harder effort of 10' that I did closer to (road) threshold on feel. I ended up at 102% for the 10', and although my HR rose quickly, it never got within a few BPM from LTHR. At the end I was feeling it for sure, but could have kept going a while longer and had enthusiasm. Nice.

My wife and I took the day off work and will be headed soon to do some socially distant camping at Temecula Vail Lake KOA with some friends. I'm looking to get another hour or so on the MTB there later, and maybe some more tomorrow if it's not too rainy. There is a pro XC course there so I'm looking fwd to checking it out.

Back on the horse next week with the first block of build. It may be a bit wet down here in San Diego until the following weekend, so it will likely be a lot of zwifting.

Yup. Today was just time spent outdoors in the warmth with no aim or reason other than to ride for a while and enjoy it. 80TSS and 725KJ/hr at right at 200w AP. I'm 72kg. So, nowhere near 200lbs. But, still only 200w.

For humans having sedentary jobs overall, just a couple hundred KJ's a week difference could mean holding even on weight or gaining over a year. I don't make big enough Z2 power to really kill it like a pro would and not even flinch while burning up fuel. Like, they're probably at 1000KJ/hr for an easy easy ride. My 725KJ/hr is for a really solid 3-hr Z2 pace if I keep it really smooth.

Last day of skiing - 55k of vertical feet over 6 days. SpO2 this AM was 96%. Gym / recovery / travel day tomorrow and then on Monday an easy spin on the trainer. San Diego’s weather is looking pretty gnarly. It will take Fiesta Island a couple of days to dry out.

Tomorrow is last z2 workout to wrap up recovery week, although I've been doing the workouts 3% harder just to get an idea if my threshold might be higher. I don't really think it is, I've been knocking out z2 stuff at 230w, but my HR has been a bit more in the tempo zone than I'd like to see, although RPE isn't too bad, so we'll see.

I'll be starting TrainerRoad's sustained power build HV this week. The plan itself roughly goes:
T-short VO2 type power
W-endurance
Thr-suprathreshold
Fri-endurance
Sat-over-unders
Sun-sweet spot
I've been seeing recently suggestions to not really do more than 2 intense days a week. Although I'm not generally one to chase all the fashionable trends, I think I may try this out and cut out the Tuesday short VO2 workout for another endurance session (I don't consider sweet spot hard enough to count it as a high intensity day). We'll see what that yields. I've ordered maltodextrine to mix with Gatorade for some homemade high carb stuff, I'm gonna need all that help I can get lol

3x16’ over/unders (Carpathian Peak+2 for you TR people). Beautiful day, we’re in a rain window, so everyone in Sac was on the bike trail. Including a bunch of people on electric fat bikes, and another group on Elliptigo “bikes”. It was a circus.

10,069 kJ this week in 11:39. Consisted of 48 mins of Z1, 5:15 Z2, 3:33 Z3, 1:35 of Z4, and 24 min of Z5+.

And this week they put a couple of races on the calendar, one at the end of Feb. Might just have a proper race season after all.

Did another 3 hour Zwift ride today to finish up a base week. Not exactly sure what I’m training for at this point. Maybe it’ll be Tuesday Nights Worlds in summer, KOMs, or Zwift races.

I haven’t raced Zwift during base because the effort hasn’t fit, but to some extent I think load is load, regardless of intensity, and I may be building for nothing anyway.

165 TSS Zwift ride, 5700ft.

I crushed my old 90min and 120min power on Zwift today. 240w for 90min and 235w for 120min. Rode Quatch Quest. Good route to warmup, do a solid 20ish min effort. Cruise. Then do just under an hour of sweetspot.

I lost a bit of avg power in that metric because the idiot trainer wanted to not give resistance after stopping to reach down to move a cable around before climbing the Alpe. So spun around at like 50w for a minute or two trying to figure that crap out.

505 TSS last week, 442 this week. Yessssir.

Tuesday this week looks warm in afternoon. Hopefully the morning rain dries enough for even some random TT bike action outdoors. That would be nice.

Honestly, from strava stalking most of the "z2" rides I see pros do are really mellow. It has changed how I approach most of my z2 days. If you can get 90-95% of the benefits with next to no fatigue, why not noodle and burn some easy kj? It certainly hasn't made me any slower. Also lets me go really hard when it is time to go really hard.

I've thought about using KJs for a while as well. What has always bugged me about TSS/CTL is that it's dependent on your FTP setting, which is very subjective, no matter what. You'll never have an up to the workout accurate FTP. As an example, you could do work for 4 weeks as your FTP is gradually increasing, but only test at the end, if at all. If you didn't update FTP during that time you might think your load was increasing, when actually it was the same. With KJs, you'd have, I think, a better picture of increasing/decreasing workload not matter how diligent you were about FTP updating.

Seems like my best kj was last week, 9698, that was at the end of a big sweet spot block. Aside from that I think I have maybe 3 other weeks in the past year where I've surpassed 9000, generally it's 7-8k range.

I'm fairly similar. It's definitely a bit of a stretch for me. I'm not sure how feasible it will be to do on a weekly basis unless there are holidays or extra breaks in which I can squeeze in an extra ride or two. But even if I only manage 8500-9000 kJ a week, that'll still be quite a bit more than I regularly do, so should be a decent fitness boost.

All this Kj talk is giving me but yet another metric to make me feel woefully inadequate.:eek:

I am rereading Faster by Hutchinson https://www.amazon.com/Faster-Obsess...s%2C206&sr=8-1 and it is only $1.99 on the Kindle.

It has a lot of interesting discussion on time trials, training concepts, testing and of course pro cycling. IMO, it would be a great read for aspiring time trialists such as burnthesheep

Just done with my biggest week of training in years. 11 hours on the bike (7264 kJ for those counting) + ~3 hours of alpine skiing Thursday evening and 3.5 hours of easyish xc skiing yesterday. Time for a rest week.

Just broke 6000 kj (wait, is that 6mj?) last week, my biggest week of the year. Most of it at sweet spot. Feeling a little fatigued today, but it's a scheduled day off that I should probably actually take.

Yeah! 6 MJs! Solid.

Weight is slowly moving in the right direction at 1-2 lbs per month. I don't ever seem to lose weight any faster than that, and maybe that is OK. I'm just a few lbs over what I believe is my best race weight, so I'm hoping to hold here until 2 months before I think races will start, then try to knock off 2-4 more lbs.



https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...61c62bb99e.png

Weekly Kj = 0

SpO2 this AM = 100%. Normally, I am 98/99% at sea level.

Blood oxygen and volume matter.

received a giant container of maltodextrine powder from amazon today. gonna mix with gatorade for homemade beta fuel. I'm looking to try seeing what my workouts are like with 90g carbs/hr, because I generally don't consume more than 3-400 calories during a workout, which lately are in the 1500kj range. I'm not struggling at all, but I think I can be better so I'm trying to focus more with fueling on the bike and not off it.

Opener ride this morning, 24' of moderate SST up Epic KOM, then 10' (ish) of threshold-y on Fuego Flats reverse and then a big ring smash up the Zwift KOM. I got the last two segments/jerseys which is pretty sweet.

FTP test tomorrow. It won't be the best conditions with chilly (for here) temps, wind and water on the ground, but I should at least get a hard effort out of it. In any event, I expect my result to be within a 5-7 watt window so it won't affect my training zones too much really.

Did 3x 10 threshold intervals with Thing 3 yesterday in the rain/dark at the Veloway. Trying to teach him how to keep power up in spite of turning/slowing (control speed with front brake and power with the rear brake). He was getting it by the end. Good feeling for me b/c I was dropping his skinny ass by the end of the workout. Then he went for a really fast hilly ride second workout in the afternoon faster than I've ever done it O_o.

I'm starting to learn how to balance my own 2x/day training rides. Four days/week, I train road in the morning, then coach the MTB team later. Weekdays, that means really really hard road intervals with their Jr. dev team on knobbies. I'm learning that I cannot do two really hard interval workouts in the same day more than 1x/week :)

tried to do the kolie moore ftp test, was not feeling it. Was definitely flat as hell after just z2 stuff all week. I did 10min at 93% and a couple of mins at 100% and my motivation to do that was zero. So ended up doing 60mins of z2, probably should have done openers.

Yea I usually do. Doing a test up Alpe du Zwift on Saturday, openers Friday after a couple z2 days.

Actually had a consult with Kolie the other day, got some useful info, going to try the "lots of threshold work" approach for a bit. When I tried it before I burned out and didn't gain much, but I was also doing 20 min tests and my intervals ended up way too hard. Also didn't really follow the progressive overload and recovery parts too well.

What did you do, just pay him for an hour consultation or so?

I talked to one of his coaches about possibly signing up for coaching with them, but decided I'm a ways off from working with a coach.

Yep, couldn't afford coaching but figured I could make sure I was on the right track with my own plan and periodization strategy. It was super helpful

Thanks! Checking in on that now.

Always fun to have an interesting read handy.

I've considered tossing some cash for a consult, but can't afford enough for a full on coach. I think it may be useful to have someone take a glance at each year "in review" and say hey, if this is what you're really wanting to do........I notice X,Y,Z. If you tell me to do/try it, I have the brains to put it into Trainingpeaks.

I learn fast, but I'll always be missing something along the way that the much much more experienced folks would notice.

Zwift race tonight. Zwift racing is weird and kind of dumb but it is also kind of fun. Why is the east coast league at 7:48 on a Tuesday though?! I'm not about to change my weekend rides and/or do openers on monday for a Zwift race. I also don't want to get off a bike at like 9pm.

Things learned:
-You can press space bar(!) instead of clicking the power up on the screen. I did not find this out until after the race though, so I was one handed out of the saddle doing 500-550w while trying to click on the feather. At one point I accidentally opened an excel spreadsheet?
-Sticky draft is the worst thing ever wtf
-Do not bring b-minus legs to a wtrl league race lolol

He's the ECCC head honcho for collegiate and we have a couple of friends in common. I've talked to him on instagram a few times and he seems like a totally stand up guy. His instagram Q&A's are very good as well and worth checking out. Alex, one of his coaches, seemed like a great dude as well. And that monster 2100W+ sprint for kohlie. Hot damn.

I'm sort of glad I ended up not committing to the coaching thing... knee flared up again and I've had a few health things in the last couple of weeks and tldr I haven't been on the bike in atleast 2 weeks...