Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
I can't seem to get my Vo2 to budge. I've tried the long aerobic 8-12 minute intervals route, I've tried the Hunter Allen vo2 route (3 and 5 mins at 118% and 115% ftp). I've tried the 95% of actual VO2 route(about 128% FTP for me), and I've tried just unstructured group ride type things. I always seem to top out within a few watts. Two years in a row (trying the Allen methodology the first year, and 95% the second year) I got the exact same 5 minute powers to the watt.
It's kind of interesting for me, but the suffering during the workouts is such that I'm not too bothered chasing it if I can get there with shorter and longer intervals and group rides. 30- 90 sec power and 30-40 minute power seem to be my best indicators of racing performance, and I find them much more pleasant to train.
Have you tried 110+ RPM hard starts/positive split for 3-6 min efforts? Those seem to do something for me, but I hate actually doing them.
The tricky thing is that supra-threshold power improvements do not necessarily correlate to vo2max improvements. E.g. if your vo2max actually improves but your anaerobic capacity decreased then your power might be the same for 5 minutes, and vice versa. Not sure how you determine what your 'actual' vo2 power is either, as you can achieve vo2max at a wide range of wattages. Sooner at higher power (e.g. 125-150% FTP) but you can't stay there as long, later at lower power (e.g. 105-110%) but you might be able to hold it longer. There's an important difference between improving your 5 minute power and actually improving vo2max. One is not necessarily indicative of the other. Ideally, for an endurance sport at least, we should probably prioritize improving actual vo2max and not 5 minute power, as this would increase the ceiling for FTP, whereas improving 5 min power via increased anaerobic capacity may not.
Speaking of which, it was so nice out yesterday I opted to leave work early and ride Fiesta Island for a little bit. I should probably have done vo2max efforts, but racing is coming up, and I don't get to ride outdoors often mid-week, so I did 30/30s. I don't like doing those on the trainer, and figured I haven't done anything in those anaerobic zones in a while. They hurt and I felt nauseous after so I guess I can count that as a success.
Also took Tuesday off and did a 4 hour hilly ride with a slower friend. Haven't gone that easy on a long ride in a while, NP was just at the bottom of z2/top of z1. Somehow it still felt productive though? Mythical LSD gains? I usually push mid-high z2 at least for this sort of duration.
If I can get an hour or two in today, and my usual 4 hours sat and 1.5 sunday, then this should be my longest week on the bike in recent history
