Hi! I need some suggestions on what workout I should do on Fridays: Sprints, VO2 Max intervals, or sweet spot (or something else?) I'm 41 years old and weigh about 146 pounds.
I have three primary goals this season beneath the main umbrella of wanting to increase my FTP: First goal is to ride strong with the group rides as they are the most fun, and as the season goes on will hopefully be more like races, and I would like to have a decent sprint as there is usually at least one sprint in the group ride and these days I seem to be better at sprints than climbs (I am the slowest climber among the strong A group riders--but about midpack for sprints)--I would like to do better on the hills. I did hill repeats last Thursday but they were a bit lackluster; my best interval of 7 was the first one which was 262 watts or 108% of my best all time 20 minute power (242 watts), since owning a power meter anyway which I got in 2019)--this was a 6 minute climb with enough steepness that I would drop below my ideal cadence (I prefer 100 cadence, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but when I'm grinding below 80 cadence it's hard for me to move up. hill fast). That personal best 20 minute power was done on May 4, 2021.
My second goal is to do a 110 mile ride in late September with three friends, one of whom has *much* more talent than me, but doesn't do structured training but used to race cat 3 cyclocross. A week before that there's also a local race (not technically categorized, but the front field is made up of cat3-cat4 calibre, otherwise any Joey can participate and it's designed for people like me that otherwise don't race. It is only 27 miles on rolling terrain with a few short climbs (nothing steep) that happens every year and looks like it might happen this year (if it does this will probably be my priority event of the year as it is an actual race). If my training/riding goes well this summer I may go to a race or two outside these events, but generally I do not race and enjoy the group rides enough!
I've only been riding with power meter this season since April 19 and most of those rides have been with a heart rate monitor.
Training Peaks tells me my current fitness is trending up at 43, fatigue is trending up at 93 and form is trending down at -65. I'm not 100% sure on how to read these numbers, but I get the general gist of it. Am I supposed to prevent fatigue from hitting 100? I'm definitely focusing on recovery tomorrow (I try for like 90 watts most of the time during recovery rides or whatever feels really good).
My somewhat structured training week has loosely been coming together over the last few weeks:
Monday is an easy, short tune up ride with 4x15" sprinty leg openers with 4 minutes of zone 1 recovery between each sprint, to get me ready for the punchy Tuesday night "A Pace" group ride. I average around 650+ watts for the 15 seconds efforts.
The Tuesday group ride has been a large 2 hour group (up to 18 peeps) with lots of surges and too much zone 1 and one VO2 max or threshold effort for about 8-15 minutes, but I think this large group ride might get split into two groups (one to go out 6 minutes earlier and be chased by the higher calibre second group).
This week (today) I've just started another A pace group ride (half the size with lots of pace-lining, so very little zone 1), but still a pretty punchy ride with a 15 minute effort up a hill at 100% of my best 20 minute power on fairly tired legs near the end of the 2 hour ride. I was struggling after this climb to stay with a 3 man rotating pace line (we got dropped from the core group on that climb) so was definitely a "nothing left at the end of the ride" workout. I'm fairly certain all of the core strong A riders are Zwifting and were doing so over the winter (I don't ride indoors).
Thursday: easy spin recovery ride between 45-60 min.
Friday: ??? more intervals? sweet spot? threshold? VO2 max? sprints?
Weekend: One or two endurance rides with at least one ride being 4+ hours. If I do the second endurance ride it will be a group ride at mostly zone 2 (and hopefully not too much zone 1).
I've been averaging 206 miles over the last 4 weeks (between 11-12 hours) to give a sense of my fitness level and training. I did 3 solo centuries last fall (first time I had done a century) over the course of 3 Sundays (all ridden at zone 2). In the winter I did a lot of winter gravel rides and did 700+ kilometers during the festive 500 (but it was all zone 1 and zone 2). I didn't ride in February due to snowpack. I've never done indoor training. In April I started riding in earnest again with hard tempo 3 hour rides and longer zone 2 rides for a couple weeks and started the loosely structured training about a month ago. At this time I want to build my training plan around the Tuesday and Wednesday group rides which will be hard work outs (VO2 max/threshold kinda riding with less and less zone1 / rests as the season goes on). My best all time 90 minute power is 196 set on April 20th, 2021. Tonight I had 195 watts for 90 minutes. My best 60 minute power was 200 watts set April 4, 2021, but that was a very punchy ride and Training Peaks has the NP for that 60 minutes at 236. The only FTP test I ever did was one I paid for (it was a gift actually) where you breathe into a thing while riding at different zones. That was in spring of 2019 and it said I had 178 FTP, but I very quickly rode away from that FTP so it was never ever useful for the training I did in 2019, so I am very reticent to suffer or pay for another FTP test, since FTP is a fluctuating thing! I'd much rather guess at my FTP based on ride data from TrainingPeaks. I figure for training purposes my FTP is around 230-240 watts.
One interesting thing to note is I didn't do any group rides in summer of 2020 (pandemic
and so I didn't do much hard riding at all (I don't have the motivation to ride hard without there bing a group ride to be riding for!). My max heart rate in 2019 was 173. My max heart rate in 2020 was like 153. This year, even though I've upped the intensity again my max heart rate is still only 157 and I have gone deep on at least a few occasions (including tonight, Wed, May 19). I'm 41 years old and weigh about 146 pounds.