burnthesheep

I dunno, I go hard enough on the trainer I feel I need to not be in traffic on the bike. I mean hard enough I wouldn't feel safe doing the same thing on a Raleigh road. I'd rather not get hit by a car b/c I'm weaving after doing some 6x3min.

I live in Raleigh. Plenty of country roads further out, but family life means intervals happen in the gym. Most local hills are too short for a 3min interval. I can do an 8min interval thru Umstead, but that bike doesn't have a meter on it.

On the group ride, I can still dig like on the trainer, but it's a different thing. Can't describe it. I'm only one full year into formalized training. Maybe I'm not that good at this yet, but that's how it is for me. The trainer is a necessary evil given the time I have. The trainer maximizes my time spent forcing my body to adapt/build. I can't argue with 70 watts in a year.

I want to "graduate" to the Carborro p-ride sometime soon. And win the Chapel Hill RR in the spring (in 4/5). I've gone from Crankarm to the Gyros to Team on Draft. ToD isn't a racing group ride, but we mess around enough it's a good group for my part of town. Carborro is a 40 min drive for me to even get to.

I do the hard group ride thing about every 3rd week. I'll skip the 3rd workout of the week and do that instead.

rubiksoval

Ha, right! I got in a break and got 4th in a race the other week after doing 12 hours...for the entire month...CTL was 49 Lowest I've ever seen in race season by about 35 points.

rubiksoval

That book was written by a dude that doped juniors.

rubiksoval

Didn't you start the season ripping through everyone? Thought you had a win or three and some placings?

I'd just do whatever you did then! Success breeds success and all.

rubiksoval

From time to time I'll go out and do intervals on sections I want to take the KOMs. Sometimes this ends up being more of a fartlek session if they're spaced a bit, but sometimes I'll just do repeats on one hill and take a crack at the KOM the first or second time. Making it into a little race always helps me.

burnthesheep

rubiksoval

Not sure what the rest of that has to do with anything. Just a little FYI.

spectastic

i heard carmachel is kind of a pos too. apparently he also name drops lance when he talks about his book and training programs, when in reality, he had nothing to do with lance's training, and his training is geared entirely towards shorter 1 day events, nothing even close to a big pro stage race.. anyhow, i do see sense in his philosophy for guys who do this for fun, and not for a living.

yea. I upgraded to a 2 in the beginning of the season, and got my ass handed to me at season opener. so i buckled down and did a bunch of hard rides, and a bunch of intervals, despite having little time, and got strong. did pretty well, then kind of hit a slump, fractured my wrist and was off the bike for a while, and was building my way back for a 2nd peak period. In theory, I should be stronger now than I was before, but haven't really been fresh enough or had enough racing going on to know for sure. I really want to win this one (several personal reasons), so I'm just trying to be in the best shape possible for it.

burnthesheep

The rest makes no sense because I'm not good at analogies. Tossing the baby with the bathwater? I dunno. Just saying I'm not tossing his book in the trash because I learned about how much of an ass people are/were. As a noob to riding, it worked for the time being. It's likely run it's course anyway by now.

The OP is probably good enough that the book won't help, now that I see he's winning stuff and going strong. I didn't realize he was already that far along. In that case, I've nothing more to add because it's at a level beyond where I'll ever be.

Good luck OP, all the best.

gsteinb

spectastic

I still don't quite understand what it is a coach does that you can't do yourself. Is it because they have access to a lot of athletes, and can understand your situation a lot better based on those other data points?

gsteinb

Well, it can be difficult to be objective about your own performance and needs. Pretty common for people to go harder and longer when what they really need is rest. Those metrics don't always illuminate that need. They're often frequently misunderstood as well.

Enthalpic

TSS/CTL/TSB comes from research modeling a Peak in performance (originally trying to model muscle glycogen storage; heck a 100 TSS is probably still about 100g of carb) over short time frames. TSB is good for micro, or at most meso, cycles - not macro cycles.

Hermes

Well, if you can do everything yourself, then by definition, you do not need anyone else to help. My definition of a coach is a paid third party that can add value to my cycling that can take me to a level of results that I cannot achieve on my own. I have had a lot of coaches over the years and all of them contributed to my results and I could not have done it without them.

I am not a Cat 1 so maybe you should highly discount what I have said. I am just a lowly trackie / time trialist.

spectastic

I'm just trying to understand what these things the coach actually does. you have these metrics that tell you how fit you're getting, how stressed you are, etc. and you're basically trying to get as fit as possible for the target race, without over training. these can all be monitored yourself, and the rider should have a decent concept of the area on the power curve that needs to be improved, whether it's 10s, 1 min, 5 min, 20 min, >1h etc. to dictate the type of workouts that one should focus on. where does the coach come in?

MDcatV

all the metrics (TSS/CTL/ATL/TSB) are guidance factors and athletes have a tendency to not apply them correctly to their own individual situation. same with power curves. athletes have a tendency to misinterpret where they really need to spend their training time and when they need to spend their training time working on different aspects of their power curve. lastly, fitness = overload + recovery, not 2overload + 1recovery, but athletes have a strong tendency to focus on the overload and ignore recovery until they're forced to recovery (by getting sick, or by seeing their fitness inexplicably decline, or by being burned out) and then repeat the cycle by too much overload trying to get back to square.

a coach also provides accountability on both sides of the fitness equation - meaning, they can monitor when you go harder than you should based on your race/fitness schedule and when you dont go hard enough. additionally, we all have workouts that we like doing over others, and have a tendency to repeat those ones while avoiding those we don't like as much. the accountability aspects of a coach can mitigate that tendency.

can someone do all that self-coaching? of course. can a coach assist with avoiding some of the misinterpretations or pitfalls? yes. are their coaches that miss the mark and take their athletes into the same pitfalls that they would run into self coaching? yes. however, I don't know anyone whose fitness didn't improve when working with a coach vs. self coaching.

i've used 3 different coaches, as well as self coached, and always ended up with better sustainable fitness + better results when working with a coach

topflightpro

Spec, you're a scientist or PhD student, right?

Could you teach yourself everything you need to know to be a PhD just by reading books, articles, and the internet? Probably. But you go to class to learn from an instructor who has specialized knowledge in the area and can make sure you are reading the most appropriate materials to earn your degree in a reasonable time. It's the same thing with a coach.

tommyrod74

Similarly, let's assume you own a multi-million dollar home and need to sell.

You could sell your own home, even though you aren't a realtor. You can use Zillow, do market research and pull comps (to your best ability given your layman's access to tools), study up on negotiating tactics, hold your own open house(s), vet buyers, take offers, negotiate a price and any give-and-take in the contract, etc. If you're lucky and smart (and don't let emotions make bad decisions for you), you won't make a big error that puts you at legal risk or leaves big money on the table. All this on top of your own job and life.

r, you could save a few months' work and stress and let an expert, who does this every day, handle it for you.

rubiksoval

I had a coach from age 17 to 20, from cat 4 to cat 1. Looking back, I'm convinced it was actually detrimental and really hampered my progress, as well as wasting an inordinate amount of time. Sans coach I've significantly improved all power numbers and won nearly 2 dozen races, versus the 5 or 6 I won in the same time period with a coach.

I guess I have a much better idea of what doesn't work well...

For what most coaches provide, I think the pricing is absurd and a brazen ripoff. Even with that said though, and the fact that I wouldn't personally bother with one, I'd still probably recommend a good coach to a newer rider with a ton of ambition, just so they wouldn't waste time figuring out what not to do. The "good coach" part is a real kicker, though.

burnthesheep

Any advice for someone like myself that's looking to move up from Excel and a Barnes and Noble book to buying a TrainingPeaks membership or doing something new?

I don't have a smart trainer, so don't know if Zwift would be that fun if I can't truly simulate an outdoor ride/climb. So if I had the money to spend think I'd spend it on TP instead.

If I have a basic understanding of what I'm seeing, want to do, and how quickly numbers go up.......worth the $120 a year?

topflightpro

BTS, I think you would mighty benefit from a coach. You talk about crushing people on rides, but they groups you have mentioned riding with are not known for being the most intimidating. If you want to discuss some options, PM me, since I know several local ones.

spectastic

point taken, but I feel like getting cycling fitness is nowhere near as complicated as these things you guys have mentioned. But I agree on the "good coach" being an important factor. These guys are crazy expensive though..

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I've been riding for 5 years now, and looking back, I wasted a lot of those years not really knowing what I was doing. I think I could definitely have progressed a lot faster if I had known what I know now, eg. with a coach. But if you've been riding long enough, with enough accumulated knowledge, I feel like the value a coach provides diminishes, and eventually, the rider should very well be able to coach him/herself. that said, I know there are coaches who have coaches themselves, I guess due to the accountability factor of getting the rest necessary to keep progressing.

spectastic

point taken, but I feel like getting cycling fitness is nowhere near as complicated as these things you guys have mentioned. But I agree on the "good coach"

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I've been riding for 5 years now, and looking back, I wasted a lot of those years not really knowing what I was doing. I think I could definitely have progressed a lot faster if I had known what I know now, eg. with a coach, who would fast track my learning. But if you've been riding long enough, with enough accumulated knowledge, I feel like the value a coach provides diminishes, and eventually, the rider should very well be able to coach him/herself. that said, I know there are coaches who have coaches themselves, I guess due to the accountability factor of getting the rest necessary to keep progressing.

rubiksoval

I've never used trainingpeaks so I'm not sure what that would entail.

For someone going at it on their own, I think WKO4 is a pretty good tool. That along with the WKO4 facebook group and slowtwitch helped me to do some good analysis and figure out a few things that benefited me enormously in specific racing fitness. It took a lot of toying with, and a lot of video watching and reading and research and some time going back over data (which a newer rider wouldn't likely have), but the benefits were really significant. And those are things other people may figure out on their own, or be good at naturally, but I still hadn't figured it out after four or five seasons as a 1, so it made a difference to me.

And with that said, that's not going to be totally applicable to someone with only a year or two of riding, but if you can have an ongoing analysis and a year-end review, and really start digging into your racing and what it is that holds you back, and what you did when you were successful; that type of stuff can be a big boon when you get to a point where the really talented people start beating up on you (have I mentioned I beat the recently crowned pro national rr champion in a crit this summer... ;D).

colnago62