TMonk

Sweet man! What was the course?

TMonk

Getting my wrist checked out tomorrow at the doc's office. It's getting better a little, but at a quite slow rate. Crash was last Sunday. Putting any weight on it or doing like a pushup/pullup def out of the question. We'll see what they say. It may be strictly indoor for a bit

hubcyclist

I believe it’s called a whole lotta lava so it goes around the volcano and then up the climb. It was fun!

Hermes

2 times up Soledad Mountain at threshold. However, you Zwift guys are giving me FOMO.

caloso

Had my best MTB TT race of the season last night. There were long sections of flowy smooth single track which really favored my CX bike, but the biggest thing is being 7 pounds lighter than I started the season. I'm going to keep on this 16/8 IF for another month and see if I can get down to 165 before the holidays.

ridethecliche

I've been doing ramp tests once a month or so on zwift just to track progress. They definitely over estimate for me because I skew anaerobic so they're a good proxy for my suffering tolerance.

Last one a month ago put ftp at 224 and today's put it at 244. Last min was 321 W.

The 4DP test put it at 204, I think because I suck at pacing but also because I skew anaerobic and it ran me out. I did this test about an hour after a sufferfest workout so definitely not well rested.

I have mixed feelings about their plan so far it seems a bit all over the place. I picked one with slightly less volume so I could supplement with some SST on zwift. Let's see how it goes. At least it's entertaining.

caloso

Which plan are you doing? I'm in week 5 of Build Me Up. There's a lot of cadence work, which I was skeptical of, but it does keep my attention focused.

ridethecliche

You're doing sufferfest too? What's the build me up plan? I couldn't find it when I just looked.

I'm doing the all purpose road plan. Im not an expert by any means but I wish they went more into the logic of the plans and workouts. The all purpose road seems to be all over the place for me and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to gain from any particular workout. The 4dp is very interesting in theory but I don't get why they've lowered certain targets the way they have. I might have to scale up some of the workouts because I don't feel like I'm actually working all that hard in some of them.

The all purpose road plan looks okay but I feel like i might be better served by doing their building blocks plans and doing some ftp work. I feel like i need to spend a good chunk of my time doing ftp with right now in the form of SST to push things higher. The APR plan doesn't look to have any dedicated ftp work from what I see, so I picked the intermediate one and want to do the 4-5 workouts during the work week so I can try to ride outside or do zwift ftp work over the weekend. I have a decent discount on my subscription for the first year so Im going to stick with it but I think overall the trainer road philosophy probably speaks to me more ie they do a better job communicating the purpose of plans and workouts.

Edit : oh wait. You mean the zwift build me up plan! Yeah I don't know much about that tbh they all looked kinda wonky to me. I think zwift would be pretty much perfect if they came up with good coaching /training programs.

topflightpro

I haven't done anything for about 2 weeks now. My "race" season officially ended in late September - yes, I was able to do a handful of socially distanced races at the track - so I've enjoyed just relaxing a bit. Starting things back up next week, with the hope that things improve and we can have real races in 2021.

ridethecliche

caloso The issue for me sometimes ends up being that my knees really don't like a lot of heavy low cadence work so I kind of balk at that. I don't really play ball when the training program asks me to dive below 80. Besides, with ERG mode, cadence changes can be very strange because you're fighting things as you slow down and speed up in the same gear, though I guess you can shift to kind of 'trick' the erg mode momentarily. I don't know if I'm sold on the entire sufferfest thing, but I guess I'm going to pick and choose their workouts in this plan. The plan does provide some structure and if I want to do something more traditional, they do have the building blocks setup. I think trainer road's plan builder is much more complex than SUF's in that regard, but TR stresses base and SUF basically poo poo's it in many ways. I'm also paying 50% for SUF that I would pay for TR right now, so I'll likely ride out the year with SUF likely falling into their building blocks setup. I wish they had a plan builder where I could set things up myself but hopefully that functionality will come.

Anyway, looking back on a few things.

Ramp Test 1: 8/27- Zwift says FTP 215
Ramp Test 2: 9/9- Zwift says FTP 224
Ramp Test 3: 10/8- Zwift says FTP 244

Again, all of these are pretty grossly over-estimated IMHO, but I'm using erg mode on a kickr (OG KICKR!) and using my left sided PM for power readings so atleast everything is consistent. I may not have checked offset for all these, but bike stays in the same spot on the trainer in my apt and I usually recheck if I move things or take the bike on/off.

Regardless, I don't think I'm going to be able to do 2x20's at like 220 W anytime soon so the numbers are a bit funny. The 4DP test (which exhausts you before making you do a 20 min test) put me at 209W. I think all this means is that 1) There's some progress and 2) I'm re-learning how to suffer.

I've also looked through some of the Zwift plans. I wish there was a way to set up a plan for yourself using their workouts. caloso have you found a way to do that? They have a pretty big workout library and it would be awesome if you could integrate workouts from ergdb (trainerday now?) into your own workouts. Now set up workouts on a schedule on a calendar and things go next level pretty quick!

cmh

Don't overthink things too hard when you are gaining 20W of FTP per month. When you level off and stop seeing gains, that is the time to overthink it.

Nice work, btw.

cmh

I'm now on zwift and did my first FTP test yesterday. I was a bit tired going into the test, but I paced it well and gave all I have, so now I have a bar set. I'll play around with individual workouts on zwift although I hope to still do the majority of my rides outside for at least the next month or so. Then maybe I'll try one of their ftp builder plans, and some zwift racing. Should be fun and painful.

big john

What did the doc say?
I didn't go get checked, severe lack of common sense on my part. Still want to do some climbing with some friends tomorrow. Hip thing is better but I still have to be careful not to twist it. Knee is a bit stiff with lovely bruising on both sides of it. Game time decision.

TMonk

Doc thinks its just a sprain which is what I'd hoped for. They'll give me a call if the x-ray reveals anything unexpected but I'm thinking I should be able to get back outside after another week or two of indoor. I had planned on doing a monster "pre-base" week out of nowhere starting 10/19 before slacking 1 more and then starting up for real in November, which has been a tradition for me the last few years. Looks like I might be able to make it happen!

caloso

I had one of those days yesterday where I had planned to do 6 intervals, but felt so good I did 8. I felt so good I probably could have done 10, but I didn't bring my light and I was running out of light. That was awesome. I haven't had a session on the bike like that in a long time.

TheKillerPenguin

I guess I did a breakaway practice thing today? It was 2x20 with 50min of tempo sandwiched between.Pretty fun "workout".

ridethecliche

3x10 min at 90% ftp with 5 min 'recovery' at 80% between intervals. I guess this is gonna become a staple or something...

TMonk

~1 hr of random zwifting, mostly with "Pace Partners". The Pace Partners are translucent bots that ride a certain route over and over at a set w/kg range. They have 4-5 at any given time at all levels. It's a great way to pass the time at a consistent power. I wanted some SST so I rode with Amelia Anquetil for a while. She's the fast one and held a steady 4.2 w/kg. Mine was like 3.8.

ridethecliche

Tried doing another ramp test today in the SUF app to see if there were any updates since I think the crazy test they start with underestimates.

Pulled the plug a few mins in. No interest in riding a trainer today and missed the window for getting out. Whatever, I'll deal with it next week.

Cypress

Took the bad weather as a sign to start my offseason. Now I gotta try to not fill my abundance of free time with food. I plan on firing it all back up in the beginning of November and incorporating weights into the first few months. Haven't been in a weight room since college, so it'll be a painful learning curve.

hubcyclist

I did a longer zwift race today, took me 1:42 and my NP was 0.88, pretty good long effort. It was 3 loops of greater London, the 3rd lap was a bit lackluster but that’s to be expected when I barely ate today and didn’t bother to eat on the bike lol

cmh

90 minute SST zwift workout. Felt good. I wanted to go harder, but erg mode kept me in line.

ridethecliche

Fml my knee is acting up again already

TheKillerPenguin

Don't know if you stretch, but I find doing so helps a lot with my knee and hip flexor issues.

ridethecliche

Yeah... definitely need to get religious about the post ride stretching/foam rolling/yoga.

Edit: Grasping at straws here but... just ordered 165mm cranks as well. I've done just about everything at this point same as last time this started happening. I've been wondering if it's been due to hip angle and or over flexion of the knee at the top of the stroke. Seems like an unusual kinda thing, but if I can't figure it out otherwise, I guess that's the route I'll take. Been working with a fitter and I'd be more than happy to pay him for an hour of his time down the line to make sure things are looking good again.