TheKillerPenguin

Yurp. When in actual training/base mode I try not to stop pedaling ever, and keep power constant the whole dang time. It's like a trainer ride except with variable torque and you don't want to blow your brains out most of the time.

caloso

My old coach had me do a ride that I came to call The Hour of Ever Increasing Discomfort. I was supposed to go out and ride around with no target wattage for an hour, then set the timer and ride at a z2/z3 wattage for another hour. The first 10 minutes or so felt way too easy, but by the last 5-10 minutes I was really struggling. This really helped me for a road race that I had always struggled with previously.

On edit:

Also a long FG ride is a great old school way of just keeping pedaling.

scheibo

Did an hour with 2x20 slightly harder tempo (by feel) on the flat courses by work because apparently its good for me. Definitely harder to stay motivated the whole time and keep driving the pace on flat roads, but not as boring as I thought - when you're riding hard enough boredom isn't so much of a worry. One problem with doing it on campus is that I can't remonstrate ******* drivers who come close to killing me because they're likely to be my coworkers.

I'm curious what kind of power I was hitting for the intervals but I haven't be able to upload the ride yet. I get too stressed out if I look at the numbers when I'm riding and mainly just use power for post-ride analysis. I also find I'm able to pace much better by feel than by power, which seems odd. I might need to recalibrate my RPE-meter for flat riding though, so it'll be interesting to see the results.

Heading out for another 1.5hr EZ this afternoon to pick up a part at the bike shop.

Ygduf

my 40-mile TT ride last week was just to ride at PE7. But then to hold that average power for the 2nd 20 miles was really really challenging. So much so that I'm moving my off-season workload to Tues/Wednesday and taking M/Thurs/Friday as rest. Saturday hillclimbs on legs burned from TT bike training are too painful.

scheibo

Doesn't this mean you were going over PE7 then?

Ygduf

start out pe7. stay at that power. and no, not really, in my mind.

there's a difference in pushing for all that you're worth, and just having tempo sneak up on you and wear you down.

revchuck 

Not necessarily. That level would be upper Z3ish.

Ygduf

don't get bogged down into the semantics. I use fluid PE and power terminology because on that bike I have different levels of "I can't breathe more and I'm at my limit" vs. "my legs hurt because this position is uncomfortable" vs. "this isn't that bad but I'm so goddamn uncomfortable I just want to sit up and stretch my hip flexors out"...

mike868y

i got no advice to give this guy but i did 3 hours on my fg this morning. riding with an HRM is a reminder of how hard it is to stay in zone getting in/out of the city.

rideaz

I did the group ride and then some solo miles/climbing. Ended up out for over 3 1/2 hours. I didn't have any food with me but didn't actually notice I was hungry until the ride was almost over.
https://www.strava.com/activities/413579638

misterwaterfall

Maltex

Thanks for all the feed back dudes! The races I want to do well in and fall apart in are 3 to 4 hours and hilly for these parts (3 to 4k ft of climbing) and I say my ftp is under developed because it's about 75% of my 5 minute power (that's low right?). If a race/hammerfest is less than 2 hours I can attack the crap out if it and do well but after about 2.5 hours I start to fall apart so maybe it is more about recovering from efforts.

I think that three 90 to 120 minute rides per week and one longer ride on the weekend isn't to out of whack and since I'm pretty much stuck on the trainer during the week in the winter when I get a chance to ride outside on Sunday I typically just want to go nuts and destroy. BTW I'm a cat 4 trying to get to 3, if that matters

canuckbelle

Today friggen hurt. I was at near threshold heart rate just to hold 130w the final hour (my FTP is 235). Ugh. Kinda surprised I was crying at the end. This week sucked.

rideaz

That's a lot. Do you have a coach?

canuckbelle

Yeah. This is all his fault

Ygduf

most people have like 1500kj worth of glycogen in their livers. And, if you ride below what you can metabolize as you go, that can last a long time.

she rides a lot, is efficient.

grolby

75% of my best ever 5' power is still a good 10W over my FTP. I do want/need to develop better threshold for the kind of racing I'm doing, but at just about 4.2 w/kg it's not what makes me fall apart in a long race. It sounds like you have a similar history to me, solid for 1-2 hours and tending to break down past that. Threshold is not the limiter in this case, in my opinion. Like I said, of course I want a higher threshold, but it's only part of the solution.

TheKillerPenguin

Alls I know is even when basically untrained my ftp was 4.4-4.5 and all it meant was 1) people scratched their heads when I languished for years because they'd see me on group rides smashing things, but group rides are 1.5hrs long and anyone can fake it for that length of time, 2) when I started training correctly I had really funny ctl numbers for a while because my ftp exceeded my actual fitness capabilities by a wide margin, 3) I raced dumb because I didn't realize I was wasting energy until I was out of energy because 250w felt easy until it didn't because I had no base and ****ty repeatability.

I mention the above because I've always had some FTP and have not always had endurance, which is what @grolby be sayin. The point is that it is hard to say one thing matters more in a race than something else because everything works together to make success happen. The racing silver bullet is consistency mixed with proper periodization and an occasional tub of ice cream.

hubcyclist

60mins on zwift with 50 of it at sweet spot (84%), unless you subscribe to 88% being the sweet spot zone, then it was just a plain tempo ride!

globecanvas

Today: 6 hours @ 160w NP, on 200 calories, no problem.

Sunday: 6 hours @ 210w NP, on about 1200 calories, and was dying at the end.

Maltex

Gotcha, gotta have the endurance to be able to utilize whatever level of FTP you're at I guess. Maybe mix in more tempo and steady state intervals instead of just a steady diet of threshold work.

Got the ice cream part covered, especially know that Blue Bell is back up and running.

Ygduf

oh really

TheKillerPenguin

lol. recanted.

TheKillerPenguin

1.5hrs easy. Feel good but I'm probably going to do long climbey rides with intervals and stuff this weekend.

Ygduf

you should only tell people about proper periodization if they are paying you so that you can keep them paying with the mindset that the next build is when they'll start winning.

JUST JOKING GUYS