Carbonfiberboy 

You don't know that because you haven't done it. Specificity and all that. We really don't train that differently, I just can't do hard intervals as frequently, age you know. I usually pack 2-3 of your days into one, 100 TSS/hour type of thing. February, went out with the Rabbits on my single with the PM, did 332 TSS in 3:13 saddle time, 3130' in 49 miles. That was all-out, but I stayed with them, 2 X FTP on the little risers, did a 3 hour recovery snowshoe the next day. I know, really slow, but I am 75. Tomorrow I'm supposed to do a 30' Z4 interval, OOS because of my saddle sore.. I doubt I can do it, but I"ll try. It'd be a piece of cake seated.

Riveting

Nice job! I've gone 325 miles in 24 hrs (20 hours of moving time), 16.3 mph avg moving speed. In hindsight, I wish I had ridden faster, since I definitely had more left in my tank at the 24 hr mark, but I picked a finishing pace, instead of a winning pace, because finishing my first (and only) 24 hr ride, and having fun doing it, was more important than winning. To get your kind of mileage I would've had to ride an avg of 20 mph, instead of 16.3, or taken less than 4 hours of breaks, either of which might have broken me.

rubiksoval

Simply riding for a long time isn't that specific. I'm confident it's well within my fitness levels.


This would indicate that you still have a lot to learn about power.

Carbonfiberboy 

Probably so - there's always more to learn. It's confusing. My tested FTP is 160w, which might be a little generous, certainly not too low. On the ride, TP said my average power was 118w. but my normalized power was 160w and IF = 1.01, hence the high TSS. Strava said I did 1384 kJ, weighted average power 134, though the same thing with the Coggen formula was 164w. This was a fairly ordinary short ride for this group of LD riders. I was starting to cramp on the last hill.

According to TP:
Z6: 40' The lower boundary of my TP Z6 is 194w. Max watts was 613.
Z5: 17'
Z4: 19'
Z3: 17'
Z2: 22'
Z1: 1:18

colnago62

You probably needed to do a ramp test. IF of 1.00 is supposed to equal the effort you can sustain for an hour. If you are riding at that pace for more than that, it is a sign that your numbers might be wrong.

rubiksoval

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of NP and TSS and understand how it can be broken, holding 1.01 for 3 plus hours is beyond even that realm. That FTP is certainly too low unless your PM was suddenly reading much too high on that day. 40 minutes in Z6 is...unlikely, seeing as how that's normally a zone you'd hold for 30-120 secs at a time (because it's very difficult).

To compare to your one ride, in the last 90 days (over 100 hours of riding), with multiple group rides and workouts, I've only accumulated 1 hour and 4 minutes of time in Z6.

Jim from Boston

I have posted on several threads my semi-quantitative use of a Relative Perceived Exertion Scale to set my pace for fitness, at an enjoyable level:

guadzilla

Ah cool, thanks for the considered reply.

I used to do 6-8 hour weeks with a fair bit of high intensity but i found that the gains I had then didnt last - but then, I only started endurance sports in my mid-30s (and in my mid-to-late 40s now). Am doing an 80:20 polarized plan with 10-12 hours of bike+run, and am feeling that my foundation is getting a lot better. I also recognize a big improvement from doing long Z2 with very little time in Z2. I suspect that for me, i need to pay attention to the volume each yet and do atleast 2-3 months of volume focused efforts between more traditional intensity blocks.

rubiksoval

If I could coach my 18-22 year old self with a powermeter, I think 10-12 hours would be ideal, with a few 13-15 hour weeks at certain points. At that amount, you're getting the best of both worlds: sufficient specific endurance for most any length U.S. race while not being so overwhelming that you can't pack in 2-4 quality workouts as needed. Powermeters were such a game-changer in my training. 5 hours of noodling around on group rides and such became 3 hours of targeted work. So much more bang-for-the-buck.

guadzilla

^^^ Yeah, agreed. Even with my significantly lower volume, powermeters help me get the most out of my training hours.

Am shooting to get up to being able to do 8-10 hours on the bike regularly, with 3-4 hours of running thrown it. Started riding against last year after a gap of 2+ years, so need to build up the ability to recover again. That's been the first sign of having reached middle age

Carbonfiberboy 

That's what I'm trying to get across in this thread: optimal endurance training is not plunking along at a continuous long-sustainable pace. Not at all. This ride is what endurance training looks like. This is how it's done. Go as hard as you possibly can, recover, repeat endlessly. The standard quote is something like, "Endurance is between your ears." Short rides like this are done at a higher intensity to simulate what happens on a long ride but in a lot less time. No kidding it's "very difficult." That's the whole point. As we say, "If it weren't hard, we wouldn't be doing it." You could be training a lot harder.

I was taught on longer rides than this, with long climbs, to simply keep attacking the group, off the front until you can't and they catch you, sit in until you get your breathing back under control, attack again, repeat, repeat. On a short ride like this, the routine is to attack every little rise full gas. I did the 600w+ on the ride's one longer steep hill when I sprinted from the back and dropped everyone, then "recovered" at FTP for the rest of the hill which was shallower. Yes, that's exactly the opposite to what everyone says about "how to climb a hill." It's harder, yes. but this isn't racing, it's training. It's supposed to be hard. A couple of the faster riders did catch me before the top, but as I said, it's not racing.

This is pretty funny, really. What the heck am I doing? But this is how one gets to be fast on endurance rides. You just haven't trained specifically to do this, continuously except for one regretted winter, for 20 years. You had other priorities. The first group ride with these folks I ever went on was a double metric. They schooled me very quickly. At the mid-ride lunch stop, I cramped so badly that I slid under the table and laid on the floor. I was off the back and soloing at 16 for most of the second half, but I was hooked. I had no idea.

Strasser rode the 3000+ miles of RAAM at an average of 16.42 mph. That's on elapsed time, not moving time. He didn't do that by riding slowly. A RAAM rider I know said he attacked the first climb hard and was never seen again.

I have a Powertap SL 2.4, which I calibrate before every ride or workout. My FTP is, as I said, if anything too high. I certainly can't hold 160w for an hour. My 110% and 120% intervals seem just right: I'm panting and have trouble completing one set.

But as you said, the TSS calculation is much more interesting than assuming it's 3 hours at FTP. Full explanation here: https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/w...malized-power/

The point of having a TSS in TP is to create a CTL and TSB which track fitness and exhaustion as closely as possible. IME it works quite well. I had another Perfect Ride™.

rubiksoval

So to be clear, your opinion of optimal endurance training isn't structured in any way, shape, or form, it's just go as hard as you can and repeat?

And you do that with extremely faulty power numbers that give you very little useful information?

This isn't an idea that you're going to be getting across any time soon.

rubiksoval

Your notion of 332 TSS in 3 hours certainly does not mean it's "working well". It's little more than an arbitrary number at this point.

Your numbers are off, simple as that. Trying to justify it as matching up with your perceived notion of fitness and exhaustion is self-fulfilling at best.

rubiksoval

Loan me your powermeter and set up my zones for me and I'm sure I'll be doing 1200 TSS a week.

Results won't change a bit, but hey, those numbers sure sound cool.

MoAlpha

Polarization is probably the most helpful training concept I've ever assimilated.

Carbonfiberboy 

Rather than assuming that others are wrong and only you are correct, you could test my hypothesis. Go out on a route with short rolling hills and attack every hill as hard as you can, almost all of them seated, for at least a couple hours. Attack and recover. Ignore your PM, just try to slaughter yourself. Have a look at your results in TP. Why do I think you won't try that? As you say here, your results won't change if you keep doing the same thing, very true.

WhyFi

What about Pacing for Longer BF Pissing Matches?

rubiksoval

So, what, like in a race or something? How many dozens of examples would you like?

Here's a hard race. Note that my powermeter, ftp, and zones were was all pretty accurate. Zone 6 was 25 minutes and 6 seconds.





Another of my longest and hardest races. Z6 = 19 minutes and 39 seconds.



These were both from national championship races, so suffice to say I was "slaughtered" in ways that I'm not typically slaughtered.

But hey, maybe you just train so much harder.

Carbonfiberboy 

Nice! Way to go! I don't understand the issue. That was a good example of a similar workout, only ~45' longer and a little less time in Z6 than I had, but not a terribly different set of percentages. It's interesting that you also had a lot of time in Z1. I wondered about that in the case of races. I wonder what your TSS in TP would have been, which I believe is the complaint, not really the amount of Z6 I had, which as we see, is not that different. We had different goals - yours was to try to win the race or at least podium, mine and that of my other riders was to accumulate as much high end stress as possible in the distance available, hence the Z1 time I had and how little of the others between there and Z6.

These competitive rides I've been doing almost every Sunday for 20 years are race simulations, except that if one of us drops the group, we soft pedal so we can do it again, except it'll probably be someone else who goes and the challenge will be to hold their wheel if we can. So there's no winner, just trying to leave it all on the road. Our motto: "We believe in safe and cooperative riding," cooperating to trash each other. That we had more surging that did you could have been the dynamic or the terrain. This particular ride had so much surging because it was so short. My goal is for it to be hard just to walk when I get off the bike, and this wasn't much time to get to that point, though it worked about perfectly. Longer rides don't look like this: the last 10 hour ride I did had an IF of .73, 543 TSS.

I don't get to do these competitive rides as often as I used to since I take the tandem on them now. The ability to have a bit of competition depends on what other tandems show up. It's not quite the same, but I do get a good workout on the tandem anyway, good enough to do what I want to do on my single, as you saw.

I can't do this on my own, can't get that level of stress, which I think is quite normal. My workout structure follows a pattern which was discussed in another thread where I think you were present. The idea is to accumulate a lot of stress at the start of the week and then gradually get rid of it over the week so that one starts the next week with somewhere around zero for a TSB. Tuesday, my TSB is usually -20-30.

rubiksoval

TP is the same as WKO4. TSS is the same.

No, it's an absolutely massive difference. The amount of Z6 you had is indicative of your zones being way, way off, which is why your TSS is way, way off. That's the issue. Your numbers are significantly out of whack. There's no comparison, here. I was no where near an IF of 1.01, because that's pretty much impossible for that duration.

Carbonfiberboy 

I looked back at my last Z4 interval workout - 2 X 15 X 5 outdoors, in the saddle, on June 7. Assuming my FTP was 160 I was shooting for ~155w. I averaged 157 on the first and 154 on the second. At the end of each interval, my HR was about at LT, which I know is an accurate number from doing long climbs. For the first interval I was one beat low, second was one beat high. That plus that I tested at 160, plus my experience with 110% and 120% intervals says zones are correct. Sorry 'bout that. In any case, you're complaining about a zone which starts at 120% of FTP and goes up to 375%. Complain to TP, not to me. I just upload the files. I don't set the parameters of their calculation. You probably ignored it, but I said that TP had normalized power at 160, Strava had it at both 143 and 164, the 164 figure coming from the local power idol's calculation. There seems to be a difference of opinion about how to calculate NP and thus TSS, IOW don't complain to me about it. I know how to ride a bike. You're out of line.

rubiksoval

I know how to use a microwave. Doesn't mean I understand how it works.

You're using an older version of Z6 that includes Z5, so that explains the otherwise impossible amount of time in that zone. Unfortunately, that doesn't help your erroneous IF and TSS scores, but your training parameters make no difference to me either way.

Carbonfiberboy 

They're only erroneous if you disagree with TP's calculations. TP's hrTSS for that ride was 242, though only 1/3 of the time was spent over Z3. We can see quite clearly that their equations for hrTSS and TSS gives higher ratings for high end work. The following Wednesday, TSB was -19 and my legs were still so sore that I could barely manage a 30' recovery ride on my rollers. I did various workouts during the week to gradually taper my TSB. The next Sunday, CTL was up 4 points, TSB was -1, and we had a very strong tandem ride. TP's numbers were a good match for my subsequent performance, which is the reason I use it. I recommend it to the gentle reader, should anyone have had the perseverance to have struggled through this sub-discussion.
Power zones as set up in TP using a 160 FTP, Andy Coggan 6 zone system with CTS type labels:

rubiksoval

The calculations are only as good as your inputted FTP.

I feel like that's been said multiple times already.

An IF of 1.01 for 3+ hours is like an illuminated billboard sign that says your inputs are off.

woodcraft

I just did a long-ish ride, for my sad state of fitness- 6 hrs moving time.

Mainly focused on keeping the HR to modest levels, and looked at power only to not go at all high. No efforts on hills.

A twinge in the outside of the lower leg, so focused on pedaling through the ball of foot & big toe.

Outbound was steady, but stopped quite a bit on the return leg. Finished only moderately worked, so the restraint payed off.