Hello guys,

After a racing season i feel like i should know this but i'm not quite sure. Due to lack of time and partial lazyness i've switched the routine a little. Instead of the usual 10-12 hours a week i've come dowm to 5-7. Due to lack of interest in lsd i've decided to do very harsh threshold work once a week and do just 1 30 mile plus ride on the weekends

I've noticed that my races at least for cat 4 and 5 are under 1.5 hrs so maybe 5 hour rides arent that necessary. I do one long threshold day that is one hour long. The ride is in the trainer averages from 255 to 265 watts for the entire hour, steady.

Will this actually increase my threshold and help me on those .5 to 2 hour races? I'm leaving the high intensity stuff for jan and feb. I plan to get close to 300 ftp by mid next yeat with a weight of 160-165 pounds.

Thanks,
Luis

A developed aerobic base will help your ability to recover from those hard workouts. The less time your body needs to spend on recovery, the more hard work you are able to do in a week

If I get what you're after, yeah, I think you can maintain your general fitness on the reduced schedule for awhile, but as you know, you'll need to add that high intensity interval stuff back in, the L5/L6 stuff, to get that punchiness you need for racing and to train your max efforts. Furthermore, I think mixing up the training schedule and routine is normal and essential, so that you're not doing the same stuff month in and month out.

If the goal is to be able to race on 5-6 hours a week training, I'd read Carmichael's Time Crunched Cyclist, which sets out a program specifically tailored to that.

^^ what he said.

I don't think I've ever seen a training plan that advocates a steady hour at (some percent of) FTP every week. You don't say what your current FTP is, so we don't know if your hour at 255-265 is at FTP, 90%, or what? And what is a 30-mile weekend ride? Is there any structure in there or is it JRA?

I think you would be fine with a Time Crunched program, but you'll have to target when you are going to peak and plan on having a short peak. Otherwise, you'll be better off with more than 5-7 hours a week of training.

Certainly, 5 hour rides aren't needed, but what you are saying you are doing doesn't sound like it's going to maximize the short hours you are putting in. You also don't say what sort of races you are doing. You would probably do yourself a favor by getting some help with a plan - whether it's carmichael, friel, or from a coach - to maximize the benefit of the short hours. The less you train, the better the focus needs to be.

Read this:

https://www.amazon.ca/Training-Racing.../dp/1934030554

You are very aerobically fit. Sounds like you are cutting the extra junk miles and are probably in that zone where you feel the need to push yourself somewhat to FEEL like you are getting a workout but in reality, you are probably a little tired of training. All that steady state does is wear you out and may change your training more towards TTs. It's not going to do you any favors for road racing and may even hurt your ability to respond to jumps. Best to rest more and make your training workouts/rides shorter and higher efforts and go for quality. You might enjoy them more and you get more out of them.

When I first got a coach, I would hop on the trainer and hammer for as long as possible (yes, to TRY to impress him and show him how hard I could work) and send him my ride data. His response was that I was in good shape but that that I needed to start going to the gym and build some muscle. Ride less, work out more and focus on the type of racing I was doing (exactly like yours). I found my races improved after focusing on my weaknesses. I was doing too much steady state and not enough intervals and sprinting. Then I set about learning how to race. This took me awhile and while barely having a base and getting under 1,000 miles a year riding time and struggling to even get a maximum of 3 hours a week and racing on crap equipment, I was always able to be there for the sprint despite racing guys who were training 10-12 hours a week and had really nice stuff. My biggest problem was not getting enough miles to have decent capacity.

Bottom line is since you have a decent amount of time to train, make it count and keep it fun. Don't fall into the steady workouts to much.

Agreed.

But I'll also point out what I think another poster alluded too - the lack of saddle time will result in lower endurance and longer recovery times. One of the reasons for that is power production in the absence of longer, lower-intensity training will shift more to glycogen burning instead of fat burning. Which then leaves less glycogen for anaerobic efforts such as end-of-race sprints.

300W FTP at 160-165 lbs? Jeez, dude, you should be riding those cat 5s off your wheel....

Right?!

This is the 2nd thread I've seen you mention this in, and I'm not so sure it's true. My understanding is that the common wisdom is moving away from the long Z2 base stuff. Once a solid base is established, you don't really lose it. Training in Z4 and sweet spot then becomes a better use of limited time to see improvements in FTP, without losing base fitness. Of course, this is just my interpretation, definitely not an expert.

I think there is still value in long rides (4-5 hour) for endurance training. There is still value in saddle time.

First, "base" is not something you develop in an off-season. It is built over years of riding. Understand that a lot of the powermeter trend has taken place on already trained cyclists. The pros have years of riding under their belt; endurance intervals are used to sharpen them for race season and they still do the long rides in the off-season.

The "zones" are complete fabrications by various coaches. Friel and Coggan utterly disagree about where the thresholds of each zone lies if you go by their respective books. I divide my efforts as follows:

• no effort
• endurance pace
• time trial pace
• leadout pace
• sprint

These kind of correlate with the zones, but IMO, the whole deal with powermeters and zones is you are using a precision tool to measure something that is, by definition, kind of mushy. But what do I know. I gave up the powermeter a long time ago and I don't even train with a computer anymore.

I liken training to sharpening a knife. The first tool isn't a steel or even a whetstone; it's a file. Base training, the long 4-5 hour rides for an endurance cyclist, is the file, and I believe this at least partially a muscle building activity. Longer intervals like the OP is suggesting is the whetstone; the shorter and more intense those intervals get, the finer the grit. If you start training with too fine a tool, you'll get an edge, but it'll be fragile and won't last long. If you shape the blade using coarse tools first, you'll get a better shaped edge that can be honed over and over.

The "Time Crunched Cyclist" book even touches on this. That book is for riders to prepare for a single event some months away; it says as much in the first few pages. It'll get you cooking with good form for a few weeks before you burn out and have to reset to a much lower intensity level.

All right guys, hopefully I can answer everybody's comments in this short message.

Thanks for the recommendations on the training programs. I'll take a look into that if I have some spare time.

As far as my current power output, I am doing those intervals at what I believe is my 100% FTP. My FTP when I was racing was 263 but I thought it had gone down after some life events occurred and I was left riding much less. During an hour long race I would average 255 to 265w when I was racing. For a 2 hour race I'd be somewhere in the 230-245w.

I am still using my old FTP which is 263watts. However, I was never able to do that in the trainer before. It was either because I never thought it possible or because my coach told me to never exceed 20 min threshold intervals. I also thought he meant that because it would be cruel to subject somebody to 1hr of constant pedaling at their threshold level

Out of curiosity I gave it a go and after 20 min interval decided to keep going see how much I could stand @ 250watts. Turned out that when I had 10 minutes to go I upped the pace to 280-300watts and I managed to get 263 average for the hour. This is the same power meter I was using when I was racing and usually my trainer z4 intervals would average 245-247.

I would occasionally go on solo rides for about 40 miles and average 240-250 watts. There could be a possibility that my FTP at the moment is a little higher. Maybe 270 but I am also 172#s instead of my racing 161# weight.

I do this one hour intervals at what I believe is my 100% max. This way I believe that every month my FTP should increase another 5 Watts.

As far as time, I've been lazy because I've been going on weekend getaways so it only leaves 4-6 hours during the week for riding. Now that I am back home I'll be able to pull close to 10 hours every week. Just want to make sure I'm squeezing the crap out of those hours. For winter my plan was to do one Z4 100%@hr day and then the rest of the week commute and z2 rides sat and sunday. Once the racing season nears I'll save Thursdays for z5-z7 workouts.

Thanks for all your input. Hope this has given a little bit more info about myself and what I want to accomplish.

That is a great description.

I typically can't average more than about 205w for a race, and at 205w I can't sprint. My FTP is in the 210-220w range and I don't hit that for an hour. Based on that I highly doubt your FTP is as low as 265w. A better test would be to go harder for 20 min and take 95% of it, or do a test where you increase wattage every so often.

Question - how are you measuring power? Your numbers sound really high unless you're not really drafting anyone. If you're on an stationary bike it may be off, typically on the high side. If you're using Strava definitely off on the high side. Generally accepted powermeters, probably okay, ditto other devices made by them (CycleOps stationary bike thing, etc). 265w means time trialing at 25-26 mph, give or take.

To be able to sprint at the end of a race I typically average 170-190w, and I've won or placed in the top 3 in Cat 3 races with numbers like that. Depending on the year I either weighed a bit less (155-158 in 2010) or a bit more (up to 190 lbs for 2002-2009) or about the same (2011-2014).

If you're really riding around with a 265w FTP you should be an extremely competitive Cat 3 and you should be hanging in there in P123 races. If you're not then you need to look at how you race. The power number, if it's accurate, is definitely not the problem. It's the application of the power. My sig is relevant here.

I have a quark riken and a powertap g3. Both measure about the same. I am a pretty useless when it comes to drafting. Most of my racing i pull then i can't sprint. Still have managed to take a few top 5 and top 10. At one point in time my 1 min power was 700watts and i made the roswell historic crit an averaged 299 for 40 min. Came in mid pack after a pile up on the last lap.

Also, although I typically do only 1-1.5 hour crits, I still do some base miles, meaning long rides. Fine, I have a lot of base miles already (from 30+ years of racing seasons), but even now doing those 3-5 hour rides teaches me about myself, and when you do them regularly for a decade or three, you start noticing trends and such. It's very hard to do base during the season but in the off season it's not bad. My biggest month for hours is typically January. For many years I stayed at a friend's house in SoCal for 2-3 weeks and did massive miles for me, up to 30 hours a week. Since I normally do 2-5 hours a week that's a ton of miles. Since 2012 I haven't gone so my Jan miles are on the trainer, and I still did 34 hours this past Jan (and in comparison I did 8-16 hours a month during the season). I figure I ran out of the base stuff in August, when my form rapidly deteriorated.

My hours this year (note that some activities are walks with Junior who is 2 1/2 years old so it's not a ride):

Okay then you have valid power numbers.

You absolutely need to learn to draft. If you don't want to deal with drafting you might as well quit mass start racing. I'm serious about that.

You're not strong enough to ride on your own and if you can't draft then, well, it's useless to try to do mass start races. ALL the tactics have to do with drafting or denying the draft. You should do tris or dualthlons (and as a tangent a friend of mine just won a tri somewhere warm like FL, overall, and his threshold was in the 270w range).

Your numbers are similar to a friend of mine that got 2nd at Battenkill in his first race as a 2. IN THE 2s! Another is in Europe. Racing with the elites, which include the occasional OmegaPharma pro and the like. But they know how to draft.

Watching this thread, this was my feeling also: base only lasts so long. My experience is that I put on base in winter and spring, then in summer I get into doing very hard long rides and events almost every weekend. It takes me so long to recover from these that my base gradually deteriorates and by August my endurance is not so good.

Since common practice is to do base in winter, it makes me think that base isn't eternal: it only lasts for a few months. "Base" meaning that fat burning effect. We can go along for quite a while without doing any base, but the middle of the season is a heckuva poor time to find out that we've lost endurance.

I'm interested in this discussion as well, as I've read that the evolving thoughts of winter training involve doing threshold/sweet spot stuff in addition to some z2 efforts, and moving away from the notion that you had to just do z2 exclusively for a period of time. I only raced once in October, and never really did any structured training in 2014, so when it came time to start doing something a bit more formal to prepare for 2015, I decided to go straight to one of trainerroad's build plans in an effort to build my FTP, as I figured I already have a base and did not burn myself out in 2014 with training hard. As I'm riding almost exclusively on the trainer, I was a bit worried about how limiting myself to 90mins would affect my endurance to do 3+ hr rides.

What many are describing here is a track focus type program. Much more intensity with less long distance aerobic riding. Many track specialists do very well in shorter road type events such as criterium and masters racing. These do not require that deep level of aerobic fitness; that ability to be on the rivet for a hour. The problem for young senior racers is that without the development of their aerobic capacity, it becomes difficult to keep developing and moving through the ranks. It is important to remember also, that the body can only go so hard for so long before it needs a rest. An example is why winning the Suisse, Italian, and French tours in a single year is such a great accomplishment.

brilliant... I fell into and I am still in the "Steady workout at a % of my FTP". I do love TTs, and I do feel that "steady" riding at a high tempo has increased my stamina and ability to recover. Plus group rides that we below my training efforts just feel easy. To be honest, maintaining the same watts/kg for an hour does require and ever increasing about of energy.

to you point, I need to mix it up and have interval days

As far as "pure" base training goes, my experience is that even on z2 rides I need to punch it up on short hills here and there at least into z3 for short periods. If I were using a PM, I'm probably actually into z4 here and there. Plus all winter I do one competitive group ride/week. In general I keep it down a bit, but do try to get in about 1 hour of z4 on that ride, including some sweet spot, a little LT, and even a tiny bit of z5. If I don't do these things, my performance goes to the devil, including my z2 cruise speed (watts). I don't think that's a good thing. Looking at it from a PM perspective, I guess when my FTP falls off because of not doing hard work, then my other zones drop off too and my legs don't get the work they would get if I were looking to put out more watts during base training. Does that make sense? I think this is borne out in the literature.

Cfb, your comment brings me to another point. I commute to work almost every day by bike. It is supposed to be z1 to z2 work but when u have a 45 pound rig 10% hills and horrible traffic it's very hard to relax and take it easy.

Do you record all your rides and plug them into whatever you're using for a performance manager? If so, what does your zone distribution look like?

It's way too easy to burn yourself out commuting at too high an intensity. Been there.