Apus^2

knees feel better. i had a nice two hour ride today. then i did a stomp test and the ptap reads abot 1.5% low, within specs. now i have a baby ferociously sucking on my shirt sleeve.

ljrichar

Training status = encouraged. After a few months I was starting to think that all this SST stuff wasn't pushing up my ftp but... For my usual Mon ride I do 85% ftp for 60' but today I decided to go more off of PE. Ended up doing better than my estimated ftp by a bit and only had an PE of about 95%. I'm thinking I'll do 2x20's tomorrow off of PE and see where that gets me.

ZeCanon

3.5 hrs of rolling hills today, solo. Av watts: 226, including rolling easy in an out of town. Kind of wonder what the normalized power would be... definitely higher. Climbs and flats were all in the 250-315 range. Felt good.

BigSean

Been sick and off the bike for the past 8 days. Tomorrow I will do some time on the trainer to see how I feel. Not worth risking getting worse since Im not looking at my A races till the end of April. My next race is in the first week of march, Im sure Ill suffer.

TheKillerPenguin

What be your weight out of curiosity?

waterrockets 

If you want to send a csv over, I'll send you back your NP

my bf username at gmail dawt calm

Also, you can get np_tss_if_poweragent.xls from the wattage forum that will tell you this stuff w/out WKO

ZeCanon

Currently fluctuating between 138-141lbs. This morning I was 137 but I think I was a bit dehydrated.

WR - Thanks for the excel link! That's very useful. NP for the whole ride today was 237 (*edit, typo), and if I just use the portion of the ride where I was actually "riding" (a 3 hr chunk taken out of the middle, removing warm up and cool down) I end up with 261.
4.17w/kg for 3 hrs

I zeroed the PT today like 12 times. PE and power were just off compared to what I'm used to. Just had a really good day I guess, because all the numbers look to be legit.

Crash716

So....3 days with a PT and i think i am meant to be a sprinter...

my curve falls off pretty hard after about 35-45 seconds..

umd

You are certainly built for it.

waterrockets 

You're welcome. Glad it worked out. There was an older one in there that didn't work with the newer versions of PowerAgent, so I debugged the script and posted the newer on last year.

Nice ride, BTW. Sounds like you had one of those "no chain days." Make sure to have another one on race day. I am not an endurance rider, fo sho.

ZeCanon

I have always excelled in shorter events as well. But I spent all winter working on this kind of stuff. My 5s, 1m, 5m power are going to be in the top 10% of the field whether I train them or not, so I leave them for last. Every semi pro mtb race I ever won was a short track race. The one pro mtb race I've podiumed in was short track. That's 25 minutes as fast as you can go. Long stuff has always been my downfall.

This year I've finally eliminated that limiter. It took a hell of a lot of 4-6 hr rides where I never went over 300w, followed by a whole bunch of 3-4 hr rides only slightly faster. Classic base miles. Follow that up with a couple weeks in a row of 3-4 hr tempo rides and voila, you can sit at SST for 3 hrs.

I debated hopping on the SST-as-base bandwagon, but decided against it. I used the classic SST workouts when I was limited on time, and I think had some positive results, but there is just no way I could race cat 1/2 road races on 3x20's and 2x40s alone. That works fine for sub 70mi cat 3 races, it doesn't work for 80-115mi p/1/2 races. If I can't keep the pressure on 3+ hrs straight, I won't stand a chance. Instead I applied the theory behind SST (optimal adaptation with minimal recovery time) to a schedule more adapted for longer races and (here's the important part) continued progression season to season. I came at my training this season with the attitude that this season is "base" for next season. I've been building every year and want to continue to do so.

Right now I have a pretty flat power profile, and I've ONLY been working on long distance/FTP stuff. I'm sitting at 4.88 for FTP, 5.98 5min, 9.46 1min, 20.6 5s (ok that one is an outlyer, and always will be) as of my last real tests. Last week I started with some shorter stuff, and this week I start really short stuff (1m, sprints, etc). I want to get a good downward slope again, but this time with the FTP at 5.0+, and everything else going up from there.

*edited for more awesome typing skillz. Thanks WR

TheKillerPenguin

*snap*

waterrockets 

Yeah, I feel like if I had another three hours of training each week, I could make use of a 4-hour ride. I just don't have the time. Oh well.

That 1' power is a typo, right?

Good job targeting what you wanted to work on though. It looks like you'll be going into the season with a shiny new tool kit to remove and crush the souls of others.

I made a similar training change when I gave up sprint training to focus on FTP (through SST). My profile was looking flat about 6 weeks ago, until I started training shorter durations again. My FTP improved a lot this season, but I still has a long way to go before anyone will accuse me of being a time-trialist. I did manage to get that downward slope profile going again though -- but I still need a bit more work to get the sprint back up to 20.

substructure

Down to 166. That gives me a little more in the W/kg tank. (very little).
This morning is core work and stretching. I'm starting to get psyched for the races coming up. I'm really considering doing at least 4 of the 6 in the next three weeks. Possibly adding 2 master's races to the mix to work with the team.

I've been emailing our Team manager about the Master's Road Races if I decide to do them on Sunday - the day after my Cat3 race. I asked who all was going so I could see who I would be working for. I got this: They will probably be working for you.

Holy Schnikies!! What an awesome weight on a person's shoulders. A weight I will honor.

AlexTaylor

Rise to it, Substructure!

Flatballer

Congrats! That's a great honor.

substructure

Yeah, well he probably tells everyone that.

Flatballer

That would make for an interesting race.

"Why aren't you attacking?" "I'm saving myself for the sprint." "But you're working for me, go attack." "I thought you were working for me?" "Guys, you're both working for me actually."

substructure

Then we pull off the course to draw straws. I see how this will play out.

Flatballer

I was actually thinking you could all whip out your e-wang charts and decide that way.

Flatballer

When I tested my HR originally with my coach (before he disappeared) a few months ago, he got an LT of 164. In my last race weekend, I was averaging 174-175 for my 30 minute crits.

Do I need to change my zones or can LT vary by this much in a racing situation versus training? 164 on the road hurts, but 164 in my races felt like active recovery.

Also, I learned in my latest races that I have plenty of endurance for my races (my longest rides are about 4 hours, but my longest races will be about 2 at the most), but I don't have nearly enough intensity. What's type of workouts should I start doing, keeping in mind I still have to race at least twice every weekend.

Tempo/SST sessions? 2x20? 5x5? 30/30?

I found that recovering from hills killed me in the road races, and I was so close to red-lined all the time in the crits that I couldn't make any moves, I was just trying to hang on.

substructure

Zing!

ZeCanon

You need to do efforts similar to the ones that are hurting you in races. Short stuff. 2 minutes on, 1 minute off until you want to puke.

If you want to recover faster, you need to train your body to do so. Do intervals without adequate recovery between them. You can recover between sets, but not between intervals.

wolfpack 

awesome sub!!!

Flatballer

Ok. So while I'm still hurting from the first one, go again, and again, and again.

I'm guessing these type of efforts will take a large toll physically and I shouldn't do JUST these type of efforts?

For example -

Monday - off
Tuesday - 2 sets of 2 on, 1 off x 5 with 10 minutes in between the sets
Wednesday - 2x20 at LT
Thursday - 2 hours of endurance
Friday - 1 hour recovery with a couple short, hard efforts.
Saturday - 33 mile road race, Wolfpack's Revenge
Sunday - Wake Forest 30 min crit