Cycling Workouts: Discussion/Encouragement/Sharing/Banter

[Ming the Merciless]

Hey Ming (is that what we call you?) are you training for anything specific or just to get/stay fitter? And are you self coached or following a programme?

I find if I don’t have something to train for my fitness drifts. It’s good enough for general health and fitness but I don’t push it higher without a target. The pandemic wasn’t good for maintaining my pre pandemic fitness as my targets got cancelled one by one.

I am training for this https://www.paris-brest-paris.org/en/accueil-en2/ which is 1200km over 4 days, but I have 200km, 300km, 400km, 600km qualifying events on the way there.

I thus ride ultra endurance events. You won’t find anything off the shelf but the basic mainstays of volume and intensity sprinkled on top, and progressive overload apply.

I signed up to https://athletica.ai/ last May. Initially paying monthly but went to annual subscription once I saw I was getting results with it. It’s really good for my mentality as I can do the assigned work indoors or outdoors. Given a choice I prefer outdoors. If I do more than scheduled or less it adjusts subsequent sessions to ensure progressive overload. Getting good results with it and haven’t felt this fit in ages.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Here’s my form the last 4 months, there’s Covid plus Christmas in there.

 

[bobinski]

HR monitoring is a tricky beast as fatigue sets in. One of the things drummed into us on the Majorca camp was if you fuel enough during the ride eg 90g plus carb an hour and replace lost fluids you can better manage the inevitable onset of fatigue. That is, how soon it hits and then the impact. Aurelian looked at our rides every night, weighed us in the morning and was able to say who was under fueling or not drinking enough based on changes in hr and also weight.

 

[CXRAndy]

You may find HR fails to rise when you are very fatigued. I usually see this on the 3rd day of a big tour.

That's true Martin, extreme fatigue can be seen by a HR refusing to hit normal levels.

I remember I had that happen to me at Ventoux. We were supposed to have an easy day before attempting the Cingles. A local guide took us an a very hilly 80 mile ride the day before. In the morning and up the first ascent my HR was 15bpm lower than normal for the effort I had put in before. By half way up I felt terrible and called it a day after reaching the top. Early shower, food and an early night revived me for the next day, until late on where I began to struggle again. Glad the week was coming to an end by then

 

[JuhaL]

HR monitoring is a tricky beast as fatigue sets in. One of the things drummed into us on the Majorca camp was if you fuel enough during the ride eg 90g plus carb an hour and replace lost fluids you can better manage the inevitable onset of fatigue. That is, how soon it hits and then the impact. Aurelian looked at our rides every night, weighed us in the morning and was able to say who was under fueling or not drinking enough based on changes in hr and also weight.

Fueling and drinking is so important that you just can't announced that too much. It doesn't help if you drink well only before the training, that doesn't balance dehydration, you need to remember do that every day, need to be daily habit if you wan't be well prepared every day.

 

[CXRAndy]

HR monitoring is a tricky beast as fatigue sets in. One of the things drummed into us on the Majorca camp was if you fuel enough during the ride eg 90g plus carb an hour and replace lost fluids you can better manage the inevitable onset of fatigue. That is, how soon it hits and then the impact. Aurelian looked at our rides every night, weighed us in the morning and was able to say who was under fueling or not drinking enough based on changes in hr and also weight.

Wow that's a lot of carbs per hour. How did your guts react to that? I know glucose absorption is a very individual thing , some can handle far more than others. Sounds very thorough with weight checking to ensure adequate fueling

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Hey Ming (is that what we call you?) are you training for anything specific or just to get/stay fitter? And are you self coached or following a programme?

There are two modes for the AI.

You can train for events in which case you put in the dates of all your events leading up to you big one (A event) of the year. It’s then builds an adaptive plan for you, adjusting as you do each workout and give feedback on how it went as well as synching my data from Garmin Connect. It does progressive overload, puts recovery weeks in there, does tapers based on priority of event, and ensures you are fresh but fit for them if you’ve followed the plan, does recovery weeks after events etc.

The second mode is train to maintain. Thus end of your events for the year. You want some down time but don’t want to lose too much fitness. I’ll set it to this after Paris Brest Paris. I can then do enough for maintenance mode which is a lot less than building the fitness to start with.

Best thing I paid for, as otherwise I’d just have stagnated doing the same old things and achieving the same old fitness each year. Seems to be pushing me towards a new high based on what I’m seeing so far. Not bad considering I’ll hit 57 this year.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Here’s a sample of what I get. You can move the sessions around or use the workout wizard to pick something different but same physiological targets and approx load.

 

[bobinski]

Wow that's a lot of carbs per hour. How did your guts react to that? I know glucose absorption is a very individual thing , some can handle far more than others. Sounds very thorough with weight checking to ensure adequate fueling

Maltodextrine and fructose mix for the carbs. Zero stomach issues. Homemade Protein bars/balls every hour or so Superb food at breakfast, post ride and then dinner. So really balanced. Run by the guy who came 2nd in 312 last year and who had 12 of those bottles and nothing else the whole ride.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

who had 12 of those bottles and nothing else the whole ride.

How did he carry 12 bottles on bike or did he have powder on bike and got water as he went round?

 

[CXRAndy]

How did he carry 12 bottles on bike or did he have powder on bike and got water as he went round?

312 is a sportive with arranged fuel stops. I doubt he actually stopped being a contender to win so would likely have his own backup team-much like team Sky did for Froome on his epic win in the Giro stage where he went solo for 80km, he had team helpers throwing/giving out bottles for him at points along the course

 

[Ming the Merciless]

312 is a sportive with arranged fuel stops. I doubt he actually stopped being a contender to win so would likely have his own backup team-much like team Sky did for Froome on his epic win in the Giro stage where he went solo for 80km, he had team helpers throwing/giving out bottles for him at points along the course

Ah, so a fuelling strategy that works in that supported context, but would be hard to implement in others.

 

[bobinski]

312 is a sportive with arranged fuel stops. I doubt he actually stopped being a contender to win so would likely have his own backup team-much like team Sky did for Froome on his epic win in the Giro stage where he went solo for 80km, he had team helpers throwing/giving out bottles for him at points along the course

Exactly this. 5 or 6 arranged pick up points.

 

[Norry1]

Today was just a 2 hr Z2 ride but Roy asked me to so a 2 minute max effort as well to "fill in a data gap."

Did it outside, bit chilly but nice. Did the 2 min effort, 15% below my best ever in 2021 but best this year or last. Weirdly, Intervals.icu increased my FTP by 1W on the back of it

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Weirdly, Intervals.icu increased my FTP by 1W on the back of it

Power duration model equation rounding result no doubt.