Cycling Workouts: Discussion/Encouragement/Sharing/Banter

[HLaB]

Down to Conington Airfield again for today's scheduled Endurance ride (Mount Albert-1). One day I'll have to smash that route. Anytime before when I've been fast, time has dictated I do the loop twice, the segment is only 1 loop 😂

 

[Norry1]

Zwift Race today

 

[HLaB]

Almost a case of de ja vu today except it was 10deg C warmer and sunny as I headed down to Conington Airfield for the Endurance workout Mount Albert-1 again.

It was a lovely morning but I waited until it had warmed up to go out.

And the important stats 🌞

Edit, I guess it was windy looking at the pancake flat Holme Rd segments.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

A 3 hour endurance outing today

 

[Dan Lotus]

I had a bit of a cold last week, so postponed my TR start, I then carried out the first one on Sunday, when I was still a bit under the weather, and fatigued from a ride the day before which wasn't the best idea, but I did it because the Rouvy 'Big Race' had technical issues, and I wanted something tangible to complete - it was a poor decision as things go, but spur of the moment.

Anyway, that was Mondays ride completed one day early, had Monday off, and then took part in a Rouvy race on Tuesday.
Had Wed off, and then completed this 75 minuter on a long lunch today:

Running with a bit of a hurty lower back/left hip currently (Think it came about from DIY on Saturday), so am doing lots of stretches currently, but was conscious to try and keep the cadence up, so managed 90/88/90/86 for the first 4, then admittedly I did let it drop for the last two, down to 79 & 71, but it feels like I got away with it.

Fairly pleased with it - watched the latest Matt Stephens Cafe ride which was pretty good to be fair and worth a look, I forget the chaps name, but basically a Danish F1 reserve driver for Mercedes, who is buds with Mads Pedersen.

Saturday I had a 60 minute sweet spot workout planned in by TR, but as I am planning to be watching Strade Bianche women's in the morning, thought it would be better to extend it to 90 minutes, and make it a tiny bit less intensive, but have a bigger improvement on the sweet spot metric.
Swapped from this: (Apparently my AI FTP will be 221 as of tomorrow)

To This:

Think that should work out ok.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

A VO2 max session today. This means a trip to my favourite local hill for these intervals. Did 6 x 4 mins. Recovery week next week and will drop these to 2 x 4 mins. Foggy out.

 

[Norry1]

A VO2 max session today. This means a trip to my favourite local hill for these intervals. Did 6 x 4 mins. Recovery week next week and will drop these to 2 x 4 mins. Foggy out.

View attachment 802042

View attachment 802043

I hope that HR was on a recovery not a VO2 interval

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I hope that HR was on a recovery not a VO2 interval

Hah, yes 88-91 bpm was where my HR sat before I started the next VO2 interval. Each interval took me to 90-95% of my max HR.

 

[Dan Lotus]

I'd only planned to do a longer workout on Saturday:

That was it - at the end I had a rare bluetooth issue, which took a minute or two to resolve, but meant my last interval was missing a load of watts, so I ramped it up manually at the end to counteract the missing time.
The other high watts afterwards was just when I was messing about with the ERG at the end.

On Sunday there was a 'Big Rouvy race' at 15:00, which nets a lot of coins, so I wanted to ride it but I thought to make it better 'value' and so I didn't have to get up at 05:45 today, I'd bring the Monday workout forward, and then just ride the Rouvy event as recovery.

This was it:

Fairly pleased with this one, the challenging part for me was the last 3 segments of each block, and as you can probably appreciate, this became more challenging with each passing block - 3 was the toughest, but pretty pleased with my cadence.
Went into the first part trying to average 90, then 80, and then for the overs 90 & 80, and then whatever to survive the final one.
Watched the women's Strade Bianche on catchup to distract me, which worked a treat.
On opening up the TR website this morning, it has AI'd my FTP to 223 from 221.
I have this one coming up tomorrow:

Looks like that could be challenging - 5 x 5 minute efforts, with 30 second recoveries in the middle.
Think I'll focus on cadence, and try something like 90/90, 90/80, 80/80, 80/70, 70/70

Tonight I am planning to spin REAL easy in a Rouvy group ride, which basically means I can go as easy as I want and get pulled along - eta only 20 minutes or so.

I've seen real improvements already, which doesn't seem to be something I see with the Rouvy workouts - odd.

So far, TR is making a strong case for me keeping the sub going.
Lower back discomfort is still there, but vastly reduced from what it was, and happily the lower cadence doesn't seem to have aggravated it.

 

[Dan Lotus]

So the group ride I did last night, turned out not to be a group ride, so no rubber band effect
This meant I only got on there 30 seconds prior, so had zero warm up, and then felt I had to go harder than intended.
I was planning an easy 100w 20 minute spin, but it turned into a 191w ~17 minute effort, so I tacked on a 7 minute cool down as well.

I fully expected todays ride to be tough, and presumed this would make it tougher - the first 2 pairs were perfectly ok, and then it got progressively harder, and my cadence dropped, though I don't think it was horrifically low.

Cadence:
88/88
84/82
86/80
78/80
75/72

I'm also operating without my BIG fan at the moment, and it was some 18c in the garage at lunchtime, so wondering if they might be contributory factors.

I see conflicting advice/reasoning about whether to abort/lower the percentage when your cadence drops.
I'm not naturally a higher cadence rider, my fastest rides tend to be more around the 78 cadence, I have a naturally high hr, so my theory is that that lends itself to my body getting on better with a lower cadence way to get the watts out, rather than loading the cardio.

As long as I am hitting those targets (ERG leaves me little choice) I would have thought it is still of a benefit - even getting out of the saddle.
On a real climb my cadence might even drop to 60 or less, and I'm bound to be out of the saddle on a climb, either to get some more power out, or just for a change of position, stretch etc etc.

I rated this as Hard, and it looks like it has adjusted my workouts a bit as a result.

Interestingly, I have this plan running up until I go to Spain for 7 days with my daughter.
On the TR calendar I've basically put nothing down on there and for the Easter weekend, as I don't know what I will be able to ride, I'll probably leave her sleeping in, and try and get out early for a couple of hours, maybe 3-4 times would be nice, anymore is not feasible.

Due to the calendar being empty, TR is interestingly calculating my next AI FTP as coming down 1.8% to 219, which would be undesirable, so I'm hoping that is purely down to the fact I have 10 days in there with no planned activities.
I won't be riding with any form of power for those 7 days, though will have HR, so presumably the intensity will be calculated by TR based on the RPE I give the rides, and maybe it's AI FTP estimate will not decrease?

I'm not worried about it, it's just an arbitrary figure, I was just curious, as last time I used TR, it didn't have this FTP forecast thingy.
I also thought it only calculated your FTP every 28 days as a minimum, this month it gave me a new FTP of 221 on March 6th, which I was expecting, but then it popped up of it's own accord on only March 9th, with another new one of 223, which I thought was a tad odd no?
In the interim I had completed two TR sessions, and two Rouvy events, though only one was a properly hard effort, but that was the short ~18 minute one yesterday, I also can't recall if the ne FTP was before I completed that race or not, it could well have been actually.

 

[HLaB]

A Sweet spot work out tonight for me tonight (Tallac -2) and after the latest ERG thread on Trainer Road, I thought I’d give ERG another go and it confirmed why I don’t like it (or at least how the Suito manages it). At a reasonably high cadence 90-95rpm I could exceed the target. At what is a cadence for me these days (90rpm) it would tread about the target (on average 1-2w below target) but go at a more natural cadence (85rpm) it would tread comfortably below target and never seemed to up the resistance (I’m using a double sided Power Meter now, a left sided only power meter was the opposite and ERG would constantly set too high a resistance which would drag me into the spiral of death ). I’d like a halfway house. I ended up switching to resistance mode to stay on target although I ended up with too low a cadence :-/

 

[HLaB]

Down to Conington Airfield again for my midweek endurance ride (Gora). Really blustery out but the route although exposed pretty flat so power regulation wasn't too bad. I was going to change the route but I had to take time out to drop off my commuting bike at the lbs this morning so I thought I'd better stick to what I knew this afternoon.

 

[Norry1]

So the group ride I did last night, turned out not to be a group ride, so no rubber band effect
This meant I only got on there 30 seconds prior, so had zero warm up, and then felt I had to go harder than intended.
I was planning an easy 100w 20 minute spin, but it turned into a 191w ~17 minute effort, so I tacked on a 7 minute cool down as well.

I fully expected todays ride to be tough, and presumed this would make it tougher - the first 2 pairs were perfectly ok, and then it got progressively harder, and my cadence dropped, though I don't think it was horrifically low.

View attachment 802221
Cadence:
88/88
84/82
86/80
78/80
75/72

I'm also operating without my BIG fan at the moment, and it was some 18c in the garage at lunchtime, so wondering if they might be contributory factors.

I see conflicting advice/reasoning about whether to abort/lower the percentage when your cadence drops.
I'm not naturally a higher cadence rider, my fastest rides tend to be more around the 78 cadence, I have a naturally high hr, so my theory is that that lends itself to my body getting on better with a lower cadence way to get the watts out, rather than loading the cardio.

As long as I am hitting those targets (ERG leaves me little choice) I would have thought it is still of a benefit - even getting out of the saddle.
On a real climb my cadence might even drop to 60 or less, and I'm bound to be out of the saddle on a climb, either to get some more power out, or just for a change of position, stretch etc etc.

I rated this as Hard, and it looks like it has adjusted my workouts a bit as a result.

Interestingly, I have this plan running up until I go to Spain for 7 days with my daughter.
On the TR calendar I've basically put nothing down on there and for the Easter weekend, as I don't know what I will be able to ride, I'll probably leave her sleeping in, and try and get out early for a couple of hours, maybe 3-4 times would be nice, anymore is not feasible.

Due to the calendar being empty, TR is interestingly calculating my next AI FTP as coming down 1.8% to 219, which would be undesirable, so I'm hoping that is purely down to the fact I have 10 days in there with no planned activities.
I won't be riding with any form of power for those 7 days, though will have HR, so presumably the intensity will be calculated by TR based on the RPE I give the rides, and maybe it's AI FTP estimate will not decrease?

I'm not worried about it, it's just an arbitrary figure, I was just curious, as last time I used TR, it didn't have this FTP forecast thingy.
I also thought it only calculated your FTP every 28 days as a minimum, this month it gave me a new FTP of 221 on March 6th, which I was expecting, but then it popped up of it's own accord on only March 9th, with another new one of 223, which I thought was a tad odd no?
In the interim I had completed two TR sessions, and two Rouvy events, though only one was a properly hard effort, but that was the short ~18 minute one yesterday, I also can't recall if the ne FTP was before I completed that race or not, it could well have been actually.

A few Q's in there!

Ref cadence, I wouldn't worry too much so long as you are hitting the power target.

When you don't have power, I think TR will look at your HR (and RPE). 10 blank days will definitely mean it gives a lower predicted FTP.

Not seen TR give new FTPs that close together - you sure it wasn't just a changed prediction?

 

[Dan Lotus]

A few Q's in there!

Ref cadence, I wouldn't worry too much so long as you are hitting the power target.

When you don't have power, I think TR will look at your HR (and RPE). 10 blank days will definitely mean it gives a lower predicted FTP.

Not seen TR give new FTPs that close together - you sure it wasn't just a changed prediction?

Thanks @Norry1, yeh I reckon the cadence is nothing to be too concerned about as long as I am not destroying my knees.
Two years ago on a campsite's horrendous 7 speed hire bike, I was spinning at a cadence of less than 40 to get up the climb to the camp site and I survived that
That explains the predicted lower ftp - I won't put any spurious workouts in to 'fool' it as I don't know what I will ride yet, but I guess as they appear on the TR Calendar through Strava, it should automatically update as the week goes on.
My highest ever FTP is 258, and I'd like to think, if I can be consistent with my training, that I could get back there by next year, and hopefully somewhere around 235-40 by the summer this year.

Here is the screenie with the two values, as I say I didn't prompt it to do either:

My only thought is that the rides I did inbetween those two dates prompted it to run another AI ftp update.
I'll keep an eye and see if it happens again - like me you thought it was only every 28 days?