Is this any good?

[grellboy]

Morning. I'm not a particularly active competitor, I just do the weekly 10 mile TT. Hoping to improve when/if the season starts so over the winter I've been training on my turbo. After work on Tuesday and Thursday I just do 8-10 miles (depends on how much time I have) mostly at Zone 2, occasionally creeping into Zone 3. On weekends I do a kind of DIY ramp test. Using a power meter and hrm, I increase my effort by 20 Watts every two mins from 190 - 230, then every 3.5mins. Yesterday's effort gave me a 108% intensity compared to my ftp of 250. Just wondering how useful it is in helping me to improve my 10 TT time? I climb off the bike exhausted, watts comes out at 264, so we'll above ftp and last 10 mins is at 270w or above, so half ride above my ftp. Will this help, or should I cut out the 190 - 230 part? I already do a 20 min/ 4 mile warm-up before beginning the proper session. Have included a shot of the power effort for clarity.

 

[CXRAndy]

Morning. I'm not a particularly active competitor, I just do the weekly 10 mile TT. Hoping to improve when/if the season starts so over the winter I've been training on my turbo. After work on Tuesday and Thursday I just do 8-10 miles (depends on how much time I have) mostly at Zone 2, occasionally creeping into Zone 3. On weekends I do a kind of DIY ramp test. Using a power meter and hrm, I increase my effort by 20 Watts every two mins from 190 - 230, then every 3.5mins. Yesterday's effort gave me a 108% intensity compared to my ftp of 250. Just wondering how useful it is in helping me to improve my 10 TT time? I climb off the bike exhausted, watts comes out at 264, so we'll above ftp and last 10 mins is at 270w or above, so half ride above my ftp. Will this help, or should I cut out the 190 - 230 part? I already do a 20 min/ 4 mile warm-up before beginning the proper session. Have included a shot of the power effort for clarity.

A time honoured method is to ride for several hours non stop, with a high cadence, in Z2. This will build a cardiovascular base fitness. Once you've done this for 8-16 weeks, then you add in high intensity intervals to peak up power.

Trainer Road is an excellent training platform to improve your fitness and power for whatever discipline you prefer. It has all the workouts from beginner to expert

What you're looking for in base phase is to be able to ride for multiple hours with low power and have very little heart rate drift over the whole session.

Currently your training time is not really sufficient to make substantial improvement.

 

[grellboy]

So there's no value in doing half the ride over my ftp? This will not help to develop my power?

 

[CXRAndy]

So there's no value in doing half the ride over my ftp? This will not help to develop my power?

No, any effort will help, but there are better recognised ways of improving fitness. Have a look at Trainer Road, it is one of the best training plans available

Here is an example of a 2hr30 min workout on TR. The redline is my heart rate, you can see its very flat even at the end of the session, indicating Ive got good cardiovascular fitness. This was a non stop pedalling workout at 94rom average

 

[grellboy]

No, any effort will help, but there are better recognised ways of improving fitness. Have a look at Trainer Road, it is one of the best training plans available

OK, thank you, will do.