More power babies! (as requested by turp)

Bikes
201

Oh, hey, this is cool:

Started training with power in 2010 and stopped around 2013. Kinda figured I’d never be fast. Was 41 with an FTP of 250 that took a lot of work to achieve to get to and roughly 100kg. Stopped riding in 2013 and started running. Used my aerobic fitness to quickly build up to 25 miles a week and injured myself in a way that I haven’t yet recovered from which prevents me from running even now.

Last fall, tried to start cycling again. Did a little, and picked it back up again since June where I established a goal of 8 hours a week. The following months looked like this

  • July - 25 hours
  • August - 30 hours
  • September - 28 hours
  • October - 37 hours
  • November - 47 hours

When I got back on the bike in June, I had an FTP around 150W. I’m 48 at this point and felt like I was probably suffering from the inevitable decline of VO2 that comes with age.

Since then, I’ve been building my “base”, i.e. accumulating CTL with the goal of hitting my volume target. Didn’t leave much room for structured workouts, so I’ve been doing lots of endurance, some sweet spot, and a 20m FTP effort now and then.

After about 6 weeks, my FTP jumped to 160 or so, then 165, then 170, it was going up pretty slowly. I wasn’t worried overmuch, I knew it’d go up a fair bit once I started going 2x20s, but damn that’s a low number for someone my size. Here’s what my PMC looks like:

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Last couple weekends, I’ve done a 50 mile ride on Sunday. First one was fine, legs felt a little sluggish after mile 40, last one felt great. Last week, I’ve been pretty busy with work and life and have been taking it easy. TSB is ticking up. So today I decide to do a test and hit a pretty steep hill to see what I can do for ~20m.

Did an FTP effort on the trainer earlier in the week and had a hard time holding 170W, so I was concerned, but that’s the trainer. On the road, I’ve had no problem holding that power.

So, I hit the hill and start grinding, trying to ignore my computer and just focusing on finding the balance where the legs are burning some, but it doesn’t get worse. At some point, I looked down and noticed that I was pushing low 200s and got excited… and then I hit a section that was nearly 14% for which I didn’t have the right gearing. Eventually, I ran out of hill and hadn’t hit my 20m mark, so I took a detour that kept going up. Found another side road that kept going up and eventually finished the 20m interval averaging 213W. My modeled FTP went up to 205W.

So, I’m pretty stoked because I’m within reach of where I was at 250-260W FTP. Would be nice to be able to sit in on a ride and not get shelled out the back immediately. I feel like I might be climbing better than I ever have as well, so that’s cool. Also, just now getting to the point where I can start doing 2x20s without burying my TSB.

That all said, kinda scared to reset my FTP to the new number. That’s gonna hurt.

202

So, in May I was doing the 400 mile week challenge that my team proposed. I had to do a lot of my stuff on the trainer coz work and I did one day for 60mi/3 hours. Now, on my dumb trainer, 20mph is ~250w avg. I saw that one of my teammates was doing some like 2hr/60mi rides @ ~175w on his smart trainer and I was like, WTF? Well, I signed up for trainer road yesterday and rode the used kickr I acquired and used erg mode for the first time (i was just doing my workouts in free spin). I FIGURED IT OUT, GUYS. If you do keep spinning up and eventually get into your hardest gear, the resistance stays constant for whatever watts and I ended up “riding” 67mi in 2 hours @ 230w avg. It was pretty ridiculous.

Either way, I have a free month of TR and I’m gonna start doing some of their workouts in erg mode and see how that goes.

203

I’m still trying to figure out how best to do Erg mode workouts. I was able to build a workout easily in Training Peaks and sync it to my Wahoo Bolt. Paired that to the Kickr and gave it a whirl. It clearly altered the resistance, but I was targeting a much higher number than I ended up with and historically, the Kickr has been pretty good for having average power match target power.

I’m going to try Zwift next. It has an explicit “erg mode” feature for structured workouts.

204

B is on zwift and I gotta figure out how to turn on erg mode for her when she’s doing workouts. her road bike is 10s, so she’s doing it on her 1x cx bike and hitting her numbers is next to impossible w/o spinning out. She’s very distraught about it.

205

This is all new to me, but erg mode really feels like the killer feature for smart trainers. It’s so nice to just get on the bike, load up a workout, and go. You can’t cheat your targets - either your turn the pedals or you don’t.

afaik that is exactly what erg mode is supposed to do - provide a targeted resistance. It doesn’t care about your gearing.

I recall several of the TR workouts at the beginning of my plan mentioned selecting a gear that is easy to push and just let the trainer adjust to the correct resistance for your workout.

Maybe the distance discrepancy was coming from whatever head unit you used? Is that looking at current gearing + wattage with some Di2 magic integration?

I’ve been playing around with TR + Zwift, but it’s a bit finnicky. You can get both working at the same time, but you start TR first and pair with the trainer. Load / start your workout, and then start up Zwift and only pair to the power source of the trainer (don’t set it as controllable). Then you get the beneift of TR erg mode workout + the scenery of Zwift.

It frustrates me a bit though because sometimes i’ll hit the sprint courses during a non-peak part of the workout and want to sprint, but erg mode doesn’t let me push harder.

1 Like
206

distance was because the flywheel is still turning that “extra” amount while being in 52-11 and still only doing 250ish watts.

207

This. Being on a trainer sucks. I just want to put my head down and grind.

208

Did “acho.” 3x12@288. After first one, I increased it to 302 because 288 just felt like it wasn’t gonna do anything for me. Good intro to one of their workouts, I think. ERG mode seems like it makes it less taxing, even if only mentally.

2 Likes
209

A wild Startup appears!

210

I tried this. It’s bad. Really, really bad. Not even MVP.

211

What do they do that Today’s Plan doesn’t? Seems like exactly the same premise, auto generated plans based on an event or fitness goal.

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Supposedly, it has AI. I guess it is like Xert, but with more structure.

213

Maybe the training plans aren’t shit, but it’s mobile only, which is going to suck for any visualization. The training plans look nonsensical. I’m not sure there’s any amount of ML pixie dust you can sprinkle on it that would make it not terrible.

Can’t multi-upload files, it syncs to Wahoo… I didn’t even know Wahoo carried copies of my workout files.

Yeah, no.

Fancy structured workouts ain’t gonna make anyone fast. Learn how to use the PMC, incrementally increase training stress, however you like and go from there.

Anyone well-adapted enough in their training to need that kind of complexity in their training plans is going to need a great deal more features than they offer.

214

I can’t keep my HR connected to Zwift. I’ve got the Wahoo Tickr and it’ll connect for a while, but after 10-15 mins, always disconnects. Anyone else had this happen?

215

How are you connecting to Zwift - Computer BT or companion app on mobile?

I don’t have an HRM, but i’ve generally found that computer bluetooth connections aren’t great, so with Zwift I use the Companion App and connect trainer and cadence sensor via my cell phone and just have display on computer.

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216

That might be my issue. Was using computer BT. I’ll try connecting via my phone and then using computer for display. Thanks!

217

Since any sort of travel is basically cancelled this year and all I’m doing is hanging around the house, I decided to attempt the Festive500.

I haven’t done a big training block like this in a long time. It’ll be interesting to see how my body reacts.

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218

Three days in and 180 km down. I’m trailing my pace a little bit; I’ll have to catch up about 8 km.

My chronic load is hovering around 55 right now, which I haven’t hit since 2017. My stress balance is -33, which from experience means I’m going to feel like crap in the morning. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, but breezy. I may noodle-leg it on the rollers tomorrow, depending on how I feel. It’ll have to be a daily double to keep on track, though.

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219

Where did you start with CTL for day 1?

Every time I think about riding bikes this winter, I’m reminded of my dumbass going from a CTL of 30 to 65 over 8 weeks this summer and how I just stopped riding after that.
So yeah don’t burn yourself out by Jan 1.

220

I started on the 23rd at 44. The last time I jumped that much was when I did a 4 hr enduro followed by a metric century on gravel. But that was also in August.

I’m definitely trying to avoid what I did in the beginning of 2018 where I added 23 over a month and ended up sick by the end.