Pinched a nerve or something in my shoulder Monday afternoon. No idea what set it off. Went home from work Tuesday, barely able to keep my head up. Stayed home yesterday and wasn’t as terrible. Today maybe a bit better. Been laying on a trigger point ball and using the massage gun. Gonna try to get on the bike today, just to spin the legs. I have a 75mi gravel thingy on Saturday. Hoping to be somewhat better.
I did a 20 min effort at 196 is that good?
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Divide by your weight in kg and compare to charts
My 20m best is 279w fwiw
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My first ftp test was ~185. With easy focused training (8-10 hours per week spending 95% of time at zone 2, 4.9% at zone 4, and 0.1% sprinting), I got to >250 pretty quickly. When I fall off the wagon, I hover around ~230.
*I’ve been ~84-90 kg along the way
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Ok, get me into getting faster longer
First I’ll post in my own thread about one part but I think I have enough fitness to start a “not beginner” training routine
What do? FTP build stuff?
3rd time racing a crit this year and the 5th time since 2018.
I am getting older and this damn race isn’t slowing down.
Lap 3 and 4 were at 293 and 281w which put me in the hurt locker.
That 8th lap is what finally did me in. The takeaway is, of course, that alternating between 7 mile commutes and sporadic 100-130 mile rides does not make for good race training.
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honestly a beginner plan isn’t the worst. it won’t have as complex of inervals or as much intensity i would think and unless you have a goal before the end of this year, you have months to train and build up to the intermediate stuff.
most training platforms allow you to filter to training plans based on how much time you have available. that is probably going to help you the most in terms of choosing an achievable plan and if you aim low for hours, you can always tack on weekend rides outside.
just look for something compatible with the platform you want to use. if you’re training inside, trainer road is probably an easy one. if you need more entertainment, use zwift, but not sure how great their plans are - but you can easily import workout files from another source into zwift.
keep in mind if you are training for some goal that is a ways out, you may get burnt out before you get there. i.e. if you are training for a brevet series in the spring, you gotta a lot of weeks to go, so the less structure now will benefit you in terms of sticking to training 6 months from now.
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This is good advice. You don’t want to leave your best fight in the gym, a common thing with zwift I hear. One of my favourite maxims was “better to be undertrained than overtrained”. Pretty sure I’ve done exactly this on more than one ocaision!
How do I know where my z2 is
FTP test and 50-75% of ftp
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My first six months off the couch, my FTP went from ~180W to 220ish, IIRC. Zone 2 is pretty broad and one can derive training benefit from the entire range, so…
One could also aim for 65-75% Max HR. Maybe try to stay near the top of that range. When doing Z2 go for as long as possible and choose routes with very little coasting, stopping, etc.
Another way to gauge Z2 is being still being able to hold a conversation, but just barely.
Again, in my first six months, I saw huge spikes in FTP every time I did a 3-6hr z2 ride. I wonder if I could still do that.
Maybe throw in some intensity. A good 20m climb or some such. Don’t worry about anything higher intensity than FTP for the time being. That would either be event specific work, or specifically targeting VO2, which for someone not well adapted is going to go up with any stimulus.
How long were these laps?
My take, learning how to build volume with strict z2 is a good first step. Strict means not riding normies style where you are constantly gunning it up into tempo and beyond whenever there is a hill or some one passed you. Don’t even worry about intensity at all, learning to go medium low for an entire ride is i think the big insight that is missing for typical cat 6 types who never become fast in spite of always riding “fast” or even racking up low quality strava koms.
You can do it with perceived effort (free, hard to interpret), an hrm( $, requires some interpretation) or a powa meter ($$-$$$, very easy to understand)
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Will be on bikes soon
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1:40-1:55. The surge out of the primary corner to back straight each lap is what does the real damage though. 25mph lap usually means a 40-45sec surge at 27-29mph that starts with a 600-800w burst.
I’m definitely rusty as shit and my positioning was downright awful.
Sounds super painful. I wish I was fast, because those are the kinds of races I love doing.
Does anyone have a spider pm recommendation? Like quarq/magene/sigeyi?
Love my Quarq DZero. Haven’t tried too many others though. From what I gather Quarq seems to be the safe bet for getting something that just works.
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