Winter Tempo/SST

Watoni said:

Not having the luxury of 4-5 hour training rides whenever I want, I am hoping to build a base and slim down by riding loads of tempo/SST.

The plan is to try to do 2-3 "SST rides" per week
(1.25-3 hours with 45 minutes - 1.5 hours of climbing at SST intensity), and get one recovery and one 4-5 hour endurance ride (tempo on climbs?) in if I can.

I figure I can do 2 days of SST in a row ... I am getting used to not riding climbs at full L4 2x20 intensity and I find I can ride more climbs and do multiple days if I back off to about 90% FTP ...

Any thoughts or observations?

just keep some variety happening. don't avoid a sprinkling of work at all levels.

This is a slam-dunk yea! 🙂 🙂 Sure you can do 2 SST rides in a row, I do it regularly. Big benefits to it also. You burn hella calories, get great training benefit & build power. Whats not to like? Yea, 4-5 hour rides can be great but unless I do them w/a group, they are too long & I lose motivation after 3 hours. Time doesnt pass so quickly when there are no friends or other riders to BS with (and draft!!!) and you are by yourself & doing solid L3 work. I like to do these rides as if I were on a long, lon breakaway in some grand race. Not easy, but super good for ya.

Watoni said:

Not having the luxury of 4-5 hour training rides whenever I want, I am hoping to build a base and slim down by riding loads of tempo/SST.

The plan is to try to do 2-3 "SST rides" per week
(1.25-3 hours with 45 minutes - 1.5 hours of climbing at SST intensity), and get one recovery and one 4-5 hour endurance ride (tempo on climbs?) in if I can.

I figure I can do 2 days of SST in a row ... I am getting used to not riding climbs at full L4 2x20 intensity and I find I can ride more climbs and do multiple days if I back off to about 90% FTP ...

Any thoughts or observations?

What Alex said. Don't get in a rut. Also, if you do a lot of SST you should keep the volume up. Personally I would keep some L4 in there every week and even some L5 every couple weeks.

Yes, sounds good.

I went harder yesterday ... 20-22 minute L4 climb (more or less all out, no computer/PM for now), then another ~15 minutes hard climbing. Felt good to hit it, though I would not be doing 2x20s at that initial climb pace!

Plan for this week (big volume):
Monday: off
Tuesday: 2 hours, 3200 feet climbing (SST)
Wednesday: 1.25 hours, 2200 feet climbing (L4+)
Today: (Hoping for) 2.25 hours, 3700 feet (SST/L4)
Friday: Recovery ride
Saturday: 2.5-3 hours, 3000-4000 feet
Sunday: 5 hours, 7000 feet

l'd switch tuesday with wednesday but that's just me, other than that looks like a great plan for burning loads of cals and adding some quality base to your preseason,
plenty of climbing in there which would stop me from getting bored out of my mind riding on a strait flat road, have fun!

Good stuff from Lanierb & Bubsy.

I like the idea of putting the L4 (or L5) work before SST. It puts the hardest workouts at the front of your block - so you do those when you are most fresh. Then the workouts get less intense but that's ok b'cause you are more fatigued.

Now I am always doing some L4. When I drop the L4 volume too low & replace it with L3 (I know the terms L3 & SST get used interchangeably sometimes), I notice my progress on FT slows a little- but then 90+ min pwr improves. Seems that my personal little power training lab test = 1, works best with a mix of L4 & L3, not only L3.

DancenMacabre said:

... When I drop the L4 volume too low & replace it with L3 ...I notice my progress on FT slows a little- but then 90+ min pwr improves. ...

Huhhh? FTP progress is observable over multiple weeks or many months, not days. How can you honestly say you've observed that kind of cause and effect relationship in less than six months of power training?

cyclissimo said:

Huhhh? FTP progress is observable over multiple weeks or many months, not days. How can you honestly say you've observed that kind of cause and effect relationship in less than six months of power training?

For most of y'all that have been riding/training for a while, yeah I agree - ftp progress is weeks/months maybe years. Like you noticed though I'm pretty new to cycling & PM stuff. So for me, FTP gains can & often do come in days. Not hella fast enough, but fast comapred to most experienced PM trainees. Gotta think that's not at all strange for a newbie. Didnt the killing me thread poster gain > 70 watts in 2 months? Then we are talking progress in just days.

I said what I did b'cause thats what I have seen. Since about 6 weeks ago I do monod tests every 2-3 weeks. I notice the ftp & cp values improve most during the times I'm doing > 40 minutes of L4/week. When I do more tempo & <= 40 minutes of L4/week or no L4 at all, then ftp &CP didn't go up as much. I mentioned stagnating a short while back & that was a period with lots of tempo riding. I did find that the more tempo rides I do, the easier tempo rides get + CTL goes way up. When I do more 2/3 x 20's then I find those easier & FTP progress quicker. Specificity maybe?

All this might be false for 90% of the riders with PMs on this board. Thats ok b'cause all I have to do what works for me above all else. Lab test = 1 and all that🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 . The pm stuff I have read says the primary reference is the athlete not the system itself. So far, this athlete likes a mix of L4 & L3 training more than just L3 work. YMMV 🙂 🙂

DancenMacabre said:

...So far, this athlete likes a mix of L4 & L3 training more than just L3 work...

So does this one, but I'd be careful about drawing too many conclusions on too little data...

DancenMacabre said:

...I mentioned stagnating a short while back & that was a period with lots of tempo riding. I did find that the more tempo rides I do, the easier tempo rides get + CTL goes way up. When I do more 2/3 x 20's then I find those easier & FTP progress quicker. Specificity maybe?...

I think you're looking for improvement on too short a time scale. Sustainable power for 20 or 30 minute intervals can vary from day to day and week to week for a lot of reasons including freshness, motivation, nutrition, hydration, even weather conditions. Just because 20 or 30 minute power increases, decreases or stays the same for one or a couple of workouts it doesn't mean that FTP has measurably changed.

Yeah, progress is rapid at the start in part because it takes most folks a while to learn to do longer steady efforts near threshold and some adaptations like increases in heart stroke volume are quite rapid at the beginning. But noticeable increases in fitness follow predictable time courses on the order of 6 or more weeks to adapt to an increased training load.

Trying to track FTP progress or lack thereof and modifying training on time frames much less than 5 or 6 weeks is basically an exercise in chasing the noise at least for someone past their first couple of months of training.

I'm not arguing your preference for keeping at least some L4 in your schedule, I'd do the same thing. It's just that these things take time and although you can minimize that time with smart training you can't really speed up the rate at which cells are regenerated or large scale adaptations occur and time frames for the large scale adaptations are measured in months, not days or weeks.

Anyway I wouldn't judge the success or failure of any particular training approach grounded in good exercise physiology in just a few weeks. Three weeks without a noticeable change in FTP doesn't mean it's time to change training strategies and a few weeks where numbers seemed to go up with focused L4 training doesn't mean it's the best solution (e.g. it might just mean you see increases in 20 minute power because you're doing a lot of 20 minute efforts).

I'm not knocking anything about your training approach, just pointing out that it's easy to jump to conclusions if you don't take the long view on this stuff and that's led an awful lot of cyclists to scrap good sustainable training in hopes of quick fixes when the results don't seem to come fast enough. So it might not be a question of specificity as much as a question on patience....

-Dave

Nope, no, definitely not taking any of what you said as a knock or slight. Sounds like darn constructive criticism/useful advice to me. I am gonna file that whole post away. Probably ought to be doing so with lots of your comments & the other smart guys here (you know who y'all are 😄😄😄).

Thinking about what you said, it all sounds true & solid. The body cant adapt that fast to this kind of training, not in 2 weeks anyhow. This highlights my big problem in sports, besides so-so talent, hella lack of patience! Typical naive newbie stuff, want the gains w/o the time/effort it takes. If it were that easy, then everyone would be cranking out 300 watts & 50 minute 40k TT's.
Think I'm going to commit to a pretty structured plan (allowing for some day/2/day variety for fatigue/rest) for 8-12 weeks (not 8-12 days!!!!). THEN, I'll evaluate it to see how I am doing. Maybe that means putting a test after an 8-12 week block, then evaluate it & adjust accordingly. If it is working & the gains are there, then you can keep doing what you are doing. I know you are a proponent of SST training & it has worked for you over years.

Once the ftp honeymoon period is over for me & this gets real tough, then constantly changing the program is like you say, chasing noise and not productive. So I best get into the right mindset now if I'm gonna stick w/this sport.

Great advice, thanks Dave 😎

P.S. - apologies Watoni, sorry for hijacking your thread dude. G' luck w/your training!!

bubsy said:

l'd switch tuesday with wednesday but that's just me, other than that looks like a great plan for burning loads of cals and adding some quality base to your preseason,
plenty of climbing in there which would stop me from getting bored out of my mind riding on a strait flat road, have fun!

I would switch them as well, but with work/family it is catch as catch can so I was writing what I was able to do those days, not what I ideally would do.
On the plus side, I did get 2.25 hours and ~4000 feet in today in glorious weather!

The events I care about are mostly double centuries with at least 14,000 feet of climbing, so climbing makes sense and that is what I enjoy anyway (and it keeps me mostly away from traffic centers).

As for DM's thread hijack, no worries. But listen to Dave and focus on the training and trust the results will come. In my case, I could likely do more focused training, but this keeps me happy and motivated.