Any point in L6 intervals

peterpike said:

My training is coming along well - at the moments I am doing 2 x 20, 3x 20 @L4 and 5 x 5min L5 intervals. My racing consists only of TT's at distances of 10 mile 25 mile and 50 mile. Is there any point in ever doing L6 intervals of say 2 mins. The only time I ride at this power in a race is in the last 100m. OR does the L6 work somehow improve the FT of an individual?
Cheers, Pete

Not a lot Pete. Focus your efforts on threshold and VO2 max work. You really don't need to do any L6 work in my opinion if TT's are all you do. You might want to add some so you can be a bit "better" on hard group rides though, if you do them.

The last 6-8 minutes of your TT's should be at 100% VO2 max so you should not be able to do anything higher than high L5 for the last 100 meters. Most guys if really motivated can hammer at VO2 max for about 6-8 minutes. Of course this all out VO2 effort for 6-8 minutes is hard to gauge so if you do have anything "left" in the last 100meters then you must go L6 or even L7.

peterpike said:

My training is coming along well - at the moments I am doing 2 x 20, 3x 20 @L4 and 5 x 5min L5 intervals. My racing consists only of TT's at distances of 10 mile 25 mile and 50 mile. Is there any point in ever doing L6 intervals of say 2 mins. The only time I ride at this power in a race is in the last 100m. OR does the L6 work somehow improve the FT of an individual?
Cheers, Pete

Well, not to be a contrarian to Ti Man, but I think there may be some benefit to doing some short stuff in the period just prior to the key event. Do I have enough qualifiers in there? There seems to be some evidence that intervals as short as :30 help with longer TT performance, but not by the usual mechanism of increasing Vo2, which suggests some other mechanism (buffering capacity, maybe?). Regardless, I've experienced this myself in my own training, and if I have a key 40km coming up, I'll fit in 2 workouts including some hard 30-40 second effort in the 10-12 days prior to the event. But what do I know?? Maybe some smart guys can chime in!

RipVanCommittee said:

Well, not to be a contrarian to Ti Man, but I think there may be some benefit to doing some short stuff in the period just prior to the key event. Do I have enough qualifiers in there? There seems to be some evidence that intervals as short as :30 help with longer TT performance, but not by the usual mechanism of increasing Vo2, which suggests some other mechanism (buffering capacity, maybe?). Regardless, I've experienced this myself in my own training, and if I have a key 40km coming up, I'll fit in 2 workouts including some hard 30-40 second effort in the 10-12 days prior to the event. But what do I know?? Maybe some smart guys can chime in!

It's worth a try for sure.

🙂

How about the short hills, e.g. 200-300 m of 5%. If I have calculated/estimated anyhow right, there would be easily needed power of ~600-700 Watts for 20-30 seconds. Isn't this L6 if any? Or is it just averaged back to FTP in the downhill part?

peterpike said:

My training is coming along well - at the moments I am doing 2 x 20, 3x 20 @L4 and 5 x 5min L5 intervals. My racing consists only of TT's at distances of 10 mile 25 mile and 50 mile. Is there any point in ever doing L6 intervals of say 2 mins. The only time I ride at this power in a race is in the last 100m. OR does the L6 work somehow improve the FT of an individual?
Cheers, Pete

There are two conditions under which you would ride at anaerobic pace on a TT. One is if the course has some climbs, especially short climbs < 5 mins. Two is if you ride such courses with a variable power pacing strategy. There are lots of reasons to ride such a course at a constant power (e.g., it's easier to pace), but the fastest pacing strategy is variable power. In the short sections, one would want to ride at about his maximum power for that duration and back off as necessary in downhill or flat sections. Plus, I think AWC contributes to max sustainable power further out the power/duration curve.

RapDaddyo said:

There are two conditions under which you would ride at anaerobic pace on a TT. One is if the course has some climbs, especially short climbs < 5 mins. Two is if you ride such courses with a variable power pacing strategy. There are lots of reasons to ride such a course at a constant power (e.g., it's easier to pace), but the fastest pacing strategy is variable power. In the short sections, one would want to ride at about his maximum power for that duration and back off as necessary in downhill or flat sections. Plus, I think AWC contributes to max sustainable power further out the power/duration curve.

I all due respect to you RapDaddy,......I would be VERY careful with variable power pacing and anaerobic efforts in any TT. Dipping into AWC too deeply and more than very infrequently, by necessity perhaps, will have a negative impact on your time IMHO. I think the fastest pacing strategy is to keep things pretty constant and to ramp up near the end. This is for most riders that is. Variable pacing will work better than constant pacing in certain courses, if you have the experience and a power meter, but dipping into AWC too deeply and more than very infrequently, will have a negative impact on your time IMHO. I think the fastest pacing strategy for the more experienced and those with a power meter is to keep things pretty constant, with only +- 5% variation with hills/wind, and again to ramp up near the end.

Generally for a short TT this means riding above threshold the entire time, after a brief ramping, and then hammering the last 5-7 or 8 minutes or so at VO2 max. Perhaps you could "hold off" with the VO2 effort and then hammer the last 2 minutes or so at L6. This strategy might be better for the guy that has a very strong AWC and poor relatively "poorer" top end aerobic capacity.

Generally in a long TT you want to try to hold things around 100% FTP with only about a +- %5 variablity in power for a hilly course...some guys can manage more for the last half....and then hammer at VO2 max the last 5 minutes or so. Again, if your AWC is really strong then maybe it would be best for you to hammer the last 2 minutes at L6 instead of doing the last 5-8 minutes at VO2 max.

Now in longer TT's the reality is your power is going to be going up and down from just below threshold to just above frequently, so your training should mimic this at times.

Most guys loose a lot of time in climbs as the climb will cause them to work above threshold for a few minutes and then they have to recover in order for to be able to hold their previous power. The longer you are above threshold the longer the recovery time needed and the more time you loose. The higher above threshold you go the longer this recovery time gets by necessity. You can train the body to get better at recovering quickly, by alternating efforts from near 100% FTP to just over 100% FTP and back down etc etc, but you can only get "so good" at quick recovery......
It has been my experience with myself and my clients over the years that if you go anaerobic for 2 minutes most men need 5 minutes to recover to the point that they are able to hold the same power that the had before the climb...and they loose a lot of time. That doesn't mean that your power never jumps to L6 for very brief periods at certain times in "some" climbs.

IMHO it's a good idea to not back off much going down hills, as this is where you can make up a lot of time if you have good skill....it can be easy free time for you, especially if you have a good aero position and are a heavier rider. You won't "need" to back off on the down hills if you keep if you didn't go too hard up the hill.

TiMan said:

I all due respect to you RapDaddy,......I would be VERY careful with variable power pacing and anaerobic efforts in any TT. Dipping into AWC too deeply and more than very infrequently, by necessity perhaps, will have a negative impact on your time IMHO. I think the fastest pacing strategy is to keep things pretty constant and to ramp up near the end.

As I alluded to in my post, constant power pacing is often the "safest" pacing strategy for many. Even constant power pacing within a few watts of one's maximum sustainable power requires practice and very solid performance data (e.g., from similar duration max power efforts). The common mistake is to overestimate one's max sustainable power and take it out too hard, fade in the middle and then try to finish strong (the classic high/low/high power profile).

But, there's really no disputing the fact that variable power pacing results in the shortest elapsed time if one has a well designed pacing strategy and detailed knowledge of the course and conditions (wind). This is true if the course/conditions involve grade or wind changes or both. The greatest advantage to variable power pacing is a course with frequent grade changes, but even the classic relatively flat out/back course with a headwind on one leg and a tailwind on the other leg lends itself to a variable power pacing strategy. But, it's quite true that VP pacing is not for the novice. It requires detailed knowledge of one's entire power/duration curve and practice at mid-ride recovery from VO2MAX or AWC efforts. Elapsed time is a function of both one's max sustainable power (e.g., FTP) and how the rider uses his power.

RapDaddyo said:

But, there's really no disputing the fact that variable power pacing results in the shortest elapsed time if one has a well designed pacing strategy and detailed knowledge of the course and conditions (wind). This is true if the course/conditions involve grade or wind changes or both. The greatest advantage to variable power pacing is a course with frequent grade changes, but even the classic relatively flat out/back course with a headwind on one leg and a tailwind on the other leg lends itself to a variable power pacing strategy.

RapDaddy, certainly when there are hills or changing wind sections in the race, a variable power strategy works well, and yes even best, IF you have the experience and a power meter. My concern is by how much to vary power. I think it's safest to hold it to +-5% and not to go anaerobic. Also, the decrease in power should not be to the point of going below your threshold range. Also, not everyone can do variable pacing, and even some very good riders...it's very individual I think. Under/over intervals can help though.

However, a rider should always choose a more constant power strategy when external conditions are more constant.

Has anyone written a computer program to calculate an optimal pacing strategy from an elevation profile, the rider CP curve, and the aero/weight properties of the rider? Using the same method used at analytic cycling one could calculate speed given power, and then minimize the time spent along the course subject to the constraint that the normalized power over no interval exceeds the CP curve for that interval. Assuming known wind conditions this could be done very accurately (sadly wind conditions are hard to know) using existing numerical optimization routines.

I think in most cases it wouldn't save that much time, but it might make the difference for very elite athletes. My guess is that in very long time trials, like maybe in a very hilly ironman type of race, it could actually make a large difference, say maybe more than 10 minutes. One would have to calculate it to be sure.

peterpike said:

My training is coming along well - at the moments I am doing 2 x 20, 3x 20 @L4 and 5 x 5min L5 intervals. My racing consists only of TT's at distances of 10 mile 25 mile and 50 mile. Is there any point in ever doing L6 intervals of say 2 mins. The only time I ride at this power in a race is in the last 100m. OR does the L6 work somehow improve the FT of an individual?
Cheers, Pete

There is a study showing a statistically significant improvement in 40km TT performance using 12 X 30s intervals @175% VO2max with 4.5 minute rests. This intensity may not be attainable for some people. Other protocols were examined too.

Rock the abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=10331896&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum

Roadie_scum said:

There is a study showing a statistically significant improvement in 40km TT performance using 12 X 30s intervals @175% VO2max with 4.5 minute rests. This intensity may not be attainable for some people. Other protocols were examined too.

Rock the abstract: ncbi.nlm.nih.govquery.fcgiOpen ↗

The same study showed slightly more improvement using 8x4 minutes @85% VO2 Max (or roughly 105% FTP), although I'm not sure what the recovery interval was there. Do you have the full paper?

jbvcoaching said:

The same study showed slightly more improvement using 8x4 minutes @85% VO2 Max (or roughly 105% FTP), although I'm not sure what the recovery interval was there. Do you have the full paper?

Yep, so do both at some point in your training!

I have the paper somewhere. I'll let you know the rest periods when I look it up.