Comment on my training!

Roadie_scum said:

Any input appreciated

Glad to hear you're back in the saddle. Any idea what your distribution of time will be by level? Looks like a lot of L2-L3 time. I end up with a fair bit of L1-L3 time, but not due to targeted training time. Rather, it accrues from recovery time, downhill, downwind, etc. Just curious.

Roadie_scum said:

While we're at it, anyone want to share a deeply thought out approach to meso/macro-cycles? Any input appreciated (unless it's from WarrenG).

At this time in the season, any meso/macrocycle construction will be affected by the racing schedule.

Aside from that, a 'periodization' approach would probably involve building up the total TSS per week gradually over x number of weeks. I would also play with the content of formal L4 workouts as well. 2X20 yes I buy that to beging with, but going toward some more difficult combinations later in this 8week mesocycle.

You would have room to buildup more difficult L4 workouts on wednsday. All you'd have to do, is to remove a bit of TSS on the day before. Tuesday would then become a transition day between a very difficult weekend, and a difficult L4 orianted wednsday (3X20; 2X25 going to 2X30 this sort of thing).

I would be looking to get more high L3/L4 sweetspot time in and less endurance.

Also ~200 TSS for Sat looks low - I routinely get 275 out of a 3-3.5 hour team ride on a Sat.

Thanks for the input guys. My thoughts on the amount of L2 versus more L3/L4 relate to specificity - I have to race tours of up to 5 days and road races of up to 7-8 hours. I think I might struggle without some volume in the leadup, and if I do more L3/L4 I'll blow myself completely and be outside the 1000TSS/week max. Am I on the wrong track? If I had a time trial in 8 weeks, I'd definitely be doing more specific L4 sessions. Also consider that the Thursday ride is likely to have one hour with NP close to L4 and there are two 2X20 sessions. That yields quite a bit of training time around L4.

Also, I'm not saure how you guys approach using levels to describe your training, but when I say L2, I'm not limiting myself to that zone - that's the average power I expect to see, but I will still be kicking up hills, jumping out of corners, etc. On a 4 hour ride I would expect to see my max power for 5s to 10min at about 75%-90% of max. It's not exactly slacking off, even if it won't yield large improvements in my short term max powers. I may have used the power level designations in an inconsistent manner, or this may be normal, but I thought I should clarify.

Am I being logical here, or has something gone missing?

Roadie_scum said:

I think I might struggle without some volume in the leadup, and if I do more L3/L4 I'll blow myself completely and be outside the 1000TSS/week max. Am I on the wrong track?

Framed that way, I understand why you're doing the volume of L2 that you are doing. Makes sense to me.

Roadie_scum said:

I'm not saure how you guys approach using levels to describe your training, but when I say L2, I'm not limiting myself to that zone - that's the average power I expect to see, but I will still be kicking up hills, jumping out of corners, etc. On a 4 hour ride I would expect to see my max power for 5s to 10min at about 75%-90% of max. It's not exactly slacking off, even if it won't yield large improvements in my short term max powers. I may have used the power level designations in an inconsistent manner, or this may be normal, but I thought I should clarify.

I have the luxury of being pretty crisp about my definition of ride time by level, but that's only because I built a ride file parser. So, I define them by both duration and power (at least L4-L7, which are the levels I am really interested in).

Roadie_scum said:

Thanks for the input guys. My thoughts on the amount of L2 versus more L3/L4 relate to specificity

May I ask you the reason for planning the long L2 on tuesday instead of lets say, on thursday? I mean, do you consider tuesday as a development day or do you place it there to start the week progressively?

SolarEnergy said:

May I ask you the reason for planning the long L2 on tuesday instead of lets say, on thursday? I mean, do you consider tuesday as a development day or do you place it there to start the week progressively?

The main reason is that the bunch ride which I do with my teammates is on Thursday. It is a good workout as it includes a fairly high AP/NP and some changes of pace. It is also something my sponsor likes to have us do as it is quite visible. There is a similar though not quite as good ride on Tuesdays so I could switch them round is there was a good reason to. Can you think of one?

Roadie_scum said:

The main reason is that the bunch ride which I do with my teammates is on Thursday. It is a good workout as it includes a fairly high AP/NP and some changes of pace. It is also something my sponsor likes to have us do as it is quite visible. There is a similar though not quite as good ride on Tuesdays so I could switch them round is there was a good reason to. Can you think of one?

Well you know, at a certain level, one must put all 'pros' and 'cons' in the balance and see which side is heavier. Things are rarely totally black or white.

I have no experience in multi-stage race coaching. The closest I got (from this) is Ironman triathlon coaching (9hr long time trials). These guys too need to accumulate some lower intensity volume (especially on the running side).

Usually I try to setup a framework of quality workouts in the *best spots* of the training week, then pad with lower level volume. Depending on how hard is weekend training, one may have relatively fresh legs on tuesday after a day off, allowing for better performances during a quality workout. In your case, that would happen to be L4 related work.

Lower level volume, you can always book it anywhere in the programe and it would work.

Now that being said, thursday's bunch ride sounds like an important one. Plus if it can help keeping the sponsors happy, keep it intact.

I stick to my previous little advise that you may want to try to observe a progression in the difficulty level of your wednsday formal L4 workout, even if it means cutting tuesday's L2 workout from 240 down to 180min for instance.