Quoted post said:Originally Posted by frost [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]
Definately use some cooling. It has a major effect to your performance.
+1 Absolutely
Now that our weather has changed and my house is about 60F when I come home to train indoors I find it frustrating to turn on the fan(s) to blow cool air, but within the 5 minute warmup that quickly changes. Sometime I will not turn the fan on until after the warm up and I start the timer for the first interval and notice a difference in positive change in performance and not just because I am holding L4, but because my core is being cooled. It does make a huge difference from my observation or at least in my case.
The rocking back and forth does sound odd. I try to keep in mind what RDO says that while on the trainer to keep my upper torso from being involved at all. But I imagine that this will smooth out the more time you put in on the trainer. Even with using the rollers I try to keep the bike as still as possible with very little side motion of the tires. If I am in the groove, focused and still pushing my L4 the bike stays pretty calm, but that took some practice.
As far as warm up goes you sometimes have to do what ya gotta do and in my case I have very limited time, which means there are days I have to virtually start L4 from the start of the clock or within a few minutes. I have not had any issues other than it is seems just a touch more discomforting with a harsh burning sensation in the muscles for a minute or so, but if I stick with it I am typically good to go.
As far as TSS for indoors just remember quality is what matters. As Dave has mentioned before in reminding us about CTL that we can go out and rack up a lot of TSS to bump CTL, but what that number doesn't tell us is the quality of the effort in that CTL. When the duration is short and the intensity is raised to match the short duration there is that quality of the TSS that we strive to hit based on the metabolic adaptation chart guide. I too get about 30 TSS for a 20 minute L4. Since my time is limited and considering there are tiny bits of rest time between L4 2 x 20's I am extending the my sets now to 30 minutes or more and removing the rest time. By doing this I am getting upward to 85 and 90 TSS for those indoor sessions in just over a 60 minutes session.
Last night I did 40 minutes, rested about 3 minutes to let my core cool off a bit and then hit another 20 minutes. Both of those were at 92% FT and then I finished with 10 minutes of 95% FT just to round it up to 85 TSS *. This has just been my creative way of increasing my stress load with a limited amount of time. Each of our schedules and goals are different so it comes down to working through and with time you find an efficient path or you come closer to finding an efficient path by looking and observing trends in the PMC or whatever program you are using. (* - I wanted to do 2 x 30, but got overheated even with 2 fans running and a cool room)
When I train outside my mindset is that I have already done my quality work indoors through the week. Now it is a time to enjoy cycling for cycling and my longer outdoor ride has more CTL, but certainly less quality because of traffic and other interuptions that break a sustained effort or me not being able to smooth out the hills. But I don't worry about this and kind of just enjoy cycling in more of a recreational manner with a variety of intensity levels. If I do my regular 80 mile route I typically can get several long blocks of solid L3/SST/L4, but in that TSS there is also a good portion of L2.
