Ansel Adams success rate?

I know everyone has types of workouts that destroy them. I can do over under all day long. Ansel Adams +4 which is the Tues workout, week 7 of General Build MV on the other hand… I won’t say it even killed me as I barely made it into the meat of the workout. 135% FTP repeats on the trainer… oof. Any of you love this workout? If so, which workouts really hurt you?

I wonder what the completion percentage TR has noted for any of the Ansel Adams variants. Or more generally @chad , what is the lowest completion percentage workout in the catalog? Thanks!

I’ve been 2 for 2 on Ansel Adams -2, which is only 130%, not 135%. I wouldn’t say they didn’t hurt, but the they at least roughly give you 1:1 ratio of work to rest.

The one that really hurt me was San Joaquin. Only 20 seconds rest.
San Joaquin +3 achievable?

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2nd attempt at Ansel Adams -2. 1st time round I bailed at set 6. It’s a tough one for sure but @ 130% they are doable. 135% I struggle with for any decent duration.

If you’re on the desktop website, select the workout and scroll down to “all rides” just above the list of workout variants. You can see other people’s attempts at that workout. It’s a double edged sword for confidence though :smile:

I have no trouble with this workout, but I have always found short, anaerobic, big-power efforts easy.

Sustained SS-type efforts I can put my head down and stubbornly suffer through.

Longer (3 minute) V02 efforts destroy me.

Hey @otoman. This is part of the subjective nature of working above (well above) FTP, and one of the key reasons we at TR have certain future plans in place and are working toward them as I type this. I’m not trying to tease so much as let you know we recognize how failure rates vary from rider to rider based on the type of workout, how their FTP’s relate to their aerobic capacity, recovery rates, age, gender…the list goes on and on.

For now, down-modify the intensity as necessary. This can mean an overall 5-10% reduction at the outset, a later reduction as you fade, starting low and finishing high, plenty of ways to still get quite a lot out of workouts that would otherwise bury you without some minor tweaks, just don’t get too liberal with the reductions. :wink:

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Thanks Chad! Excellent advice as always! I look forward to the new plans in the works. For now, I’ll do exactly as you suggest for those very difficult (for me) workouts.

Hey Chad, do you think that doing these kind of intervals in manual mode is a legitimate way of modifying the intensity? That way, you’re trying your best but your legs and lungs act as the natural limiter…

@martinheadon, Erg vs Manual is kinda beside the point with VO2max work–either the intensity is sufficient enough to provide an adaptive stimulus or it isn’t. I don’t mean to imply there’s a hard cut-off or a discrete switch between sufficient/insufficient, but if the watts fall too low because you’re not recruiting enough aerobic fibers to tax the cardiovascular/cardiopulmonary/cardiorespiratory systems, the workout is straying from its intended mark.

All of this is to say, don’t drop your watts so far that your breathing (and HR, often even the associated muscle burn) start to fall; this is the opposite of the elevation(s) VO2max work is about. If you can’t stay within 5, maybe 10% of your usual 2-min, 3-min, 90-sec, whatever it may be, power output, you’re venturing into less-productive, probably unnecessarily overly fatiguing territory.

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I had +4 version yesterday evening (wk 7 GBMV). No chance to success! I had to drop intesitety to 95% to go through and still I was on limit and reach max HR…