i puked the first time i ever did the 8min test.
got done the second round, was breathing super hard, that turned into a bit of excercise induced asthma, which then turned into an extreme coughing fit (while still struggling to breathe) which then led to me throwing up in my office waste basket. girlfriend at the time came in from the living room and was wondering if she needed to call 9-1-1.
Not sure why i came back after that. But over 1300 TR rides now complete haven’t done that again. Learned my lesson i guess.
For me, it’s not that I truly believe I need to fuel the workout, as much as I like to have something in the tank at 5:30am, or whenever I happen to climb on, and something to keep me from overeating immediately following the short ride. I absolutely know that I could probably get through most of the workouts without fueling, but I also know from past experience that when I do that, I BINGE when I’m done because I feel ravenous. Taking in a 60g-90g of carbs (and the corresponding calories) leaves me feeling hungry, but not ravenous, and helps avoid binge episodes.
Said differently, if I chart my calories over the course of the day, fueling my rides and eating based on hunger/satiety signals for the rest of the day nets me fewer calories consumed than when I push the workout unfueled.
it’s not the need to fuel per se. Rather, if i am going to fuel, i need to do it either way before (like two plus hours) or immediately before (as in, as i am throwing a leg over the bike). If I split the difference I get bad results, much much worse than if i just didn’teat anything at all.
They call it rebound or reactive hypoglycemia. That the carbs and the exercise both cause a hormone response the double whammy of which leaves you hypoglycemic even though you should have plenty available. I don’t remember the name of the hormone. But it’s about timing.
It’s only happened to me a few times but when it does, woof
i agree with you. I also wouldn’t fuel before the test. I just meant, given that the OP clearly IS fueling already, he should make sure he’s paying attention to the timing of it. I was sharing my experience by way of example, not because I fuel for the ramps.
I have, and I’m perfectly capable of finishing the workout without fueling, but I feel worse (read: shattered) when I get off the bike when I don’t fuel, and I am absolutely ravenous when I don’t fuel. The fueling is more about managing the couple of hours immediately following the workout than fueling the workout.
Am I reading this right if I interpret that you shut things down at about 20:00 +/- a couple? I looked back at my last three ramp tests, and I went about 26:20, 26:37, and 24:00, and probably the last 4-5 minutes were brutal on each of those tests was absolutely brutal.
I’m less interested in getting a big FTP increase with every period than I am with keeping the FTP in TR adequately set to provide workouts that are appropriately challenging. That being said, when I look at the first block of LV Build, I see a consistent pattern within the workouts. Tuesday’s high-intensity, shorter intervals with even a short rest between intervals usually gets completed without issue, but the longer blocks of over-unders, or longer, higher intensity intervals usually see either lots of struggles, or failure. Saturdays have just not been successful over the last few weeks.
I’m not sure if it’s fatigue, the fact that I told myself years ago that I just “couldn’t do” sustained, high intensity output, so I sought out activities that involved short, intense sprints followed by quick rests and now I’m training a big weakness, but I’m going to bake in a little extra recovery this week and see if that helps.
I appreciate everyone’s questions and opinions, you’ve all given me a lot to think about.
Making sure we are speaking the same language - I still do the five minute cooldown, so my total time in the ramp test workout is about 25:30 or so. As far as when I bail on the “ramp” part, I make it a goal to get to 20:00 since that is sort of proof to myself that my ftp has gone up by at least 2%. Past that, I’m not killing myself to eek out another couple of watts. I’ve noticed that while the workouts have been complete-able, the fatigue I carry has been a bit much, so I’m taking a slower pace with the ftp increases.
If you are making it to 24 minutes or more on the ramp part, that is a huge ftp increase. I think the farthest I’ve made it on one was 21 minutes plus a couple seconds, and that was after my first block of structured workouts.
We weren’t speaking the same language, but we are now. Until the last one I’d been going about 21+ minutes on the ramp, then a 5 minutes cooldown.
I think I’m still going to take an active recovery day tomorrow, then come back in and start with the kind of workout what I’ve been struggling with in the last block. Appreciate the insights!
Maybe I just don’t have the internal suffer suppression function… But since I’ve only done 1 ramp test, my sample of literally 1, is weak. Sometimes I’ve been willing to do some endurance work after the full 20 minute test, but I don’t see myself ever counting the ramp test as a workout in and of itself.
