So a little background first (apologies in advance for the longwindedness of the post).
I am what would be classed as a “Masters” athlete I believe (43), who over the last 10 years only form of exercise was pretty much the commute to work and that was walking to and from the office from the train station or car park with lunchtime walks thrown in, occasional nike rides and rounds of Golf.
Since the pandemic that was reduced to pretty much 0, where working from home and rolling out of bed into the office and from the office onto the sofa are a daily occurance.
Back in my youth I was a professional athlete for 5 years, competiting at a very high national level. When I stopped competiting professionally, I continued to stay active and playing various sports pretty much up until the 10 year hiatus.
I was previously well known for my speed, clocking 40m sprint speeds of sub 4.7secs and have never been remotely known for endurance. In fact when in school I was threatened to be suspended from all sports teams for clocking a walking pace time for cross country, which I had to halve before being allowed back onto my teams.
I recently decided to try to kickstart my fitness, I’m presuming from the hiatus and rudemenatry job I years of atrophy have me starting from an embarrassingly low base. I first started off using Trainer Day, doing a ramp test that resembled a few false dawns in prior years FTP’s, sessions were mainly base endurance and at the time I found them demanding so I would say the starting point was accurate.
Then I found TR, just prior I had done a 20min FTP test which had increased the preiovus FTP by 7%, so started with this number. Within 3-4 weeks, I was already pushing the intensity of my workouts by 10%+. My recent FTP Detection pushed my FTP up 10% in line I guess with how I was previously performing which was all in Base.
Now I’ve moved into the Build phase which is more VO2 and Anaerobic and what I feel is more suited to my athletic profile. Pushing efforts of 120-140% of my new FTP I feel weren’t really pushing me and straightaway I’ve pushed pretty much each session by 10-15% and even then I would say that the sessions are “Moderate” or somewhere in between “Moderate” and “Hard”. However I don’t feel the same way when doing a longer Threshold workouts, which is generally more Endurance and Over/Unders, pushing that by 10-15% for me I feel would kill.
Although I find all the workout to be pretty productive, i.e. fatigued on rest days, pretty much ready to go on training days. I’m not sure if I’m being productive enough to see the gains I’m after in this current phase.
Using HR as a metric, recently doing a Santa Rita workout at 10%-15% increased intensity, I only spent 2mins in Z3 the rest was in Z1-Z2. Comparing that to a Mono workout where I spend 12mins in Z3-Z4.
I guess my questions are:
Did my FTP Detection put me in the right place?
Am I still working effeciently towards my goals even if I’m finding my current workouts pretty mild?
Although I seem to be working my neuromuscluar system pretty well, am I working my cardiovascular system enough?
Should I retest my FTP with a Ramp Test?
Am I just a bit of an anomaly that doesn’t quite fit into the bell curves and therefore right zones for effective training?
Would love to hear your input…
) a 20 mins tests, if I get the pacing right, whereas a ramp test significantly underestimates my FTP (by up to 30-40 watts). AI FTP D gives me a result closer to a well paced 20mins test. Ramp tests capture most folk but miss outliers that don’t quite fit into the typical bell curves. AI FTP D I believe is supposed to give a better prediction for those outliers and AT dial you in. It might take a while to do it but its better IMO for motivation than potential failure.
I will definitely be giving some of those ideas a try going forward.
