Hi all! I’ve been riding for a couple years now and using TrainerRoad for a year. Took part in my first crit this year in the uk and went on to do around ten. Didn’t fail too miserably and was certainly a shock to the system and a different effort to what I expected, underestimating the peaks/accelerations and lack of recovery. Hoping to get some better results this year so trying to change my training to improve this for next year. One workout/race simulation I picked was tour de nez, picking it more for gauging if I’m improving or as a fitness test but also set it as a goal to complete it with no rests before next year.
I can currently get about 27 minutes in before my legs grind to a halt and then have to add rests to get any further. It seems a long way off that I’ll be completing this workout! How does everyone else find it? Are there people completing it with no rests added? Are the people that make it through underestimating their ftp or am I just poor in this particular effort?
Look forward to hearing peoples thoughts and experiences! And also maybe some training tips on how this area can be improved!
Considering the specs 1 hour, 100 TSS, 1.0 IF… it will be incredibly hard to complete at 100% if your FTP is accurate.
Tour de Nez
I have never tried, and don’t plan to by the looks of that pure suffering. Ouch.
It is brutal, I don’t recommend it! When looking at other peoples attempts they also seem to fail or ones that finish it seem to have very low heart rates I guess through either being gifted a low heart rate or ftp being wrongly estimated
I’m with @mcneese.chad, I think @chad missed his morning coffee the day he made that. IF of 1.0 is just brutal and I don’t know that completing it is the right benchmark. Or even if it is a goal of yours, perhaps find a milestone workout in the interim. Something like Huxley is really really challenging but also much more attainable.
Thanks for your input! Useful and kind of what I was hoping for, getting a different perspective on it. Maybe I have been too ambitious in my goal setting!
It’s probably attainable, but you will likely have to hit everything right (rest, fueling, mindset, etc.).
And I would be easy on yourself if you try again since it is basically the same kind of idea as trying to hit your FTP for an hour… NOT EASY.
Never done it, probably never will but having done some UK crits in 2017 I can understand why you’d pick it. In my experience my crits were up to 45 mins and had a few that were above 0.9 IF, nothing ever hit 1.0 though! If you could get 30-40 mins through that workout I’d think that would be adequate to simulate a really tough race but the impact of that workout would then hamper your race if done in close proximity. I was only racing once a fortnight so might have tried something like that in place of a race in the gap week but crits are usually pretty inconsistent, lots of on and off efforts but one race you might have a good few minutes just coasting in the group if not much happening, another race it could be constant jumps and pulling breaks back.
yeah I wouldn’t be doing it when racing, it was pretty much a race every week so come the end it was getting tough on the recovery and taking its toll. It is definitely the closest workout I’ve found to simulating a race effort though. The pace was certainly higher than I expected. I could stay with the bunch in a cat 3/4 after I got the hang of it after a couple races and learnt to conserve energy and carry the corner speed but there were a couple 2/3/4 races included in which after about 20 minutes the pace just stayed high without slowing a little like the 3/4 so I’d just get blown out the back and slow up. This seems to be what happens in tour de nez I last about 20mins of repeats then hit a wall so seems a good gauge!
I know I also need to work on my race craft as I can’t seem to get good positioning in the bunch. I can only seem to either be at the back suffering the slow corner effect wasting energy or be right on the front. Then everyone flys by once I blow up
Completely brutal. If you are ever to complete it I’d suggest doing it instead of one of the last workouts in a training block or instead of a ramp test after a rest week!!
Hopefully you’ll have seen threshold improvements and might stand half a chance. Disclaimer: I’ve never tried it and never intend to 
With an IF of 1, could you use this workout as one of the most miserable FTP tests ever?
For what it’s worth, I used that workout in my indoor classes for a few years and I don’t remember a single rider completing each and every ‘lap’. After we did the workout the first few times, it was understood that you hung in there for as long as you could, skipped a lap when necessary, and then got back in there - almost like free-lapping back into a crit but more ethically. 
But in terms of simulating a crit, that’s kinda how it works. Some laps you hit it hard, some laps you get dragged along begrudgingly, and some laps you explode and have to struggle in order to get back on…or not.
So I recommend seeing it as an opportunity, 24 opportunities, to get a little tougher, a little stronger, where you aim for as many repeats as you can without really expecting to get them all. Then next time, get one or two more, that sort of approach. G’luck!
Nice to have some input from the man himself! Thank you! You’ve hit the nail on the head there with how I plan to use the workout and have done a few times already which is just to try and last abit longer each time. Hopefully the extra seconds will add up to extra laps eventually! Thanks for the hard work you and everyone else puts into the app and podcast, good work.
This is hands down THE best crit sim workout in the library. I’ve used it two different ways 1) as chad suggested by skipping laps, 2) turn down to 85-90% of FTP and complete the whole thing no skipping. Either way you finish it with a sense of accomplishment
Honestly, I don’t know which is more intimidating, Tour de Nez or Disaster. I actually think I stand a better chance of finishing Disaster.
Agreed, I am looking forward to the big ‘D’ and TdN scares me 
I just finished huxley + 1 yesterday, one of the hardest rides I’ve ever done.