Well it seems like a lot of dead time to me.
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No, I don’t think so. AFAIK they are added so that the training plan maintains the correct time-in-zone distribution. They are boring, yes, but I think they wanted to do Polarized-by-the-book.
I hope they will change that when they put their own spin on it.
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yep, the thin lines are the conitnuous measurements, the thick lines are just crude smoothings. We can see how fat ox kicks again in after ~5min after the effort. There is some lag. We see this with the two all-out efforts nicely. In the first minute or so of the second all-out effort fat ox is still elevated.
Fat ox/carb ox do not change instantaneously with changes in power. Here a nice graph from a study on HIIT (Hetleid at al., 2015), 4min intervals with 2min rest. Almost half of the 4min work interval is fuelled with high fat ox
Two notes on the previous graphs:
- they’ve observed this elevated fat ox repsonse after these all out efforts in for more than 2 hours after the efforts
- it does not have to be an all-out. You have to bring yourself into an oxygen debt/defcitit (never know what is what)
Finally, all this quest for elevated fat ox rates during training may not be so important in the end. There is actually not that much evidence that an acute increase in fat ox actually yields to chronic adapations for more fat ox. Just moving irrespective of actual fat ox may be a sufficient stimulus. But as I’ve said, there is not much data out there. Especially not for the well trained population.
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Can you swap in Baxter or Coliseum? I really disliked the z2 workouts with 15min ‘intervals’ when I started using TR and much preferred Baxter and similar workouts because the power targets change every 3min at a minimum.
Eventually I started to prefer the longer steady-state intervals and would switch back and forth based on my mood and attention span.
I ended up having a lot of thoughts about your statement, which was helpful to me as I haven’t yet figured out all of the ins-outs of AT. But still something about it and perhaps some unintended assumptions behind it didn’t feel right to me. I am training my body, not Trainerroad’s ML models. If they really wanted to train their models, they would be listening for whether or not an athlete performed the workout at a different intensity than prescribed + how they reported that felt to them. (And maybe they secretly do?) But I digress.
My thought process is as follows: Let’s use VO2 as an easy example. A VO2 workout should feel hard, not moderate. Conversely, I shouldn’t be struggling to keep the wattage 1 minute into the interval. It is basically about pacing yourself over 4-5 minutes as hard as you can go, which given the amount of time, should automagically put you at your real VO2, given the context of the workout - i.e. how much rest between sets and how many sets you have left. These types of efforts are very simple! You don’t even need a trainer for them - just the right sized hill, or flat road with some big gears. That’s why they’re so boring on the trainer. And that’s ok with me - and another digression - I still find TR valuable even if my workouts don’t have a thousand different steps at a thousand different intensities. I’m excited with where AT will go in the future, as I’m sure it is just in its infancy.
For sure, completing intervals based on your FTP test/ERG is a good way to go if you are new to training. After years of training you know what a VO2 or threshold effort feels like. If you just do what the trainer/ERG tells you without listening to your body, it’s really easy to be in a different zone than was intended for that workout due to the fact that your FTP changes on an almost daily basis. Maybe one day AT will perfectly take the place of knowing your own body. But it would be sad for you to not learn your own body.
TLDR:
At this early stage using the system, I know my body better than AT does. I know AT will come around soon. But the first week of my training plan, VO2 felt like sweet spot!
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Hi, yeah I bumped it up to a strong zone 2 (5 zone model) after I had recovered for about 2-3 minutes. Unfortunately my HRM gave up the ghost last week so couldn’t track that but on RPE it felt easy.
I’m in a strange position right now in that I’m coming back from a period of inconsistent time on the bike. I have normally bounced back quite quickly and starting to feel that bounce back again but will continue with this 6 week plan and retest to see if there has been some improvement.
As mentioned I do aim to get in a longer gravel ride although didn’t manage that last week. Even if the volume and TSS is currently quite low it’s about getting back into that riding / training rhythm, after this block I will assess what the next steps should be.
I understand what you are saying, but I don’t think the two are in conflict. Understanding how AT works will just help you achieve what you want faster.
You can work within AT to achieve what you want. Rather than increasing the intensity (i. e. temporarily bumping up your FTP), you should select an alternate workout. For example, rather than doing 6 x 2 minutes at 120 % you could select one that has you do 9 x 2 minutes at 122 % FTP. You of course have to gauge very carefully how much you can do and not bite off more than you can chew.
That will level up your VO2 progression level, and this will tell AT to choose harder workouts in the future. By nature, though, AT is somewhat conservative. This may not be ideal to get the last few percent out of experienced athletes, but it will protect less experienced athletes from burning themselves out. I found, thought, that after overriding AT when it made sense and adding a season’s worth of training data into it, the outcome is very sensible actually.
I am not quite sure why AT no longer gives you appropriate credit for what the TR team called super passes. I reckon that most users use erg mode, and then you can achieve superpasses by increasing the intensity. I am using my trainer in resistance mode and previously had a dumb wheel-off fluid trainer. So that would actually work for me.
PS I used to do hill repeat VO2 max intervals before doing TR. I didn’t have a power meter or even a heart rate strap. The only way to tell how I did was segment times and feel. But outdoors workouts were structured differently for me, I’d usually be limited by total time. Others who have more time, I heard, often do them until their average power (or time) for one hill climb goes below a certain threshold. That’s quite different from power based intervals. Yes, the first few might be easy and you could go harder, but the point is to repeat them often enough.
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I also use heart rate to gauge my efforts on endurance rides, but that’s more a matter of convenience. Power can fluctuate wildly and usually it pays off to preserve momentum instead of religiously sticking to a power target.
In my experience, such simple formulas are completely useless for individuals. Even just looking at me, my heart rate at endurance power depends crucially on my training status. When I am trained, it is quite a bit lower, be it at the same power or same RPE.
What is more, when I am not well-trained, I have a significant heart rate creep over time, i. e. my heart rate will increase over time on average even if I keep the power average roughly the same. Later in the season the slope will be much shallower.
I would rather use my informed judgement here than any attempt by a simple-looking formula.
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Back in summer I did the VO2max intervals in a similar manner. They were actually 2min and 4min intervals that I did on a newly resurfaced quiet road close to home. I found I was soon able to pace things really quite accurately - I’d start by a particular telegraph pole and would finish each interval within a bike length or two until maybe the last two or three (out of twelve) when I’d be 30-50 metres short.
I did the threshold intervals in a similar manner on a long hill, again I was generally within a few seconds at my intermediate checkpoints and at the top.
I thought this but @SeanHurley corrected me in that the system does do this - see this thread - https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/riding-above-the-planned-power-with-adaptive-training/66984/5 but you won’t get “credits” for power zones that you move into.
@dirt_cruzer The early VO2max workouts in a plan have always been “easy” in terms of actual VO2max intensity (this is assuming that the FTP you are using in TR is reasonably accurate and you don’t have it set at 200W when it should be 250W), the new plans made things easier “to start with”, once AT gets a feel for how you perform you should see the difficulty ramp up. I felt the same with the old static plans, completed them easily. Then about four months in I hit a wall 
the workouts suddenly felt really, really hard and I began failing the occasional workout. That was on the Low Volume plans. AT is conservative and aims to prevent that burnout. Also I suspect that AT takes into account any races/events you’ve added - not much point peaking now for a race in July?
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I don’t agree you can call them ‘completely useless for individuals.’ It is actually taking some individuality into account.
IMO This proves exactly why such formulas, percentages heart rate reserve, are at times so useful. It informs how hard your body is finding the work under given circumstances. It is not endurance power if heart rate is getting close or you to LT2 levels (or above) irrespective of the power being produced… the body has no idea about power (directly). It does know how hard your heart and respiratory system is working for a given output. The output itself isn’t doesn’t dictate the training zone and therefore training response, although for most people it’s a good enough approximation for efforts below LT2 (cue the infamous graph… lol)
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Power at VO2max doesn’t scale at all well with FTP for a very large number of athletes, hence all the discussion on the Podcast and forums for years about individual adjustments, AT given time seeks to solve this problem. For some it might be 108% of FTP and others 125% taking extreme examples.
Personally I would almost totally forget about percentages of FTP for VO2max intervals.
If you don’t know what you can do for a set of intervals maybe use %FTP as a ‘starting’ guide. Assuming they are not short intervals (micro-intervals), where you can fudge the workout by using your anaerobic contribution, just go maximum across all intervals with as little variability as possible between each interval.
Other software and coaches solve the problem by looking the individuals power duration curve, etc.
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Pretty much agree with you. VO2max like most things is a case of closing in on your capabilities for the required duration. Until you’ve done a few you don’t really know what you are capable of, probably a good reason not to use ERG mode on the trainer for them. Just hit them as hard as you can. If you can hang on for the duration then all’s good. If you can do so for the entire set then even better.
When I was doing the 2min and 4min intervals outdoors it was on a varying slope, it went something like: 1% up to 4% for the first half (2min turn round) then flat then a short 5% ramp then flat. So it needed a bit of concentration to try and keep the power reasonably even over the terrain. I just aimed for an average power of what I thought I could sustain over the 12 intervals. Given that I got it right for the first ten I probably wasn’t far off.
Endurance stuff on the plans - just stick at a pace at which you can hold a comfortable conversation. Just been out for today’s workout where I did exactly that. One or two ramps that were steeper and it was awkward to keep the power down and a few descents where you just accept the rest. Two hours of chatty riding - not that there was anyone to listen to me 
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They are really boring! 
Most of the time I opt for the outside version of these rides unless the weather is bad.
But then, I noticed that some of these workouts have instructions to make them more interesting, like pedal drills and aero positioning exercises. I found the pedal drills to be really helpful.
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Cool! Thanks for linking to that reply from the TR team. Yeah, I would have assumed that they would eventually incorporate the avg or NP for the interval that you did vs. what the workout prescribed and adapt accordingly.
I should update that after 3 weeks, and doing the first couple threshold/vo2 workouts to how I felt rather than what my low (for me) FTP and initial adaptation levels prescribed, AT has bumped my VO2 and threshold adaptation numbers up from 1 and 1 to 6.5 and 5.9 respectively, and I am back to performing the intervals with the ERG and they are starting to feel just right. Adaptive training is magical! 
My goal wasn’t to go all out on VO2 max efforts as my A race is quite a ways out, but I also didn’t want the power level to be so low that I was actually doing a sweet spot workout in a polarized plan.
I’m also enjoying the easy Z1/2 rides, and making a real point to keep them easy. That is also why I don’t think adjusting my FTP upward was a good idea. I will go out on a limb and say that these low intensity workouts are the most important part, and the real secret sauce of the polarized distribution model.
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Yes, I’m aware of the option to choose a different workout and that’s cool. I guess my point is more that I don’t know what my body is up to until I start riding. Pre-selecting a different workout is a different thing than going by feel.
Anyway, it seems AT has done the things it was meant to do! It has put me at levels that are accurate to where I’m at. I’m pretty happy with it! See my other reply.
I have no idea what “super passes” or “credits” are 
Your reward for being able to do work is… more work! Haha. For me the point isn’t the glory of achieving a number, but doing appropriate work towards the goal of getting faster without burning out.
Yes, agreed, some VO2 workouts are intentionally about getting you to that failure point, and you barely even need to have anything but a timer to do them!
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Just to understand: so you paced them to hit roughly equal times? Or did you do all-out efforts? Back then I just did all-out efforts, going as hard as I could, pacing correctly for the duration of the climb.
You are right that my statement was too black-and-white: yes, you can use these formulas to ball park your heart rate zones and that can be useful. What I was thinking of were various competing formulas that give you slightly different answers for the heart rate zones. And that I think you use heart rate numbers with the same precision as power numbers.
By far the most useful heart rate zone is endurance, but that is precisely because for endurance riding hitting precise power targets isn’t as important as for sweet spot, threshold and VO2max. So yeah, you have a point.
Most useful HR zone for me, from the beginning, has been threshold 
Can you explain?
For me threshold heart rate is pretty useless. On a power PR from this year, I did 117 % FTP for 7 minutes. My average heart rate was 159, at the lower end of what I’d usually consider my heart rate at threshold (157–163 bpm).
The variation is too big to use heart rate. I’d rather pace by feel if I can’t use power.
that sounds like what happens to me when a fitness bump happens.
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A bit of both. I was aiming for even times at the hardest effort I could sustain across all intervals if that makes sense. So I had to adjust the first interval to what I thought I could still achieve ten intervals later. I wasn’t riding to the top of the climb but turning at X minutes.
If the indoor target was 330W then outdoors you’ll have a range of something like 315-345W (can’t remember the exact percentages now but it’s good enough to go with). I’d do a rolling start with a couple of pedal strokes up at the 600W range to build up speed then settle in at what power I thought I could do and try to hold that. At the end of the interval I’d have just enough time to turn, ride/coast down to the start and repeat, from memory the sets were equal effort and rest. Each interval was probably 95% of max effort rather than 99-100%
If I’d been doing each interval “all out” then personally I’d want a much longer recovery period between each to ensure I could do them all equally well. I think it was @WindWarrior who characterised it as pushing “ability” vs pushing “capability” (might have got the individual and the terms wrong), i.e. true all out is trying to push your ability or limit while consistent “really hard” is trying to increase your repeat capability.
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