I see this is the new “how to make friends and influence people” thread 
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Well honestly I made it because I did 3 straight hours at 87% plus another hour of zone 2, and I started thinking “hmm maybe my ftp is set too low because I’m not sure it should be possible”. But it appears maybe 3 hours is good but not unexpected. FWIW, I’m never doing that again unless I have to in a race. Way too much for my old man recovery ability to deal with lol.
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I’m with you on that. I’ve done 60-90min in the SweetSpot IF a couple times, and it’s mentally awful. After 45minutes, it’s a bit of “this hurts, but not that much,” and 15 and 30minutes later it’s “well this is still hurting, but I can keep going…”, etc.
That’s a really good point that specifically addresses the reason for some lulls in a power curve. I was looing at mine today and noticing my recent 8min and 20min bests are almost the same. 
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i mean, if you want to talk about training that was a waste of time, i can go on at length about my use of adaptive training to train for CX in 2021 vs how I’ve been able to push my training ahead on my own since then
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Yeah you have to take TR with a grain of salt, it honestly has no idea what it is really preparing you for, like in my case it just thinks I have a 350TSS race in april but it has no idea what the specific efforts are or anything like that. The general principal of having this highest threshold possible is a solid paradigm but the specificity is a big low hanging fruit that only you (at this time) can really prepare for. Maybe in the future I can upload other rider’s strava files of the event or the parcours and TR will be able to break that down into the kind of durations necessary, but for now that is on you.
I’m really glad to hear that you internalized the process and went out on your own that is what it’s all about.
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What’s wrong with Coggan’s adaptations from different zones chart? It may be old, but I haven’t seen anything that says it isn’t correct. Maybe you can post some of that reading list, I’d be interested to improve my understanding.
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These things are always somewhat flawed and up for debate when trying to make buckets out of things sitting on a continuum, but it helps put some structure around it. Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I don’t see anything glaring that is now out of date on that chart. But I’m not an expert, it’s just a hobby for me. What specifically do you take issue with on that chart besides it’s age?
Plenty has changed in recent decades, but much more has stayed the same when talking about sports science and the understanding of how adaptations happen. If it’s bad practice to reference 20+ year old studies on sports physiology, then all the experts doing this for a living must be doing it wrong. I still see studies from the 70’s and 80’s referenced. I’d actually consider anything from this century to be relatively current. That doesn’t mean the old study is right, but I’d be more likely to trust a somewhat dated study that has been referenced for decades vs. a brand new study that’s often trying to prove out the shiny new object/approach.
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I think the chart drastically underestimates the benefits of zone 1/2, especially for fatigue resistance / durability and overall endurance. It also (intentionally) ignores high volume as a training stimulus, and downplays the negative consequences of (too much) high intensity work. IMO it just shows a lot of bias towards his own research, and attempts to convince the time-crunched athlete they can get just as fast or faster by doing a ton of sweet spot without any negative effects.
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Lets say all of the x’s in his chart are totally correct the trend still pushes athletes in the opposite direction of SST work when they have high volume. IE towards more z1/z2 work. The reason is that after a certain amount of TSS per week the athlete doesn’t need more, they need less, this is because they are already pushing the limits of TSS by doing 5h z1/z2 rides a lot give or take in base.
In theory they can top up their TSS with sweetspot work like how a lower volume rider can when they miss a session is still valid… but that number is basically 0 when riding big hours during a fat base period.
Some of the words of Jonathan from TR’s interview the other day on nero that stood out was this idea that not all TSS is created equal, some leaves you feeling more wrecked than others for the same TSS. In light of that SST stuff is not really conducive to this focus in base of doing a crap ton of aerobic work and “escaping” from TSS limitations per week by making it easy and breezy.
The thing you gotta keep in mind is also if zones are set correctly, the guy above who claims to have been doing the “perfect” TTE + FTP testing calls z2 50-65% by RPE, whereas I do my z2 work at 0.72-0.77 for an upper z2 session right around LT1.
And that is the other element of it, if you have a high LT1 from constant aerobic stimulus over a long time then you have higher power in z2 and a higher calorie requirement so you have to worry about your body state response to the TSS to maintain your ability to feast… and at the end of the day anyone who has been there knows you come out of a beauty day aerobic ride feeling like a king and you come out of SST rides feeling usually not as euphoric, that all adds up. mechanistically it is explained by not all TSS being created equal and stimulus aerobically being able to “escape” from TSS with sufficient levels of easy breezy riding.
I’ve been lurking a lot on quinn simmon’s strava recently, lot of 5-6h rides, lots of calories burned, lots of hard efforts in key ranges or mapped to features on the road, not any sweetspot blocks. It’s a different sport if you go after the metabolic flexibility model .
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The guy is as mental as his training. He has world class numbers but can’t get out of his own way. He should be a classics beast but fails to deliver. He couldn’t even race last year because of overtraining. And now he’s back at it doing 600-700 mile weeks with crazy 5 hour rides at 380w NP. I hope he gets sick two weeks before his first big race so he actually recovers and can smash everyone.
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@hubcyclist I’d like to hear more about your experience with TR and your CX racing! I’m following a TR CX plan for this fall.
He dropped the peloton in stage 2 of tour down under and almost held off the whole IPT sprint train on his own. He is definitely nuts though, I’ve met him can confirm.
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eh, not a lot to say, I was in on the early batch of adaptive training in 2021. I did base build specialty with just about 100% compliance (there may have been a workout or two I struggled on). While it was good for my ego to have workouts I was able to accomplish, reviewing in hindsight I didn’t actually get any fitter and I was pretty mediocre in the races I did. The most telling thing is comparing my power curve from that year vs stuff I’ve been doing as of late. I had already been using TR for 4 years before I did adaptive training in 2021, so I wasn’t a novice. But since ditching TR and self-coaching (and now I’m coaching a few people myself) I’ve been able to improve overall in several respects. I haven’t raced a ton as of late, but the one race I did in 2024 I finished 8th, so I definitely have more potential now than I feel I did with TR, at least when it comes to the preparation
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Usually can do 30-70min off the shelf.
If I can’t do 90% up Alpe du Zwift (~50-55min) without dying then my FTP is set too high, as I should be able to do that at 100% FTP. My TTE @ FTP is on the short side at ~40-45min though.
This is probably true for most people who have been training for more than a year or two.
Never tried to do more than a ~75min long single effort as not useful for my type of riding.
I’ll do 3+ hour long SS sessions indoors or outdoors though, but these are usually based off of multiple 20-30min efforts. So like 5x20 or 5x30 or something. I find these useful for ultras.
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1hr53m
From my Power Records although that was Tallac +4, nearly five years ago now
Man now you’ve got me looking through my records 2020 was way the best year for bike power. So depressing!
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Did you train differently then??
I worked differently! I didn’t work half the year and the world was in lockdown…
A lot of virtual racing as well, I suppose. I only usually race a couple of times a year.
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No I haven’t, I stopped my TR sub a couple of years back. But based on my understanding of things I’d say there are a few areas of difference a) I’m willing to do pure vo2 max blocks, something TR won’t do b) I don’t do any short “vo2” intervals, 30/30s at 120% or 1-2min vo2 workouts. If I’m doing 30/30s they would be maximal efforts as part of anaerobic capacity building and 1-2min stuff would similarly be more anaerobic power development. c) I don’t use fixed percentages for anything, I for people who primarily try and do TR as much by the book as they can (as I did) there’s actually very little opportunity to make real breakthroughs in the power curve. At the same time, and I’ve gone on about this in other threads, my 4min power, for example, is quite different relative to my FTP than some people I know, using a one size fits all workout with set % can limit some and overestimate others, and I don’t believe the solution is to do a less effective lower progression level version. Anyhow, those are just a few of the sticking points, I’m sure if I thought about it more there’d be more
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