When following a plan, the workout is defined first, then an outside ride attempts to match to it. My question is doing this process in reverse.
Most TR plans ignore anaerobic, but I often do highly anaerobic rides on single track, which are intense compared to TR workouts indoors.
I know there’s functionality not released yet to take these rides into account in progression levels. With current functionality one process that makes sense to do this manually is to:
look at the zones, duration and Intensity of the ride
The options are limited for anaerobic, and because of the low workout levels of these workouts, secondary adaptations to VO2 are unlikely. Everyone doing SSB etc seems to have low PL’s for Anaerobic at 1.0.
The VO2 approach would be to focus on associate this outside ride with a VO2 workout, to maximise relevance with the progression levels active within the plan.
Combining the anaerobic and VO2 ‘time in zone’ would mean choosing a VO2 workout to associate this outside ride with.
The time in zones (VO2 and over) is 27% of 90 minutes; 22 minutes. With this logic, I should match with a workout with approximately 22 minutes of time in VO2 zone. This produces vastly different adaptations, ie it actually triggers adaptations in VO2!
I associated some of my Zone 3 paceline rides with a workout of similar duration and IF. Some times I filtered it further to a similarish profile. I erred hopefully on the cautious side by just selecting workouts that were ‘achievable’ just to stop my Tempo PLs degrading. The Paceline rides are maybe improving me but I decided that associating them to a ‘productive’ or ‘stretch’ workout could possibly lead to overtraining.
refreshing this topic since a few things have changed in AT since the last post.
Personally, i do all of my interval work indoors and do zone2 time outdoors. I am trying to think of the best way to find the correct workout to associate.
I am thinking i should look at total time, less any coasting, then lining up IF and maybe TSS. For example, i had a 2:30 ride with about 20min of coasting/waiting at lights, etc, with an IF of .70 and NP right in the middle of z2. So i am thinking of finding a 2hr endurance workout with a similar IF…Perkins-1 in this case…does that seem right or are people doing it differently? This is a longer ride for me, so should i consider something from the “Productive” category or just keep it as “Achievable”?
Good question. I have been doing the three workouts almost exclusively on the trainer and adding a 3 to 4 hour endurance ride on Sundays. I haven’t been trying to associate the outdoor rides with anything because the only endurance rides I have seen on the LV plan are during the rest weeks (never mind that the Sunday ride is about enjoying a bike ride rather than listening to the electronic taskmaster). I suppose these outdoor rides could boost my PL to a 10 for endurance, but seems like it would be pointless given that the endurance rides during the recovery week are either 60 or 90 minutes.
I like that idea. You’ve got a good point - if its just z2 and im not trying to do any interval sets, it probably doesnt matter since it wont impact my >z2 training on AT. I guess worst case, if i know ill be cooked for a following workout, ill put a matched ride in there so AT doesnt freak out when i pick an easier alternative…gotta conform to the machines!
