Last year I did my first Gran Fondo with powermeter Log In to TrainerRoad. I participated in the 28km/h group and it took around four hours. I just barely managed to stay with the group on the final punchy hills as the group mostly scattered.
I’m planning to participate this year too and hopefully try to stay with the 30km/h group. I was planning to do the lv Century plan before the event. Century plans are quite focused to sweet spot and I thought that would be fitting for the demands of the event. However, I now checked the my power profile and it’s mostly anaerobic 58 min and coasting. There is 7 minutes ss and 12 minutes of treshold. My FTP was probably set too low and should have been around 190 instead of 175. so that changes the tiz amounts a bit, but bot hugely.
Is it normal for the power to be so spiky? I guess, this is at least partly because of my low FTP which means that I have to go over FTP when the road points upward, but am I doing it wrong?
Even if I would manage to be a bit smoother I think it won’t be a sweetspot based effort. Should I maybe replace some workouts in the Century plan with workouts from Rolling Road Race?
I don’t think my body will be able to do the whole RRR plan and I still need to do some longer workouts so I can go for close to four hours.
Looking at the profile on Strava I’d say rolling roadrace is a better fit yes.
It’s not a long ride and there are no sustained efforts ,just (lots of) short 500m bumps.
I checked your calender and you don’t seem to have followed a plan up to this point though.
Mostly sweet spot rides but without TSS-progression or enough consistency, so jumping straight into a speciality plan might not be the best option in the long term.
From October to the end of the yea I followed the British Cycling’s intermediate base training plan quite well with some slight modifications. Just couldn’t do the sweet spot or tempo efforts on the longer weekend rides without losing my sleep.
Since January training consistency has been problematic. Have been experiencing some over reaching symptoms which combined with flues have hindered progression. The plan was originally to do in a polarized manner two high intensity efforts an one or two longer endurance rides a week.
I overtrained/burned out couple of years ago badly and it took around two years to be able to really do any serious cycling. I still have to be careful and I’m a bit afraid of doing too many high intensity sessions in a week. Actually even for sweet spot work I think the limit is twice a week and for VO2 and above maybe even not that. This makes following the TR plans to a letter hard.
Rolling road race looks too hard, but I could maybe try the cross-country olympic or marathon plans. Most likely doing some modifications when needed.
Would be interested to hear if someone has a similar background on tips how to get consistent training done and how to adapt to harder intervals?
Sorry to hear about your health problems.
Erring on the cautious side sounds like the right thing to do.
I didn’t recommend a plan in my previous post as well…I’m simply not qualified for it.
Everyone has to find their own personal balance and training load they can handle, but some things i’ve seen suggested here are :
splitting the workweeks into smaller blocks with more rest weeks.
3/1 for SS-base instead of 5/1 and even 2/1 for the other plans.
reducing the Vo2-max intervals down to 110-115%.
Not everyone can do 120% intervals without blowing up. And if it’s more repeatable you’ll end up spending more time in zone… which should bring about bigger gains.
Just be careful with pushing yourself, a solid aerobic base and fatigue resistance is much more important than people give it credit for.
I think I will experiment with two work weeks and one week for recovery that might help. Just requires some determination as more work feels initially always better.
Does anyone have a comment on the power profile and zone distribution? Does it look normal or should I be doing something differently to have it more steady without so many anaerobic surges?
But I’d suggest aiming to start each climb at the front of the group, and then slowly drift back towards the back of the bunch. This will allow you to keep in contact with the group, but perhaps knock 5% off the effort required on the climbs, which will make a big difference to how many matches you have left towards the end of the ride.
