Iñigo San Millán training model

How do you determine what is a weakness?. H

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Maybe the liver converts fat into carbohydrate, which is then used by muscle? :innocent:

What was your FTP at the time of this test? This is pretty common among well trained athletes. Also very common is a range of maximal fat oxidation work rate and not a clean, neat peak.

I agree, in my personal experience progressive overload is key for progress when already reasonably fit and “just riding” does not work (maybe at ~12 hrs my volume is not high enough?).
For the last two seasons, when I start riding often outdoors starting March/April, I basically barely improve until September/October when I start indoor training. Probably because I am just riding, no intervals, just going hard when I see fit, occasional gran fondo/race, and hard Tueasday Chaingang. I plateau but I have fun.
On the other hand my biggest gains are over the winter, when I dose and measure the strain I put my body through, and I try to increase TiZ or intensity week over week.

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Yeah, I reckon you’d need upwards of 20 hour per week to make that work. And then have the right terrain, some shorter hills that’ll make you do over-threshold efforts for example. I’d think you end up with some sort of polarised intensity distribution.

And yes, I also think the mindset is important - you must want to push yourself and improve, not just ride around, ir, as @sryke says, it’s too easy to avoid working on weaknesses.

Now where so I get the 30h a week to test this theory…

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I don’t really know. Xert had my TP at 267W after a breakthrough on an 8 mile TT. However it was measured on a single sided crank PM and I’ve since found out I currently have a consistent 58/42 L/R leg power imbalance. Also the test was done on a Wattbike so who knows how the power levels compare between the two. I do know I had just stopped a 2/3 year low carb experiment during which time I was riding say 14-20 hours a week consisting of 1 or 2, 3 to 4 hour hard (for me at least) group rides. The rest was solo or social riding mostly Z1 and 2. For what its worth Intervals.icu has me categorised as a Sagan type rider.

I basically spent this year doing long endurance/tempo rides and then on Sundays I’d throw some proper climbing into a 5-6hr ride. I peaked at 20hrs/week, all done outside. As a result I now have fantastic fatigue resistance. I can ride all day, every day but I have no snap. I measure my performance on how quickly I can climb(VAM), and basically the difference between a 10min or 60min climb is minimal(not in a good way). That’s what I’ll be trying to improve with some more structured intervals.

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I would be interested to see the IF of those rides and to compare them over the course of a year. If you’re at the same, or nearly the same, IF on every ride then what you describe is to be expected. I’m a big a fan of seasonally, or even event focused, structured training. Dropping in the intervals after an endurance cycle seems to be magic for me.

Enjoy those intervals because it sounds like you earned them :smile: . Recover well! Be Well and Ride On!

This forum is so disappointing sometimes…

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Those of you who have lactate devices and lances, where did you get them from and for how much? I’m in Canada and haven’t had much luck googling, but the one quote I got was over $1000. Any help?

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No bite from me on this one.
Good effort though.
I respect the try :+1:

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Not at that rate.

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Massively enjoyed reading through this thread. From my personal experience, I seem to respond best to high volume zone 2 work. I have only been using power for a year, so in the past z2 rides have been on HR (which I think actually works just as well for steady rides).

A typical z2 ride would be 65-70% max as an average, trying to avoid letting HR drift above 75% max HR for too long (I live in a very punchy area (this is the easiest/flattest hill to get up when I head SW Baileys Hill - Bottom to Junction | Strava Ride Segment in Sevenoaks, United Kingdom).

For those that also do a lot of z2, what quality do you typically do? I know tempo is seen as the devil :stuck_out_tongue: by the Polarisers, but it also happens to be 100 mile TT race effort, so doing that as one of my hard efforts worked out well whilst prepping for that race.

This is my distribution since November last year. I try and do most of my rides in Z2 but get carried away sometimes on group rides.

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I am pondering choosing z2 vs tempo for high volume work myself. Does it make sense to work your glycolytic energy system very early if such adaptations can happen very fast and closer to the race date? What is the minimum required dose of lactate-generating work in the off-season? And in which form: tempo, threshold, anaerobic? How does one decide using metabolic and functional testing?

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1330 hours in one year :exploding_head:

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I’m retired. What else am I going to do - play golf?

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With that volume a lot of it has to be z2. I am sure there is huge variety here but 400-500 hours is about all Incan manage with work, etc. usually on the 400 side.

No, stick to cycling :smiley:

By the way, I still think that’s an impressive amount of hours!

My dad is retired too and people think he’s crazy when he occasionally does 2k+ kilometres a month for some Strava competitions :joy:

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