53 y/o male, occasional triathlete and occasional mountain bike racer, wannabe gravel fondo participant, years ago was a Cat4 on the road. Most training is on Zwift these days. After a few months of no riding, I’m back to training on Zwift with the goal of getting ‘stronger.’ Current FTP is 205. Max HR is 179.
I’ve sort of settled on two Zone 2 rides (hour to 1.5 for each ride) and two Zwift races a week. I find the Zwift racing (just in Cat D) is motivating.
My question is just how sub-optimal are the Zwift races. I’ve included some Interval.ICU screenshots of recent races. Races seem to be mostly Z4 on HR (using 7 zone model) with incursions into Z5 and Z6 and a smidge of Z7. Looking at power, it’s a everything from Z2 to Z6.
Given I’m in the middle of the pack of D riders, often I’m working fairly hard just to stay in the pack and every climb is true fight to stay with the pack (or a fight to at least stay with someone as we get dropped.)
While I’ve heard Zwift races are pretty sub-optimal, to my untrained eye, these races seem more intense than the Vo2max interval sessions I’ve done in the past.
I’m wondering how much a difference would it make to drop one race for a proper structured VO2max session. I dont have enough knowledge to know how much, if any, I’m leaving on the table by not doing proper interval work.
Hopefully you can make sense of the screenshots below. I wasn’t able to organize them in order.
Yeah, I knew I was being vague with the goal of being ‘stronger’ in quotes. Sorry about that. Still being vague, but I want to bump up my FTP and bump up my VO2max. (After being off the bike a bit, I’ve got room to improve.)
Ultimate goal - find a flat Cat 5 mens road race (not crit) and be able to hang. Would need to get my FTP up significantly. I do realize that I’d have to put in a lot more hours (and also really dial in my training) to get it to where it would need to be to race on the road again. At best I think I can chip away and make small gains at the current 5-6 hours a week I’m at now.
In my experience, most Zwift races aren’t good replacements for focused interval work, but are often better fitness training compared to racing in real life or smashing group rides. And they can be a fun way to get some race-specific training in.
My general training approach is to be disciplined with my 2 structured interval sessions per week. Do them rested and don’t try to fit them into a group ride or zwift ride where you’ll be forced into random efforts. But then I give myself a 3rd “hardish” day each week to have fun and smash. Typically Saturday. Might be a group ride, might be an outside race, might be long solo effort, and it might be Zwift. I don’t do actual Zwift races too often (mostly because most are really short) but I’ll do the Saturday AM BMTR group ride which a pretty decent proxy for a 100 mile gravel race (not as surgy, but hours of deliberate pedaling).
Just try to find a zwift ride/race that closely approximates the events you are training for. It doesn’t need to be a perfect match, but you can often race/ride in a certain way that helps mimic a real life race effort (and it’s a great time to try “dumb” race tactics). I think the fun smash days are important. In addition to keeping you mentally fresh and excited about the bike, you are getting some good race-specific efforts in that you may not get in structured training. Holding onto a wheel for dear life on a climb or bridging a gap in Zwift can be very similar to real life race efforts and can be great mental and physical training. Not the same as structure, but brings some additional things to the table.
In that case, yeah it’s holding you back some. Essentially what you’re doing is the same as any other rider who only does hard group rides and a couple of endurance rides.
Doing hard stuff doesn’t make your VO2max go up. Riding with time in Zones 5/6/7 doesn’t make VO2max go up. What it does is caps out your ability to generate relatively higher power by burning sugar, and once that’s gone, it’s gone. Problem is, your improvement in anaerobic capacity is pretty well capped. Maybe you can get by with that?
but if you’re serious about improving, specifically FTP, you’re going to want to incorporate some structure before long.
Doesn’t mean that’s all you ever have to do, but you’re gonna have to do it especially being a lower volume rider.
VO2max training is a different animal. When most people think they’re training VO2max, what they’re probably training is maximum aerobic power (or even anaerobic capacity in some cases), meaning their ability to put out high powers repeatedly for longer durations or for 3-8 min intervals. It’s a valid way to train for some time…
… but ultimately you need aerobic improvements which means generating power aerobically for long periods of time. The events you want to do are primarily aerobic, so you should train that way primarily.
If I were you, I’d start by subbing one of my Zwift races with an interval set. Focus on sub-threshold work and extend your time there. Then do a Zwift race for your other intense session. You’ll make some progress that way, and you’ll still have some fun with it. When you want to get more serious about it, incorporate more structure and drop the Zwift races to be just occasional “desserts”. For now though, have fun with it. Nothing wrong with that.
