one more “Epic” long course to include a bucket list Tour De France climb 
That is the Alpe D’Huez long course, their website doesn’t load for me, but is meant to be http://alpetriathlon.com/en
You get to ride three mountain passes: the Alpe du Grand Serre (1375 m), the Col d’Ornon (1371 m) and the climb up to Alpe d’Huez itself with its 21 switching bends
Thank you for talking about triathlon again and if @Jonathan @Nate_Pearson @chad all do a triathlon I think that would be great.
What do you think about bumping up the year to 2020 and doing a 70.3?
You can still do a full IM in 2021?
I think your experiences for a 70.3 could have a broader relevance to more listeners.
I am looking forward to more content and guests on triathlon, running, and swimming.
Keep up the great work on all fronts.
Jonathan is targeting MTB nationals in 2020 and I’m targeting cat 2 stage races.
2021 is going to be cape epic for me. There might be time later in the year but it’s hard with fall travel.
@chad
I was intrigued by the results of that paper by
Rønnestad & Hansen… the thing that was by far the most striking to me about the training protocols wasn’t so much he use of 1-2 week blocks of HIT/MIT, but the massive LIT blocks the guy was doing usually every 6-10 weeks. I think this is likely to be the most significant difference between the intervention in the paper and his prior training, which apparently topped out at 13hr/wk… and probably the main difference from the training of almost all amateur endurance athletes.
Most training weeks that were Recovery, MIT or HIT were 8-12 hours, but there were several 20-30 hour LIT weeks in there that shift the averages quite a lot for load & distribution. On 2 occasions, these were backed up to give over 50 hours in 2 weeks.
Is this what most amateurs are missing from their training? Many are consistently using HIT/MIT sessions, but few have the time for the huge hours. The huge time commitment of this kind of block probably puts a lot of us off ever entertaining that kind of schedule, with the perception being that you have to be putting that volume in consistently for it to be worthwhile.
However if it was known that dropping in occasional, isolated huge training weeks over a long period could unlock a new level of performance, then squeezing it in once every 10 weeks or so might be a sacrifice that more of us may be inclined to make.
RESULTS: Five participants (3 males, 2 females) were excluded from the analysis due to the GPS watch malfunctioning, not reaching a true max, or dropping out of the study. The remaining 18 participants were 27.61 ± 7.94 years old, had a height of 172.28 ± 5.23 cm, and weighed 75.44 ± 12.67 kg. A significant difference was found between measured VO2max (52.41 ± 8.61 ml/kg/min) and estimated VO2max (49.33 ± 4.88 ml/kg/min) from the GPS sports watch.
CONCLUSIONS: The GPS sports watch was not a valid estimate of VO2max. Variability of HR could have potentially influenced the results from the GPS watch.
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4196/presentation/8449
Just looking at the Couzens athlete VO2max case study & noting how this athlete’s training changed. The training load went from ~10.5 to 11 hours a week to a little over 20 hours a week. Of that 20 hours, about 15 were in either ‘aerobic’ or ‘easy’ zones. The article itself indicated 65%-80% max heart rate was ‘easy aerobic’ work. So I’m guessing the ‘aerobic’ zone was LT1 or lower and the ‘easy’ zone was…well, less than that but more than recovery.
That’s 2 hours a day, 7 days a week of ‘easy aerobic’. In addition to a couple hours of tempo and an hour of threshold work. That would be a big time commitment for the average work-a-day athlete! Not impossible but just a big commitment over the course of 36 months.
Um. 49.33 +/- 4.88 vs 52.41 +/- 8.61 doesn’t look like a ‘significant’ difference to me? It’s within the standard deviation. It might depend on the model I guess?
Was it leaning towards an overestimation of VO2max by the watches? Or was it all over the place?
The estimate of my Garmin is way too high compared with lab results.
@splash…I dunno. p<0.05, I guess. I don’t have the actual data & probably couldn’t summon the rigor to do the t-test if I did have the data. 
But, in general, MOST VO2max estimations tend to underestimate…or at least that is my recollection. So I’m not surprised. On the other hand it does please me to think that the VO2max Garmin tells me might be an underestimate. Maybe my motives aren’t pure.
How is your 5h power project coming along, @Brennus?
I’m only three batteries and a motor away from my goal. I can honestly say success is quite literally within my grasp but I’m exploring more traditional methods first.
Splash: it’s the standard error of the difference that matters to significance, not the standard deviations of the individual samples. Since VO2max and estimated VO2max are presumably quite highly correlated, the SE of the difference will be much less than the SD of the individual samples.
I admit my statistics are terribly rusty. It just isn’t very obvious from their data. I’m with Brennus though, happy if the estimates are in general lower than the lab data…
Oh, my god. I’m way late to the party (about 2 weeks behind on the podcast, gulp) but I just got to the bit where they are talking about doing a full IM on 6 months training. I am so keen to hear this!
As a triathlete/cyclist, I can’t wait to hear their insights on running and swimming, especially when they get some experts in to critique their form. I hope we can get some videos of that, too! Super keen!
I have also wondered about this question, intensity vs dwell-time for VO2 gains. Which is more useful in spurring VO2 improvements.
Anyone got a link to the video someone did on tips for fitting a race number? I think @Jonathan might have had it on his instagram story and involved using bolts I think but I forgot to go back and watch full video and now can’t find it again.
Ignore me, found it: Tech Tips - Number Plate Install - YouTube
I should have been more clear in my previous message. For example:
30s Billat-style intervals vs classic 3-5min VO2 intervals vs Seiler-style 4x8min
Which one elicits the most robust adaptations? 30s allows you to do more work and thus accumulate more time/volume at VO2. But does that actually elicit a greater response. It might give you some metabolic adaptations. But are the intervals long enough to really drive large changes in VO2max? On the other end, are the 8min intervals intense enough?
So is accumulated time vs intensity as the main catalyst for increasing VO2max?
I must confess to feeling mildly cynical about that article. Why analyse the workouts using MPA? Why is that the most relevant metric? After all, it’s only the end of an algorithm that might not even have robust data at the beginning. You could equally well analyse the workouts by looking at time above 90% vo2 max. But MPA is Xert’s invention, so naturally they’ll push that.
For an article that refers to a lot of academic studies, the phrase “The high energy system is best trained by repeatedly drawing down MPA” really needs a “[citation needed]” after it.
This. I’ve yet to see any studies that looked at adaptations from depleting W’, FRC, MPA, etc to a specific level.
Not saying that it might not be a good way to train anaerobic power, just that there isn’t any evidence behind it.
