Ah, thanks. I couldn’t get it to come up on the US site for some reason.
Quite some week with almost 30h, probably prepping for the Vuelta later this month: Sepp Kuss
Sa: San Sebastian
Su: easy
Mo: easy
Tu: 4h, long climbing efforts, seeral sprint intervals with full recovery on first climb
Wed: 5h, 4x20min climbing efforts with 30s surges
Th: 7h endurance ride in the mountains
Fr: 1h, easy
Sa: 4h, sprint intervals/full recovery in the beginning. During the ride vo2max work.
Sun: 6h, several long climbing efforts as over-unders (with low cadence work). Probably below and above threshold
Mon: easy
Tu: 4h, sprint intervals; 2x climbing efforts at vo2max
as with all the other GT pros, work/intensity is done along the ride. They actually have quite some gaps between efforts/sets. Just mentioning because people of wonder if they should do 4x8’ with 2’ RI or 2.5’ RI. And wether this deviation from any “gold standard” would spoil any precious adaption.
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From most of the literature that I’ve read, rest timing is one of the least important things, with the exception of very specific types of work. My understanding as follows
Endurance, sweetspot, threshold work:
- 3-5 minutes for physiological recovery, but there is no real downside to extended the rest out a few extra minutes
Sustained supra-threshold work:
- Rest depends on the goals of the session.
VO2Max work:
- Sustained effort + time in zone operating at high percentages of VO2max is more important than 1:1 rest timing (this has been confirmed to me by some experts). The power needed might be lower than you think and changes throughout the workout.
Intensive Anaerobic/Sprint
- Rest should be complete in order to make the efforts fully maximal
Extensive Anaerobic/Sprint
- Rest timing matters because you have a specific objective, which is to stretch out efforts
I’m probably missing a few things here
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He does. Here’s a nice 3x20 @ FTP workout he did a while back.
https://www.strava.com/activities/2558997306/analysis/0/13935
He also seems to respect the easy ride. Talking 50% of FTP.
I’m really thrilled, as already pointed out in the Strava thread, I’ve upped my game w/r to Strava scraping. I can now extract entire weeks at once and evaluate rides quickly. Incredible how this helps with the data mining, you lose so much oversight when having to click from activity to activity (even though I have already semi-automated the process before).
My first conclusion from running several pros through it: they train much, much, much harder than I had thought initially. This is really apparent. I must correct my statement “pros just ride around (endurance, tempo) and get their intensity through racing”
Furthermore, as most know Strava applies some smoothing to the data. Whatever that might be. I apply a 5 sec smoothing to my charts. And suddenly all the sprint intervals show up. And pros do them a lot. A lot lot lot:
Here a Strava chart:
And with only 5s smoothing:
Would be interesting to know if these are intended they way Dan Lorang explained once.
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I think that’s the #1 conclusion we can all agree on.
Their hard would kill us and their easy would drive us crazy. Amateurs spend way too much time in No Man’s Land…mostly cuz it’s not our job to ride a bike!
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I don’t know. I think it also has to do with the higher ftp of the pros, that stretches the zones out. There is some sort of minimum amount of power you need to just ride around. (There is probably also a maximum, over which you get too fast for comfort with regards to traffic, corners etc.) This power zone is mostly set by riding at a ‘normal bike speed’, so maybe 15-20 mph or so. The power needed to ride at that speed is fairly similar for both pros and amateurs, maybe a little lower for pros due to better aero positions, better bikes, clothing etc. But for pros, this power zone sits in their ‘easy’ range, whereas most of us need to use a much higher percentage of our ftp to ride at that speed.
This ‘low ftp’ problem is even more obvious when people with a very low ftp try to ride hills - they often have to ride at threshold or above, just to keep the bike moving.
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I see, presumably, a lot of time spent in Endurance zones (<75% FTP).
(Not surprising since it’s Jan-May.)
And a lot of time, presumably, descending @0 watts.
An amateur’s/Weekend Warrior’s chart would most likely be a majority of Tempo – No Man’s Land.
potential FTP region added. Roundabout classical distribution
10% > FTP
20% between 0.75 x FTP and FTP
70% below 0.75 x FTP
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#chartmaster #speculationassassin 
It’s people like @sryke who are the icing on the TR forum cake. 
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Not necessarily training per se… Richie Porte and Cameron Wurf Everest the Col de la Madone. 
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now with a better charting library, output is actually a single html file with interactive charts (one can zoom in and so). Very easy to look at in a browser
January 2019 for a Giro stage winner. More a domestique for the mountains. First week had no activities.
I think I should remind you that “no mans land” is in reference to a HR response, and quite a narrow one actually. When talking about elites, many of them will have an LT1 around 80% of FTP, and otherwise very flat lactate curve until they go above threshold.
The no man’s land of zone 3 in the Norwegian system is only 82-87% of max HR.
Not sure how that will skew it down a bit, but could bump it up to about 80% as low intensity, which is right in line with other published data about intensity distribution of cyclists.
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Yep. “No Man’s Land” is, more or less, zone 3 in the 5-zone heart rate system, which is the upper range of zone 3 in a power-based system.
I would not claim to be elite, but my LTP in Xert aligns with what I would do at 80% of HR peak – or right at the top of the Norwegian system’s HR zone 2 (or Friel’s zone 2 as well). For me, that’s 83-85% of FTP, depending on fitness.
What makes for No Man’s Land depends on muscle type and lactate curve for the individual athlete.
Yes, professionals do a shit ton of duration below 70% of FTP – because that’s the only way you can manage 24 hours a week on the bike. Once you go down to 10-14 hours, the amount of low tempo a rider can positively respond to begins to go up…
Interesting take from Xert
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Apparently Pros now use e-bikes for easy days.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1UDMB3JvWB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Yup. Some teams even used them at the Tour on rest days. Why not!
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These are the cues I always keep looking for. Add the weight of a rider, one can get a decent understanding of how/at which intensity they train. And sometimes they even have the power zones enabled (which needs cross checking for plausibility)
