Ok, thx. Maybe try it sometimes. But still not clear what would be the difference between LBP and LT1? Isn’t this suppose to be the same? (But different testing)…
Cardiac drift is a fact of life. It will be greater at higher intensities and lesser when you’re more fit, but that’s about all that can be reliably said.
Two different ways of quantifying muscular metabolic fitness, but yielding significantly different absolute values for “threshold” (I e., LBP >> LT1).
@stino77 It’s higher. Between LT1 and LT2
Ok, cool. Seems like a good test to do.
It didn’t drift that much. So at this point either:
- extend that out to when it does drift more (it’s a judgement call as to how much). You did an hour. Now time for 2 x 45mins. Or stacked days.
- do a HIIT block, then come back after 4-6 weeks and do the exact same session. Compare to this one.
- cyclocross season is starting so if you race, use early races. 45mins around a cross course is excellent training.
Keep in mind a single hour is not that long, so I would lean toward #1.
Like I said above, I really didn’t have the luxury of going “well my tempo seems to be up to par so let’s slam some intervals”. It was more like: “first race next week, time to taste blood”.
Exactly. You are basically trying to use the “lesser when you’re more fit” part. Get more fit, see less drift. Is tempo the only way to get fit? Of course not, but these “kJ bombs” have been an effective way to do it for me.
I said above you have to embrace it or not. If you embrace it, then you take that drift into account. If you don’t and you have a “low RPE” and feel “very comfortable”, then let that be your compass. Drift be damned. The later seems to be the trend lately, but I was never satisfied with that (still am not). If I’m just going to use feel why even have a power meter. I could just go back to training like I did when I was running in college. Youth, hubris, and my feelings.
We literally have The_Cog on the thread so I’m going to get fact checked with the following statement, but here goes: look for an increase in TTE with this type of training. Although it can (and does) happen, it’s not really about increasing FTP right away.
The last paragraph is spot on. When I did it, this type of training allowed me to really push out my TTE. I didn’t really get a bump in FTP although I was a much different rider.
HR drift is normal with any long interval. I’m not seeing where the problem is.
I’m going to say that you also don’t have to necessarily chase TTE. Every workout doesn’t need to be 5 minutes longer time in zone like one might do with an FTP progression.
For my build I did 3x20 mostly for 8 or 9 weeks as Steve described in the podcast. I did a few 4x20s at the very end. I also never blocked the workouts. I felt tired enough doing 2 of these workouts per week. Because I did the same intervals I was able to track them on a spreadsheet by HR like Steve suggested.
For each interval, you take average power / average HR. Because I did the same 20 minute intervals I could make a trend chart over the weeks. If the ratio of power to HR keeps falling then you know you are getting fitter and fitter on the current stimulus.
My impression from Steve is that one can avoid the “harder is better” and the more, more, more attitude with this type of training. The sessions aren’t soul crushing. The hardest part is mental - sitting for a long interval and watching the minutes tick by.
I started this topic on Fasttalk and Steve offered a lot of tips and answered most of my questions:
In retrospect, a progression may have been more in line with minimum dose. Instead of starting at 3x20 I could have just started at 3x10 or 1x20 or whatever and worked my way up with less leg soreness over time as I got fitter.
In any case, I build some great fitness doing just the 3x20s. I’m in my 50s and was not training for anything but a hard 3 hour weekend group ride. If I had been training for the pointy end of some longer race, I may have been motivated to build out to 3x30 or whatever was needed.
All of this talk inspired me to start my off-season training early. I was going to wait until Oct. 1st, but I never like to waste a bout of high motivation 
I started with 3x30 at ~83% FTP. Screenshot below. A couple observations …
**This got pretty hard towards the end. Even though my FTP is technically higher than it was when I worked with Steve, I used to be able to to 1x90 and even 2x90 at nearly this identical wattage with a lower FTP.
**I’m not sure my FTP was totally accurate then (~275) and I’m not sure it’s totally accurate now (~290) But I’m in the ballpark for sure.
**In the last 10 minutes of interval 3, my HR stopped recovering below the 83% threshold. Did I lower the watts? No. But I should have. Something about that blue line makes me bullheaded and stubborn. I probably should have started with 3 or 4x20.
**The reason I stopped training according to this modality is because I had some weird timing with my races. My “A” race since 2021 has been in October, and I have another really Important race (Barry Roubaix) in late March/early April. After some time off, I wouldn’t really start base training until mid-November, and then I would panic by February 1st, and start with high intensity days again.
**I’m going to keep at 3x30 a minimum of 2x per week until my my HR reliably stays below the 83% HR marker. I’ll probably mix in a 1x45 session if I feel good and build overall duration out from there … also will have 2 endurance sessions with a pace at around 40 TSS/hour (I train 5 days per week generally)
**I’m 49 y.o., so that informs much of my recovery considerations. YMMV.
**I’m lucky in that I like this kind of training … the way I execute (1 up/4 down) as well as the intensity being enough to engage me, but not feel monotonous, makes this relatively easy for me mentally. I find it much more difficult to execute a 2HR endurance ride from a motivation perspective.
**I think I averaged about 73 RPM on the first sets, but I was down around 66 RPM by the end. I also kinda like that type of work, as noted earlier in this thread.
Not sure if any of this is helpful, but hope it is. We’re all here to share ideas and ideally get better and smarter.
Good luck🤘
Why?
Because I think (perhaps misguidedly so) that based on how I often I want to work at this level, I’m going to exponentially increase my recovery needs the higher my HR drifts above a certain level.
I’m trying to stay at a level (for now) where I’m never trashed and my rides all feel strenuous but achievable.
At least that’s what I think I think.
EDIT: I’m using HR as a proxy for LBP right now. So my inferred LBP is what I’m trying to stay under.
I dunno about you but my body can take 20-30 minutes of warmup. IMHO you didn’t warmup or remove the first 20-30 minutes in calculating decoupling. Some drift will happen, but you might be surprised how little. Or not.
As above, I don’t have more time. This is why I’m doing the most I can given the time available. Most days I can find an hour, so I’ll do the majority of the session at this intensity. The purpose for my post was wondering how high to push the power.
There’s 1-2% drift over the last 40’ of the 60’ interval. So, maybe that’d be a better measure once I’ve got warmed up ( spending 15-20’ of my hour warming up feels like a waste of time)
Yes, I did “how long to warmup?” experiments at a flat 55% and a different day at a flat 60% and … and repeated some. In all cases my HR drifted up for the first 20-30 minutes, and then leveled off.
If I’m doing intensity, I’ll gradually increase power from ~60% to 80% then some specific clearing efforts before getting into the work portion of the session.
For relatively easy training like this, it seems best to just get going after a couple of minutes.
FWIW here is 3.4% decoupling after an 18-minute warmup:
51 minutes at IF = 1.0 and variability = 1.003. FTP set 9 days earlier, this was 3 years ago.
If I remove the first 12 minutes, I’ve got 39 minutes at threshold and 0.5% decoupling - trend (linear regression) lines have power increasing 7W and HR increasing 5bpm.
I’ve got some long threshold efforts with negative decoupling, because they started before my body had 20-30 minutes to warmup.
Cool! I have also the intention to start with this kind of training next week. The only thing for me is that I have a MTB (beach) race within 8 weeks. So I think I have to keep some intensity sometimes. This race is more a tempo/sst kind of race with some short high surges when changing from beach sections. It’s not road race or crit racing…
So I have to think this weekend how I gonna approach this tempo stuff within my training for that event.
The only way to know whether you can handle the load is to try it. The absence of/avoiding cardiac drift can’t answer that question, nor is it an indicator of changes lactate.
So no way to gauge strain during exercise?
Sure, but is it an indication of increased strain?
HR is a measure of cardiovascular strain during exercise, but won’t really tell you anything about metabolic responses, which are more important in determining endurance exercise capacity, and hence whether you’ve done too little, too much, or just enough in the context of your overall training plan. The only way to find that out is to try different things and see what is sustainable and what is not.
Now if all you have is a HR monitor, and you know from experience that if you do more than X duration at Y intensity you’re going to have difficulty recovering adequately for your next important workout, then yeah, you could use HR to help hold yourself back. But if you’ve got power (and perceived exertion, which is always freely available, and tuned by millions of years of evolution), why bother? Your HR, for example, might be elevated above normal due a poor night’s sleep, despite which you may very well be able to carry on training as usual.