I’ve been following a mid-volume training plan since mid November. Made it through Base 1, 2, 3 and General Build 1 without missing, failing, or reducing intensity on a single workout. Increased my FTP from 270 to 302. Once I got into the second half of General Build 2, I failed a couple Level 7+ VO2Max and Anaerobic workouts. No big deal I thought, as searching forums found plenty of people with similar issues, and these workouts are supposed to be brutally difficult from what I can tell.
Now I’m onto the Rolling Road Race specialty plan, and I seemingly cannot complete any of the Tuesday and Thursday workouts. The Anaerobic workouts like Mud Lake and D’Aujour are so difficult that I have to turn them down or I’m hitting my max HR even in rest intervals. I actually experienced muscle failure during the last 2 intervals of D’Aujour last week, which has never happened to me on the bike before.
Furthermore, the “attacks” VO2Max workouts like Iron Mountain, Martellese, Opheim, etc. I don’t understand these workout instructions or how to complete these. The Iron Mountain workout text says that the 6 second 150-200% FTP bursts are supposed to be done standing… OK. Then later in the text it says: “Try to keep your spin above 100rpm throughout the 2-minute intervals and shoot for 120rpm or higher during the bursts.” So I’m supposed to spin at 120rpm, while standing?? What happens in reality when I try these is I stand up and the power spike slows my cadence to like 60, and then when the interval ends it’s brutally difficult to spin my cadence back up to 100 to complete the rest of the 106% FTP interval before the next burst. When I first tried Iron Mountain last week I quit because I thought I broke my trainer or drivetrain. Today I failed Martellese.
If it helps, I’m doing everything in Erg mode. I’m 43 and I have only been training since last summer, but I try to have a great deal of consistency except for 6 weeks off the bike due to a surgery last fall.
Someone please give me some guidance as to what I’m doing wrong, and how I can either complete these workouts, or something else I can do to improve my anaerobic capacity. I feel like the Rolling Road Race specialty plan is not working for me at all right now. Had disappointing performance in a race last weekend, and actually dropped out of a planned race this weekend, because I just feel like I haven’t had any consistent training with all these failures.
Specialty is a tough part of a plan. It is event specific stuff. So, in your case, to help you perform in a rolling road race.
Workouts like Iron Mountain are targeting the ability to launch, or respond to, attacks in a race.
The scenario being that you are in a group and either you, or another rider, launches an attack from the group.
As I have seen on TV, those attacks start with an out of the saddle, full on sprint (150-200%FTP burst) and then the attacker settles into a high threshold effort (106% FTP effort) to try to snap the elastic.
That is what the bursts are aiming to train you for.
It might be hard for the ERG to react quickly enough for the 6 second bursts in Iron Mountain. You will either need to pre-empt those bursts by winding up your sprint a couple of seconds before they start, or do those workouts in resistance mode and hit the targets as best you can.
Put the hammer down while standing, then sit and keep a high cadence. Don’t worry about exact numbers for cadence, or even power if you’re a few watts off. Try and do those workouts in resistance mode, ERG mode is complicated.
If you have the opportunity and terrain to do that, try to do them outside.
Thanks for the tips, I’m also confused about resistance mode as I actually tried switching to it during Iron Mountain last week and all that happened was that I could not turn the pedals… at all. I think it was set to the default of 60% resistance. I’ve never used resistance mode for workouts before so trying it on an advanced one was probably a bad idea.
I honestly don’t have a trainer to tell you how resistance works exactly or give you advice for a proper %, I’m sure someone will help you out with that technicality.
As for ERG mode, my take for higher efforts - above sweet spot - is that it makes it unnatural and sometimes unsustainable due to the constant resistance the machine - trainer - is offering.
When you’re not using ERG mode, means that if you soft pedal for 1 second, it’s 1 second of rest. 1 sec here, another there all you need to go over the inveral sometimes.
This is a particular opinion, some people prefer to do all in ERG, but I’m the opposite. Try and see what works for you.
That makes a lot of sense, I have definitely experienced the “clamp down” effect of ERG mode increasing resistance as cadence slows, like in the “muscle failure” reps of D’Aujour I described in my first post. 500+ watt intervals, slowing my spin due to fatigue, and then the resistance increases so much that I physically can’t turn the pedals forward anymore. I guess I need to play with resistance mode on some easier workouts to get the hang of it.
That’s precisely what happens. You alleviate to have 1 sec of relief and instead of relief, you have more resistance that you have to overcome. It’s terrible.
Do try resistance mode on your trainer and get used to how it works with TR workouts. It can definitely help in short sprint type intervals.
For me, ERG is fine for all but the short (<20 second) intervals. It took me a while to get the hang of pre-empting large power changes: the ramp up is so quick that, to keep things smooth, I have to be a little bit in front of it before it starts.
I really like ERG mode for workouts that have sustained efforts but for Vo2max and Anaerobic I have to do them outdoors or on resistance mode because like you said if you drop your cadence at any point you’re hosed. Resistance mode definitely takes some getting used to but it’s well worth doing for any of those workouts that require bursts of power.
@funsplosion do you have access to any fast group rides? If you do, I’d say just swap one of those workouts for an actual group ride and try to replicate the spirit of the session in the group ride. For example, try and get in a number of similar type of efforts whether you are instigating the attack, or responding ot an attack. The workouts in specialty phase are tough, and if you can knock them out then great, but I find great value in actually mixing it up in a group ride and going deep several times. Also, I don’t have a smart trainer so I have never used erg - but I understand that it doesn’t replicate real world variations in cadence and power output that you would experience in a race or outside training scenario. BTW, great job on those gains you made, very well done!
Yes I do. I’m in a club that does actual training races twice a week, the same days as these workouts actually! I haven’t been attending because we’ve had a pretty cold and nasty spring so far, but definitely will soon. Also good advice, thanks!