Sunday group rides. How to make them more profitable?

Training
1

Rides are 3 - 4.5 hours, analizing them I see, about +300 TSS and near 0.90 IF.

This rides are the substitite of sweet spot intervals workout in TR, but when I look into the time spent in each zone of the outdoor ride, I see half an hour spent on active recovery endurance ant tempo each, 1 hour lost coasting, v some little minutes on SS and vo2max and 25 min on anaerobic.

So there’s not SS at all, and there’s lot of anaerobic which I’m not sure are worth the time spent on it.

The idea is to spend time on each zone separately, at a constant rithm so the body learns to work like that, not? Is mixing everything at once on a long ride really useful even with high TSS?

How I am supposed to ride?

2

If you can do 4hrs at IF of 0.9…I’d question your ftp!

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3

Yea, holy crap.

4

Especially with an hours coasting!!

5

https://www.trainerroad.com/career/enric97/rides/52988147-morning-ride#.XJlVYwwXKHY.link

Can you see it?

My Garmin has FTP configured to 244 while TR is 250. But anyways, TR calculates TSS an IF itself from the data, not?

Maybe the reason is that my FTP outside is higher? But should for example ~10w make the difference in IF?

I dont know, 300 TSS seems a lot to me compared with the +100 TSS indoor workouts like Carpathian Peak which literally kills me…

6

53 min coasting recorded. Idk where the numbers come from too. I suppose continuosly sprints exaggerate IF due NP factor?

7

300TSS for a ride with only 3:15 moving is… excessive…

I would suspect a combination of things:

  1. FTP too low. Certainly for outside, if maybe not for inside
  • many struggle to hit the same power inside.
  • you may be riding a different position? (my TT bike lives on the trainer, I ride my roadie for group rides, definitely an FTP offset due to postion).
  • Are you using the same power measuring device?
  1. have a look at ‘NP buster’ rides.
    There’s a discussion here on that: https://www.cyclingforums.com/threads/np-buster-question.406110/
    IF/TSS isn’t a perfect system. It weights big spikes, perhaps disproportionately in some circumstances.

As for getting the most out of them, what is your aim? If you’re riding like your target event, it’s probably good training. If you’re planning a long, flat TT type event, it’s probably not. Remember that everything we do on the trainer is just a means to being able to do our target event as well as possible, not to win training…

Just my 2p anyhow…

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8

Incidentally, what’s your NP for the ride?

I’ve found that groups tend to smash themselves to the top of a hill and coast down the other side. Ride the hills at the same power going up and down. You’ll get dropped on the way up but trust me, you’ll be overtaking everyone a few seconds later.

1 Like
9

Thanks for answering.

PowerMeter is the same, a 4iiii, 0 weird numbers indoors.

Today I’ve done Taku with my Garmin520 (ftp updated) paired to the 4iiii to compare TSS and IF with TR and numbers were the same.

I ride the same bike. Outdoors I get out of the saddle a lot, we like to make short high efforts very often.

There must be an explication

10

227 NP
166 AP
250 FTP (ramp test)

11

Your numbers are common because you are coasting and in active recovery a lot of the time and then smashing the hills at a level that’s lower than what you should be doing on high intensity interval days. It’s not great training.

Club rides are fun and good for the social aspect, JT, are typically not great training rides - unless it is a race training ride.

As for your question, get on the front and hold the upper limit of Z2. Most club riders will let you just sit up there because they want to show everyone how fast they are on the climbs. Let them and just Sag the climb. Then, make your way from the back to the front and carry on where you were. Do not let people half wheel you. Hold your watts and if someone starts halfwheeling, let them and just fall back.

Last resort, find some others in the group who want to ride like you do and just go off the front or back with them. I’m sure there are others in your group who are taking their training seriously and don’t want to fartlek every weekend (it’s good to do sometimes, but, not all the time).

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