The Bell curve of cylists - how fast are the average TR users?

From the article:

For all-rounders and aerobically strong cyclists whose goal races are criteriums or cyclocross, I program three weeks of true HIIT and RSA-focused training before their first race, and no more. This seems to be the balance point between increasing anaerobic and sprint power without sacrificing the aerobic ability needed to support repeated sprints. For the more natural sprint and anaerobic cyclists, I suggest even less criterium specific training.

I guess that answers my question. I think I may change the Short Power Build to Sustained Power Build and see how it treats me. And probably swap some of the Cyclocross plan workouts for SS intervals during the week (assuming probably incorrectly that we will race at all this year).

And being truthful to myself, it makes sense my endurance power numbers are bad because I loathe SS/Threshold work.

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All jokes aside, I think the article linked is good advice in your case.

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Haha, I actually LOL’d at this. At 6’3", 185 pounds, all I know is I wasn’t a born climber.

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Yea, I’m going to focus on longer SS/Threshold stuff for the next phase, see how it works out.

Maybe I am writing that only from my personal experience but in my opinion Sustained Power Build is not a great plan (it was not in my case). It is very taxing and gains were marginal. I tried only threshold and SS workouts and the gains were more substantial. I put little post about threshold riding here.

I have improved my aerobic side, endurance and FTP a lot. Try longer threshold 2x a week or SS 3x week +Z2 rides. But as I said - this is only my experience, but I believe that doing 3x20 at threshold or even SS gives you more than 5x8 min supra-threshold an it leaves you feeling a lot better. What is also nice - aerobic conditiong will help you massively with those efforts around 5 minutes and even VO2 max so for you it is win-win :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the info. From your other post, it made me think about a few things. I don’t think I’ve ever done a SS/Threshold interval longer than 15 minutes (probably explains some things). I really dislike SS/Threshold. Maybe my FTP is too high, I don’t know. But SS/Threshold is difficult for me. I could probably experiment with some things and make my own build plan of sorts.

You may not need really long SS/threshold intervals to get a strong stimulus. My question is how much time do you spend doing for zone2/ aerobic endurance?

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Not a ton. I’m at around 6-7 hours/wk total, with probably 2-3 of that doing Z2 work. If there’s anything I dislike more than Threshold, it’s indoor Z2. Weather is finally warming up where I live so I’ve been able to ride outside, so my Z2 hours should go up. I just get really bored doing indoor endurance rides.

Same here, and all I can say is that doing more z2 resulted in a big bump to both short power (up to 5 min) and long power. Similar short power but my 5-sec is more like 1100 and I’m nearing 60. Going to double down on weight training this fall, the neuromuscular part is fairly solid.

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My 2 cents.

I had the exact same issue. I’m very much a fast twitch athlete. Great sprint to 1min power. Terrible at longer efforts.

I just spent 7 weeks doing basically just Z1/Z2. 3hrs a day, 6 days a week, during our lockdown. All outside. Zero chance I could do that indoors. I’d have died of boredom.

Funnily enough, everything improved, so much so I thought my power meter was broken. I literally went from years of stagnation to rapid improvement.

For fast twitch athletes long slow distance is, in my opinion, the single best system for building your aerobic fitness. As I now understand, time crunched sweet spot training really suits athletes with mid to higher slow twitch fiber content. This sort of training beats up fast twitch athletes and on 8 to 10hrs a week, it very rapidly leads to a plateau.

What us fast twitchers need is DRAMATICALLY increased hours, nearly all of it at low intensity. The more the better. I rode around for weeks religiously sticking to the intensity discipline. It took maybe a full 5 weeks till I noticed a change. It was actually quite sudden. I was suddenly holding much higher wattage at low HR. I’d become more efficient.

A very significant portion of this LSD training was totally fasted or 2hrs of Z2 riding, then some carbs and a final hour at closer to tempo power.

Summing up. If you’re well trained and have been for multiple years, you either need to increase intensity or duration. If you’re fast twitch, more intensity will just lead to a short peak then the inevitable collapse. If you really do want to improve, do whatever it takes to find more available time, then build a proper aerobic base.

I wish someone had really drummed this into me at the beginning of my cycling journey.

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I was similar, but lots of outdoor solo riding with COVID shutdowns locally had me doing hard efforts of ~1hr solo instead of swapping turns in a paceline

i feel like ive come out of it stronger overall. Group rides are back on for us in AU and im struggling with higher end power after not doing any for a while, but that will come back, and i think it will come back better than it was

long z2 rides would be a great option too. I dont have the discipline to sit at that kind of pace, it frustrates me, something i need to work on

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Can I vote downhill instead?

Fat Old Dude

As @SpareCycles states:

This is just a small example of how significant aerobic contribution is to power output at virtually all intensities. Even maximal 1min or 30sec efforts show a surprisingly large contribution from aerobic energy pathways

(I’ve also read (somewhere) that anything over 10sec has aerobic contribution… :man_shrugging:)

More aerobic “base”, more available power.

But I’d be careful prescribing tons of Z2 volume as a cure all for speedsters. Everyone responds differently to different stimulation.

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Same here. I am 53 yo 74kg triathlete and have a ball park 3.5w/kg that I can push up to 3.8 when doing an A race prep. However, I can sprint up to 1200w (my PM is a Powertap G3 which is quite reliable).
I can put out VO2Max workouts quite well but SS is a pain and I always need to scale down.

I used the covid thing to do a huge volume at Z1/Z2 and my FTP just went from 238 to 262w in a couple of months (ramp test). The strangest think is that I had huge improvements in the short side of the power curve without performing any work in that effort segment.

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That is what the article have stated :slight_smile: Aerobic conditioning is a base for everything, even short efforts have significant aerobic contribution to them:

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When you doing long Z1/Z2 rides, do you go over Z2 with power at the uphills? Or is it superimportant to keep power in check for the whole ride?

I did all of it indoors so I kept it really within the range.

Since this approach meant increasing the volume to crazy figures when compared with the previous history, I kept my IFs below mid Z2 so that I could recover for the next day.

If I was doing this outside, I would try to route my rides avoiding hills that would have forced me go get into Z3.

Seiler and Maffetone somehow suggest that any time above LT1 will trigger a metabolic/fatigue response that will move us away from the ideal balance between availabily to sustain the consistent volume and targeted adaptation.

But let me get this straight. I am not saying this is the silver bullet for everyone.

A) if one cyclist is consistently working 8 hours per week using a mid volume program for years with a lot of intensity above 90% of FTP and suddenly starts riding 16 hours at Z1/Z2 with nothing above that but for comparison sake getting the very same TSS, I am pretty sure she or he will see an improvement in all the power curve. But if we are talking about someone who is already doing a lot of slow volume spiced up here and there by some harder efforts, increasing the weekly hours a bit and reducing the intensity will probably be neutral if not detrimental. In this case a lower volume, higher intensity block would probably be a much better idea.

B) Horses for courses
If the power profile of the cyclist points to he or she being a slow twitching diesel engine, maybe the best stimulus to improve sustainable aerobic output would be working the much higher intensity side sacrificing volume in needed. Stuff like the Ronnestad 30/15 intervals would be a suggestion I would make.

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Man, I relate to that last bit so much. I just can’t get myself to do more than an hour Z2 on the trainer. And up until last week it was snowing (not normal for May). Last week I was able to get out for some 2+ hour rides finally. So I can probably really add some Z2 rides to my training. I am set to go back to work in a few weeks, which is a bummer, but I can still get out on weekends.

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Yup. Aerobic metabolic pathways will be engaged essentially instantaneously to begin recovering energy stores, eg. ATP & PCr that are rapidly depleted at the onset of an effort.

I’m still learning about bioenergetics at the cellular level, but if I understand things correctly, interestingly all those diagrams showing ATP-PCr works from for the first 10sec, glycolysis from 10 to 90sec, fat oxidation beyond 90sec, etc. are more true for an all-out effort from a cold start. But less true the further away you get from that scenario.

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The reality of course, is that all ‘energy systems’ are engaged at all times, at all intensities. Just the relative contribution of each will change over time and intensity.

For example, for that cold-start all-out sprint interval, oxidative energy production might not be contributing to the mechanical work output per se for the first ~10sec. Since ATP-PCr will be depleted at a much faster rate than can be re-synthesized via oxidation, until the oxidative pathways get up to speed. So ATP-PCR will be fully depleted before aerobic metabolism has a chance to contribute much. It’s kind of a matter of ‘what fails first’.

That’s going from 0 to 100%. If you’re already starting from 50%, say from a warm-up, a recovery interval between work bouts, or leading into the climb in a race. Oxidative and ATP-PCr pathways will already be engaged to produce the current effort. So (a) you might have less capacity remaining for an all-out sprint above your current working intensity, compared to starting from rest. And (b) aerobic pathways will therefore contribute relatively more from the start of the subsequent effort.

I think of my aerobic system as an engine that chugs away in the background to constantly re-charge the battery of my anaerobic reserves. The bigger the aerobic engine, the faster it can re-charge the anaerobic battery. Therefore it can keep the battery more topped up, giving me more capacity, and greater ability to turn on the afterburners at the end of the race.

Not sure what the background conversation was about, but hopefully this was a relevant & interesting tangent :grin:

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