That looks like my typical first ride in nice weather hammer fest. Testing my previous personal records and top strava segments. I posted in the what am i doing differently for '19 thread my thoughts on what they did for my performance. I didn’t feel the strain from it until a week or so later, then needed extra days off and consistency suffered.
Or… you’re just a lot fitter than you realize and will be absolutely crushing it this year.
It couldn’t hurt him. This wasn’t a SS ride. Over half the time was spent between Z2 and coasting so NP looks great.
@stevemz You could always load up a SS workout and just start skipping rest intervals to see how you feel. I started bumping up my SS after a particularly good day on the trainer when I had one of the + versions of Tallac(I think) scheduled. Just skipped one rest, then the next, then all of them.
Structured training is great in general, but sometimes can also impose mental limitations. I used to dread SS and now it’s my go to and rides look like this…
I’m not exactly sure the calculation but those IFs include zeros where we are stopped at lights
And they’re also including standing or semi-hard spikes, when you’re starting back up. Doesn’t that artificially inflate the IF? What I’m saying is that I think everything ppl are saying about increased muscular endurance and maybe incorrect FTP is a valid conclusion if this were a steady-state effort (and it’s clearly not). No? The VI is probably very high.
(sidenote: @stevemz I went ahead and bought WKO4. Spent the weekend getting somewhat up to speed. Good stuff)
The anaerobic is a lot of pack surging and short hard hills. The hill back up to my neighborhood is also about a 2 minute effort where I am usually in the anaerobic zone for the whole effort.
I would normally just dismiss a ride like this, but the outlier nature was hard to ignore.
Exactly. A 3 hr group ride w/ NP of .85 that includes an hour of coasting and Z1 is not the same as a 3hr SS ride at .85.
The type of ride you did is good and fun, but, doesn’t drive the same adaptation as a hard 3 hr endurance ride or even a hard 2 hr endurance ride.
These types of rides wear you out with some non specific gains where if you rearranged the ride a little differently with the same effort, could provide much different (and better) adaptations.
For the purpose of this discussion, I’m less concerned about the adaptation I’m getting (which is minimal) and more curious about what lead to the performance, since it’s an outlier in my past rides.
Ok, fair enough 
Seems like some “legit” anaerobic % there (as opposed to my usual outdoor terrain…very rolling hills, lots of starts and stops, and inconsistent group effort, which leads me to just ignore the hella high anaerobic numbers I get on those rides).
If that’s the case then my conclusion would be stronger anaerobically. Leads me to believe you’ve been doing a fair bit of VO2max intervals the last six weeks or so (but I have no idea what you’re doing). Especially if you’re TTE or Stamina metrics having changed (the conclusion @Tanner1280 is saying I think).
My indoor and outdoor FTP are the same; I do testing both indoor and outdoor when I re-asses.
My headline TTE/Stamina hasn’t changed, since I haven’t done any steady state efforts in that range.
My best guess at this point is that a combination of a bunch of things that I don’t be able to pull out until when I re-asses in mid-April. I wasn’t planning on changing anything about my training regardless of the conclusion.
Thanks for all the thoughts and opinions folks and keep em coming.
I have highlighted a 20min segment including stops; however, my time in the chart below does not include that time stopped. If you were to highlight an area of your ride that includes stops, the chart below has the same number? If so, then you really just kicked butt and loved the feeling of the wind in your hair chasing people! And I would like to know how to set up my Garmin to have that same data because in the image above that does not depict the time I’m stopped based on my rudimentary understanding of what I highlighted.
I have more in common with my dog than I thought! 
There was a pretty good podcast posted in the running thread, talking about how it can be really hard to pinpoint something in the last few weeks to indicate how you are performing now.
Were you just more consistent? What test were you using to evaluate previously? Does it correlate well with the current test (although that’s probably not going to change if by more than a few percent).
Ah, in that case, very log rides at 65-75% FTP (Steady state endurance rides) probably led to the gains. Your comment about a PR late in the ride points that direction. I’ll, again, reference this blog post by Brendan Housler, Master’s National Champion, 8 Time Category 1 State Champion.
when I look at similar results, they are during or after a long build where CTL rose up into the low 90s. As part of that build, I developed a very large aerobic base and coupled with that base my (personal weakness) vo2max on-road durations had increased to 3-6 minutes. That led to a fair amount of 2-3 hour rides with high IF during that period.
Interesting (to me) is an example after building that large base and then detraining for 3 months. So after allowing fitness to slide a bit with June/July/Aug unstructured and reduced riding, around Sept 1st I started a 2 week block of vo2max work and then began rebuilding for a Nov climbing gran fondo. Kicked off rebuild with mid-Sept 3.25 hour ride that had 4000+ ft of climbing and saw 0.86 IF for 3.25 hours, 90 minutes at 0.96 IF, and 120 minutes at 0.92. Despite 49 minutes of coasting according to TR (it was a group ride), the longest actual “stop” was 3 minutes final descent and 2 minutes for pics at bottom of the canyon before turning around for the 1.4 mile / 10% climb back out. Interesting part from my point-of-view - still had the legs despite reduced riding the prior 3 months. My conclusion - huge aerobic base was reason it was still possible to go out and do demanding efforts.
Not sure if any of that applies to your situation, hope that helps.
Well, I think I have an answer.
I went out today for an above threshold workout and spent 45 minutes >10w above FTP out of an hour. So sounds like my FTP is set too low and it’s time to reassess.
Take your NP for that ride and divide it by 90 or 95% IF and you should be close to the real number.
Or maybe not. For a moment assume your ftp hasn’t changed, what you experienced is not unusual according to Coggan:
Typical IF values for various training sessions or races are as follows:
Less than 0.75 recovery rides
0.75-0.85 endurance-paced training rides
0.85-0.95 tempo rides, aerobic and anaerobic interval workouts (work and rest periods combined), longer (>2.5 h) road races
0.95-1.05 lactate threshold intervals (work period only), shorter (<2.5 h) road races, criteriums, circuit races, longer (e.g., 40 km) TTs
1.05-1.15 shorter (e.g., 15 km) TTs, track points race
Greater than 1.15 prologue TT, track pursuit, track miss-and-outNote that one particularly useful application of IF is to check for changes in threshold power – specifically, an IF of more than 1.05 for a race that is approximately 1 hour in duration is often a sign that the rider’s threshold power is actually greater than that presently entered into the program. Thus, by simply examining a rider’s IF for various events during the course of a season, increases or decreases in threshold power can often be revealed without the need for frequent formal testing.
I’m pretty well calibrated against my own abilities and these were two outlier days within a 3 day time period, and were stronger efforts than my peak season last year.
Doesn’t change how I move forward other than being a validation that my training is working. I had already planned a full assessment week after my race block is over in early April and I’ll still wait until then.
Main issue is that I’ll prob rack up some extra “fake” TSS between now and then.
Just putting that out there for consideration, as those would be strong but not unusual efforts for me. You mentioned headwinds in original post, those produce a lot of high IF for 80 minute group rides on Wed nights.
