What workout did you do today? (2020, part 1)

[janneseppala]

Jepson for me tonight, the last interval at 102% intensity. Was fine even though I had to take a few days off due to various reasons.

[JoeX]

@ValeCyclist

will do it in Erg mode and you can see what my trace looks like.

Thanks but there’s no need, and I see others comments to - I have a whole thread on it if you’re interested.

Can someone school me on Erg mode?

[PusherMan]

Mount Goode -2

Didn’t have the time to do the full plan version so had to cut the recovery valleys short. One thing is for sure, I’m a grinder. Try as I might to raise my cadence, 82-84rpm just felt right.

[ValeCyclist]

@JoeX

Thanks but there’s no need, and I see others comments to - I have a whole thread on it if you’re interested.

I know I’m in that too

[thesupermarket]

First time trying an indoor workout, outside.
It was ok. Not sure I will do that again. It was great to see the numbers and see what it feels like to sustain watts on a course that I ride all the time. Hard to do. Once you hit a downhill of any grade you really have to smash to sustain the watts despite what it feels like.

Sorry this is kind of long but hopefully it can help someone in the future.

• Wahoo Element Bolt
• Stages Right side only power meter.
  
  
  
  I was doing laps on a 3.3 mile rolling loop around Prospect Park in Brooklyn. I loaded the ride as I left my spot, which is 5 miles away from the park, don’t do that. Wait til you can actually start the workout. I figured there would be a ‘start ride’ option and then a ‘start planned workout’ option. There is not but I might be wrong. I think you can load it and then pause it right away, which is what I did but something about the interface made me doubt that it was working. I’d wait til you get to your piece of road to start the workout. If you pause it there appears to be an arrow button that allows you to rewind the workout that I tried, but it’s unclear if it was actually rewinding so I ended up just reloading the planned workout once I got there but that only kind of worked.

1. Right out of the gate there are a few visual issues

• the warmup interval looks exactly like the main threshold intervals in terms of size, shape and duration. The target watts say 153-275 for 10 minutes. So, I’m looking at what appears to be a threshold interval but it’s telling me to do 153-275 watts, that’s a pretty big swing and I was confused. Just hit any number between 153 and 275? Do an average of the 2 numbers? That can’t be right. I just assumed it was skipping the warmup and treated it as the first 275 watt block. Why not just post the target watts? Not a range of watts. Wound up doing 6 threshold intervals instead of the 5, oh well. I would say that 99% of my confusion came from the inconsistencies in the visual language used on the wahoo compared to what’s used in the TR app. It’s 2 different albeit similar languages for the same thing.
• In terms of visuals and a pattern language, cyclists are trained to know exactly what a big block just under that ftp line means and it’s not a warmup. If I showed you the image below and asked you what kind of workout it was you would have one answer. 6 intervals at threshold. No question. Maybe best to just show it as a ramp but who knows, probably some programming limitations between TR and Wahoo.
  
• The image below is from a couple weeks ago. Just to show what the workout looks like in TR. The warmup is clearly the warmup. It is and it isn’t 10 minutes between 153 - 275 watts. I get what that means now but at the time it didn’t add up. The warmup is 10 min total finishing at threshold but it’s 3 min at 153, 2 at 182, 2 at 213 and 3 at 275.
  
  
• During each threshold block it doesn’t just give you target power. It shows you a range like 275 - 295. Not sure why they chose to display it like this. My snafu with the warmup led me to think that the low number was irrelevant. So, I just aimed for the high number each time until I realized that the target is actually right in the middle at 285. You end up doing math during each interval trying to figure out what the target wattage is. Just show me the exact target wattage and I’ll do my best to hit it, variation is inevitable.
• I spent a lot of time looking at the wahoo. A lot. I don’t recommend doing this on a road you are not familiar with or in traffic.

4. End ‘planned workout’ issues

• once the timer is up on the planned workout it asks you to ‘end planned workout’, assuming your ride will continue. I clicked ‘end’. A ‘resume’ button is there but it doesn’t work. My ride ended with the end of the planned workout. I had to start a new ride for the 5 miles back home. Not ideal but whatever.

3. Upload issues maybe

• The map on iPhone in strava is blank and the ride shows up in my feed but once you click on it, an error pops up and it will not load. Online the segments show up but the map is blank. Update it finally showed up. Not sure what the issue was. Just took a while.

5. Power meter issues

• Power meter was connected but the watts on the display would freeze. Not sure what was going on but I noticed it twice in the same part of the loop, the beginning. I turned on auto lap inside ‘planned workout’ for the blocks and I think it had something to do with the issue but who knows. I was thinking that it was detecting a lap in the geography when it wasn’t supposed to. Who knows. I reconnected while riding but you can’t do that because it will take your current wattage as ‘0’ so I if you are pedaling at 300 watts when you connect, it will read 0 watts. So I had to stop and recalibrate. The second time it happened it eventually started working again. But during that freeze you are going off of RPE.

In the end I’d say it was a successful workout in terms of RPE and looking at the power profile. Pretty much nailed it. Much harder than doing it inside.

Comparing indoors to outdoors. Keep in mind I treated the warmup as a threshold interval outside.

The End.

[SamMose]

Carson for me. Felt pretty good so I did a quick interval at the end.

[Cleanneon98]

This is a setup problem, not an ERG problem. Here is my Carpathian Peak

Here it is super zoomed in

[Cleanneon98]

I was going to have an aneurysm if I had to do Pettit on yet another Wednesday so subbed in Homer’s Nose. SSB2 MV is kicking my ass, and the rest of this week and next week is going to really hurt, but then it’s recovery week

[eric1a2krueger]

Spencer +2 today… VO2 max is my friend.

I went resistance mode as I was pretty sure I couldn’t do 6x @ 120%, and I wanted to start easier and work up through the end.

One more hard workout left in a rough block of SSB 2 LV

[pcarnell]

Yesterday was my first vo2 max repeat…ever. Wasn’t hitting target power but at least I stayed on the bike for the entire duration. After about the first 10 intervals I was convinced I wouldn’t even make it through the first set, let alone the entire hour. Those 5 minute breaks really are just long enough to convince you to keep going.

All of that said, felt like a really productive session and I was properly flattened by the end of it.

[nkykirby]

Beech for me today as I pedal through recovery week. Focused on increasing my cadence a bit for the workout.

[Klaw]

vo2 today, 1min on 30 secs off was very manageable. Personally I find vo2 workouts much more manageable than other zones!

the extra 30 mins of endurance riding were spent trying to maintain an aero position / flat back with minimal cylinders/arms exposed.

[kurt.braeckel]

This… this was the hardest workout I’ve done on TR yet. Holy buckets of suck. All were full power, it even then I’m not sure I held it. One backpedal on 4, two on 5 and 6.

[mancunian]

@rocourteau

I think that’s a trainer issue, not an erg mode issue.

Or a user issue

[mancunian]

A bit more Endurance work today

[asteryx]

I felt like quitting 2minutes in first interval.
Suffering training is what i lack

[abartucciotto]

Heart rate looks good. Not too much drift towards the end hey? that is it did not climb much compared to the first interval

[ellotheth]

Beech, the reintroduction continues:

You know you’re in a bit of a state when freaking Beech makes you think golly it feels good to be back on the bike.

@thesupermarket

The End

This is a fantastic write-up. Maybe split it into its own topic? A product owner would love it.

@pcarnell

Yesterday was my first vo2 max repeat…ever.

[GPx]

Did Bashful+1 yesterday as part of the low volume sustained build:

It was really strange, the first three intervals of the first block felt as the heaviest.
Heart rate was the highest (184, my max is 201 in 2019 outside) then and felt the most tension in my legs.
In the fourth interval it felt like the tension broke in my legs and my heart rate wouldn’t really go above 177 for the rest of the workout.

Might be something wrong with my trainer in terms how it manages the resistance (it’s on ERG) the highest watt don’t feel the same all the time, but when I get to a recovery interval it does really feel lighter.

I mean TR makes you faster and fitter, but I cannot imagine that I have gotten that much fitter to be able to have such a low HR at 125% of FTP.

[UKCarl]

1st hard workout back after 3 weeks sickness, was a little nervous but actually went surprisingly OK (Spanish needle on Sat may be a different issue…)