Which outside workout matches chaingang?

You may want to re-asses your FTP, if you’ve got a warm up and cool down, that’s probably an hour over FTP to get to 160TSS.

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In the US, chain gang most commonly refers to forced labor with prisoners, particularly in the south in the late 1800’s / early 1900s with minorities. The convicts were chained together to make it more difficult to escape and make it easier for the officers to manage them while they performed forced labor outside of the prison.

I assume chaingang is not commonly used over here partially because of that baggage.

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that is a perfect explanation!

Chaingang = Paceline

It’s the UK term for Tuesday/Wednesday Worlds or other local fast group ride.

I find that the Tour de nez, or nevada city classic probably is the closest match to an hour long chaingang ride

I disagree. Weekly chaingang is one of the most effective workouts.

Done properly it’s the equivalent of “over/unders”. Depending on the number of riders (we usually have around 6 in each group) and the way we decide to ride determines the duration of the intervals. Work on the front usually just above threshold, recover just below. Typical duration of the ride is around the hour mark.

Chaingang effort

Whilst this wasn’t the fastest one of last year, gives a rough idea of the efforts.

I typically think of chaingang as ridden in a couple of ways:

  1. Though and off - traditional chaingang style where your spells on the front are very short.
  2. TTT - typically spend up to a minute or so, depending on the abilities within the group to maximise speed.

Usually when we ride “chaingang” it’ll be TTT style for the first 30 - 40 mins, then we’ll lift the pace riding through and off. In the UK, we don’t really use the term “paceline”.

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No offence, but if the weekly chaingang is one of your most effective workouts you might have some big improvement potential in how you perform regular workouts. Both inside and outside.

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Why? If I’m following your point, FWIW a local guy did TR base/build/specialty for years, got to about 300W ftp. Then he started racing outside and doing Zwift races, and his ftp went up to around 340 and he turned into a beast. No structure for 2 years straight, instead he was busy bagging podiums on local and Zwift races. His big improvement was dropping structure, and switching to racing. As if multiple years of TR base/build/specialty was his base, and then he switched to race. Always interesting to see what works for different people. :man_shrugging: Apologies if I misinterpreted your point.

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Some folk say the best training for racing is racing, I think O’Bree uses that term too in his’ book ‘Train the O’Bree Way’ (or what ever it was called) although I’ve never read it :joy:

Obree doesn’t believe in intervals. To him the best training is to replicate the kind of race you will be doing.

“Specific training for specific events. Everything else is peripheral and less effective than the base truth of athletic performance enhancement.”

– G.Obree

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Sounds pretty much like what I did!!! I just don’t “train” anymore. I ride, race and have fun :slightly_smiling_face:

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So this was tonights chain gang ride. My FTP is set at 232W (via AI but probably was a reasonable level based on the training I’ve done since last actual test.

Lap 1 - 57mins, average power 214W, NP 241W, IF 1.04.

I’m guessing my FTP needs to go up a bit, but by how much???

Use AI FTP Detection to know for sure without having to test!

Thanks Ivy - problem is I did use AI FTP in the last two weeks so can’t use it again (AFAIK). The last couple of times I’ve used AI FTP it has given me what I perceived to be an accurate value so happy to use it but not sure if I can until the 14 days comes round. Any other suggestions??

we also call it a chaingang. It’s more cool than a paceline haha

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Nice! Definitely not necessary to update more frequently than that, we know its hard to be patient when you want to know if you’re getting faster. Sit tight though!

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FTP looks about right to me, how long can you hold 232W? The power curve from that ride says 41 minutes.

EDIT: Had a closer look at the actual ride, that’s was quite a beasting, judging by the title - were you dropped? The power trace is very spiky for a chain gain, I’d say maybe you were working to hard/long on the front, or maybe having to much work to do when you need to join the back of the line - most of those spikes are over 300w+

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Thanks. The ride was tough (always is!!). The group (maybe 20 riders) split on a hill when riders ahead of me dropped the wheel. I ended up in a group of 4 (which then became 5 when we picked up another rider out of the front group) and we worked well right up to the end of what is recorded as Lap 1 (I then peeled off to head for home). I don’t think I was ever working either too hard or too long on the front (turns on the front generally are around 15 seconds I would say). The route does undulate so you have no choice but to go hard on the hills/inclines

FTP looks about right to me? Go by average power, normalised power is misleading if there are short power spikes (under 60s) in the ride.

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My definition of a Chaingang:


I wouldn’t want to try and crowbar these to fit into the TR system - it doesn’t fit into the format of a normal structured workout and would likely over/under-shoot your abilities at VO2/anaerobic or whatever. They are great training and race prep though.

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Nice intensity, etc :muscle:
When I bother I occasionally match our chaingang to something like Bays (an endurance ride with bursts) Trying to match up IF, TSS and Duration quickly.

However last week was a little more intense and I wanted to match it to a Tempo workout with burts but couldn’t find any so settled on Ebbets. My theory is to get something that will maintain things (even if its 1 or 2 below my current PLs) but not ramp up things preferring hopefully AI to adapt upwards on my more anaylsed indoors workouts.

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