I’m sure some of the regulars here have already seen it, and apologies if they’ve already posted it, but YouTube served me up a Stephen Seiler clip from just before the pandemic onslaught that may be of interest to us oldies but goodies.
Short answer: Yes. Our top end goes fast, almost no matter what. Endurance not nearly so fast, if we keep training it. We can hang on to a lot of bang for buck for longer slower rides. Common knowledge perhaps, but he dives a little deeper than that. I know it doesn’t change the substance, but I love the charming gentle drawl that makes it sound like he’s talking hogs with a straw in his teeth instead of digesting Latinate research papers with a lot of statistical analysis. From, of all places, Norway,
At 65, My max heart rate ( Thanks ramp test) is 176, with my max at age 50 being about 185. Don’t know before that. I’m still curious how far I can push my FTP with training.
Apologies, fellow threadies, for posting to this thread what was intended as a private email to another forum member with whom I’d done a group ride. Took it down before the whole world knows my Netflix favorites.
Adding my bit here to follow the thread (found off today’s Facebook post). 59 years old. I wish I could do a mid volume plan but don’t have the time, so LV. The new plan builder is fantastic. I trained for a year with TR and built my FTP from about 150 to 231 going from 1.9 W/Kg to 3.1 W/Kg in a year. I improved my A race (winter Fat Bike race) from 56/103 to 19/76 (top 54 to 25%) and I feel like I was capable of quite a bit more. My FTP increases were small the last 4 months prior to my race, but I hope with strength training and increased volume these next 6 months to raise my FTP to 260. That would put me where I want to finish next year’s race and possibly finish in the top 15 (out of 75-100 racers).
I agree with someone who said strength training is important. I need to do some leg strength training and improve my volume this year - but so far life has gotten in the way of that and I’m actually way behind on following my new custom built plan (gravel). Still, I have continued following the plan as best I can, but have dropped time or power when I’ve had to. As a testament to the basic strength of the TR system, I completed Ansel Adams -2 yesterday at full power - no power drops to finish. I was amazed. When I started TR in December 2018, I never would have imagined finishing an over/under workout with 299 watts max.
I saw a comment from Nate on Ep 251 of the Podcast (March 22, 2020) specific to our demographic. Training Without Events, Outside Workouts, Hormonal Birth Control and More – Ask a Cycling Coach 251 - YouTube In a discussion of how to maintain consistent power over hilly terrain, where it tends to spike up and down, he made a point (at 1:19 in the show) that for an over 60 cyclist, any power spikes over threshold will hurt you much more than a 30 y/o cyclist in trying to achieve maximum power output over the course (which translates to maximum avg. speed.) In other words, try to stay at or under your threshold. He also said that he didn’t want to say anything prematurely before it’s ready for release, which indicates this is related to promised product he mentioned in this thread*. No doubt they’ve scraped all of our senior workouts to analyze how making that big push up the hills translates to a quantifiable loss of avg. power over the course of the ride.* That makes sense, but I look forward to reading more about that when they release it.
That said, my power will frequently spike at least 200 or more points over my threshold on a rolling or hilly course. It would be interesting to do an apples-to-apples comparison over the same course staying within threshold v. pushing it up the hills.
It would be interesting to do an apples-to-apples comparison over the same course staying within threshold v. pushing it up the hills.
I did this recently and the result was illuminating. Courtesy of the covid pandemic I’ve been riding solo more often and have made my weekly Thursday group ride route one of my regular weekly solo rides. A few weeks ago on this ride, I set out to keep my power as best I could at a steady-state in threshold/sweet-spot during the whole ride, rather than hammering the climbs until “failure” like I usually do. I didn’t set a single PR for the entire rid, but I had my best overall time ever for a solo ride on that route. I thought it was funny that as far as Strava was concerned, nothing remarkable happened on what was a really remarkable ride.
To keep things loosely on topic, I’m 53 and am totally inspired by the riders 10, 20+ years older than me who are still going strong and using TR. I’m glad to see I have many more years of coveting new bikes ahead of me.
Im also 64 and I tried the 20 minute test. I hit the spiral of death ,ended up freewheelinga bit ,and pedalling squares, I managed to finish it. The FTP number I got was way too low, so I just put my FTP to what I did on the ramp test 4 months ago. Im reluctant to do another one , as it was so awful , and I think whats the point? Ive been cycling for years and know the 1st test was pretty accurate.
At my age, its just about consistency and maintaining a high level of fitness. Im a diesel , and race cyclo x and MTB, and in spite of it am successful in the o/50 category
I’ll hit 67 in a few weeks, and just recently came to grips with the fact that I don’t recover like I used to. I’d start a plan, then after several weeks hit a wall. I used to complete plans, albeit years ago, but I guess my ego wouldn’t allow me to incorporate the extra rest that was needed lol.
But now, because of current events (no events to aim for), I’ve just been loosely following Friel’s ideas in Fast Over Fifty to stay fit, but using TR workouts. Basically–one VO2max workout, one or two muscular endurance/sweet spot workouts, and one longish ride. Weights twice a week. No real structure here, except trying to make progress in the VO2max workouts. And low and behold, my w/kg has gone up from 3.58 to 3.87, both tests done on the S’fest platform, for consistency. I was stoked, and feel I can still improve, seeing I was just “freestyling” my workouts.
If events start up again, I’ll probably start a TR plan again, but I’ll be less anal about following it, and judiciously insert rest days/weeks, thereby extending the plan length
considerably. Yes, it sure would be nice if TR could find some way to accommodate the dinosaurs here (hint, hint) with something specific to our needs…
I’m going to have to read that Friel book someday. Nice to see the gains you made with just a loosely formulated approach.
I think modifying the plans with extra rest and less intensity as needed is the way to go. I’m only mid 50s but definitely feel the influence of age compared to 10-15 years ago. Before my spell with covid over the past 3 months I’d had a great run through SSBLV1 & 2 extended with additional recovery as needed (I run 3x weekly, too, so LV is plenty on top of that) and had seen some very nice gains.
The need for additional recovery and rest seems like it would be a pretty individual thing. I know TR has invested a lot in the plan builder, but frankly I’d be happy to see an alternate versions of existing low volume plans extended with additional recovery (2:1 work/recovery week ratio), and maybe similar mid-volume with added recovery and a bit less intensity. Lacking that, it’s really not that difficult to drag a plan to the calendar and shift things some to make the work to recovery ratio closer to what I feel the body can absorb.
Sorry to hear about your bout with Covid. That had to put a damper on your training.
Yup, if I have a goal event I’ll eventually get back into a modified TR plan, probably the same SSBLV as you, and use a bit of intuition when listening to my body. As mentioned, TR recoveries may be insufficient, but also I found that their jump in the velocity of workout intensities from week to week sometimes was a bit much, at least for me, especially in the build phase. Ouch!
Friel’s book is worth a look. Frankly, I think he is at the other end of the spectrum and favors too much rest/recovery, but at least he recognizes its importance for, um, vintage riders. He really doesn’t lay out a specific plan, per se, but gives general guidelines. Since you have a lot of experience in working out, you know what does and doesn’t work for you, so basically you can plug-and-play TR workouts into a loose scheme and it probably will at least keep you fit, or even improve, as I have. ymmv, of course.
My experience is approximately a 5% underestimation. My 20-min test exceeded a ramp test two weeks later by 6%. Riding Lamarck (2x2x10min at FTP, can be used to estimate FTP) at ramp test FTP I need to increase resistance to make the workout meaningful. Redmeijer (Apr 18) has the same experience. Anyone else?
The research from Stephen Seiler (YouTube: “Does our Endurance Machinery Slow Down … as We Get Older”) shows that top end declines due to decline in max HR. Could the underestimation of FTP be due to the ramp test challenging the “high end” (which declines with age) versus the 8-min or 20-min which demand more endurance?
FYI: I’m 63, using TR 3-1/2 years, religiously for past 16 months. Increased FTP 10%, VO2Max from 44 to 52, and completed a 150mi 1-day ride (RAMROD) in 2019 faster than in 2005 when I was unstructured long rides versus structured training.
For me it does, n=1, etc. I’m 61 and I reckon it’s about 3% low when I take into consideration how subsequent workouts feel.
For me it’s not maxHR but VO2max that seems to be the limiter, by the time I get to 19mins I’ve built up enough fatigue and increasing build-up of waste that I just can’t deal with. I’ve just finished Climbing Road Race speciality and there’s a few workouts in there that are similar to the Ramp Test and I struggled with those as well.
Lamarck is a good one to verify how you test.
Ultimately any test is just a guideline and you need to have some feel for how to adjust things as you progress. I found that over-unders at my test value were more like level-unders or even under-long way unders so bumped my FTP by 3% or so and things felt pretty much as coach Chad’s workout notes stated.
Only a young 56 , but for me the ramp test seems to under estimate FTP.
Consistently I have not been able to achieve a result in the ramp test to match a FTP from a 20 min test.
I finally went back to the 20 min test recently, and it came up with a 20w increase on the last ramp result, and so far I am getting through SSBHV1 in regulation.
Hi everyone, I’m 61 and using TR since … 3weeks ago. I found TR after a 5weeks of zwift , I this social world I attend and completed a 4wks training program and I realized the huge results that I made. So I decided to try a pro-tool to verify my limits. After this short of time I reached my best season records (2013) I very satisfied about TR and I surely subscribe for the next months.
I’ve noticed significant variances in ftp tests as well.
What I like to do right after I get a suspicious result, or even once a month just to see where I’m at, is an estimation test developed by Joe Friel. Caveat- you must know your LTHR to do it , but it is a relatively painless effort, and for me pretty accurate, usually within 2%. Joe Friel's Blog: FTP Confirmation Test
I’ve been and on-again and off-again runner for years but made the move to cycling a couple of months ago due to knee issues.
At 51, I look to threads such as this one for inspiration. When I was still running, I followed the exploits of Ed Whitlock. Do you know of him? Literally into his late 70’s he was running sub-3 hour marathons - respectable times for people in even their twenties! More recently, Gene Dykes has picked up the mantle and is running amazing times in his seventies.
Are their cycling analogues to Ed and Gene? The common denominator to each was that they both showed promise in their youth, but then got out of running for decades, taking it up again in their later years.
That makes sense, but I look forward to reading more about that when they release it.
, but for me the ramp test seems to under estimate FTP.
After this short of time I reached my best season records (2013) I very satisfied about TR and I surely subscribe for the next months.