Winter is coming, gotta think about base period

Training
62

All good! I was just curious.

I’ve put in a ton of hours indoor on zwift and outdoors this year, but I just recently started racing on zwift regularly. Stumbled into a MGF race and had a team reach out. Definitely more fun in the tough series when you have teammates and strategy playing a role.

I’m planning a very similar winter to yours. I’ve been shocked at the fitness I’ve built off of zwift racing. Just moments ago got my A+ upgrade a few days after 6hrs at 263w NP in a gravel race.

I credit some of it to the fact that I genuinely enjoy it and I find myself looking forward to getting smashed in hard races vs interval workouts.

I’ll have to look you up on zwift and give a follow. Someone ought to set up a TR group ride for all the multi platform users on the forum :wink:

63

Superb job on the A+ award! I’m aiming for that this winter. I’ve managed to get the numbers needed a few times outdoors but I’ll need to find a few races with the Epik KOM or Innsbruck I think.

Which MGF race did you do? Which team reached out to you?

I’m much like you - really enjoy the social side of Zwift racing. There’s a real community side to it that is brilliant fun! And being part of a team makes racing so much more interesting. Some teams use tactics with great effect in the races!!

As they say - Ride On!!

64

It was whichever race all the IS guys and Alex West show up at… it was a rough intro to the pointy end of zwift racing.

I’m racing with CryoGen now. There’s a nice sense of camaraderie between teammates and even competitors that I don’t really see IRL all that much. I have an ongoing battle with pretty much the whole ODZ A squad:)

I typically favor rolling courses so haven’t put in crazy 20min numbers, but it seems like Yorkshire and the Central Park courses are good for putting down power in a fast group. That might be because I have a dumb trainer with a low power ceiling though. I use my PM for zwift, but still can’t put in a real sharp sprint effort so I’m forced to go long…

65

I saw you were mixing it with some of the really big hitters!! I did the Euro PM time slot for that series, and plan on doing the same one for the new DIRT series over the winter. It’s fun racing the same guys each week!

Cryo-GEN seem like a decent squad. A few of the guys I ride with IRL are in that team, but I’ve also got a couple of [DRAFT] teammates locally too. You can imagine how that gets competitive on a club run!!!

The Yorkshire course is brutal!! It does make for some super fun racing though - never enough time to fully recover before the next VO2 max effort!!!

Hopefully line up against you at some point over the winter:)

66

May have to re-think absolutely everything. Just set up my work plan for the next 4 months. I will have less time. Or better, enough time but not so much for longish rides in one stretch.

And the last 2 days have been interesting. Tried out this LIT-Optimisation from above. Both methods.

Context:

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After Sunday’s race (podium :slight_smile: ) I felt surpringly fresh. Quite short for my usual racing, but this is autumn. Next race is in a week.

So after a rest day, a 90min run with some indoor cycling afterwards was very easy.

And then my goal was/is to do a block of intensity, with intensity, which is not intense :slight_smile:

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The LIT-Optimisation sort of fits nicely into this

So yesterday these 30s all-out

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and today KP-sprints. Seated from a (virtual) stand:

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however, added some 10/20s in the end. Felt so fresh, felt so good. 10/20s, intensity without adding (intense) stress

will decide according to body feel what I do tomorrow. I enjoy this quite a lot. Have to ponder about base again …

67

Just a cursory guess, but would it be worth doing say 4x60/120 HIIT to drive glycogen/An contribution down and then follow with say 12x10/20 LIT to work other systems? :man_shrugging:

68

Perhaps off-topic and if so, let me know and I’ll start another thread.

At lower training volumes (<10hrs/week), is it really important to distinguish between above AeT and below AeT?

Also, for those who know their own data, how does your AeT stack up to VT1 (via breath test)? Seems FaxMax (when known) can vary quite a bit within endurance zones (as @sryke alluded to above), and I’m not sure it helped that I knew my range/value this season (i.e. didn’t change my training)

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Not sure I understand your question. What does knowing where the distinction lies have to do with volume? My guess is that if you’re doing less than 10hr/wk you might as well stick to training with power in lieu of HR based “zones”. So I guess I just answered your question that I didn’t understand! :man_facepalming:

My AeT range as established by Friel & MAF rules: ~123-132.
My VT1 as established by talk test: ~115.
My FatMax is not established but range could be: 90-125

I was already doing my “Z2” rides in the 115-125 range, so knowing these didn’t really change my training, it just affirmed that I may possibly be doing something correct.

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@Captain_Doughnutman When I read the OP, I thought “hmmm, other than the intensity, it looks a bit like what I do”. (exception: I don’t really periodize. I do this year round and then throw in 4-6 week blocks of intensity before a target event…base isn’t a “time of year”…it’s fitness and it’s all the time, like how Kolie Moore sees it).

Anyhoosies, I then asked about @sryke’s total weekly volume. He said he thought it would be less than 20hrs, but it’s still going to be fairly high by amateur standards (~>15hrs), and I thought “ok, rides below AeT are still beneficial but less taxing than above AeT” (Couzens), so maybe he’s just trying to manage his fatigue. On that kind of volume you likely cannot do “higher” endurance exclusively because even endurance makes you tired if you do enough of it. But I could be wrong so I asked. In other words, why did he make the distinction in the first place? And furthermore, if I’m on ~10hr/week, would I really care to also make that distinction. Doing every endurance ride at or near, or above AeT hasn’t make me tired, and I’ve been doing it for several months.

I know (roughly) my AeT from regular lactate testing, so I don’t use HR formulas. It often differs significantly from my FatMax (assessed via INSCYD). In the last few months, knowing my AeT has informed my training a bit. Knowing my FatMax range last season didn’t change my training all that much, but then again, it’s impractical and cost-prohibitive for me to regularly monitor that.

Fatigue management. The more you do, the less intense some of it has to be. After all the run-around and over-analysis of “polarized” on this forum last year, it often really just comes down to that principle: volume goes up, intensity goes down. Something has to give.

Without testing, you don’t actually know any of this. ← I re-read. That sounded unintentionally harsh. What I mean is: all that stuff gets you “in the ballpark”. But if you have testing, you don’t have to be “in the ballpark”. You have data you can trust.

71

True, and no harshness taken, it’s always good to revisit and refresh one’s strategy. However, my current training (if that’s what it can be called) is based on the following considerations:

  1. Being heavily de/untrained for the better part of the year, I’m back to making those “noob gains”. My requirement for a high degree of specificity isn’t a requirement at all.
  2. In lieu of specific/personalised laboratory testing, I’m relying on the information of those who have years of testing knowledge and experience.
  3. My “data” isn’t specific, but then again, I don’t believe my personal physiology differs significantly from the larger pool.

Regarding testing, all of it has been conducted in the pain cave.

I know my HRmax and according to Friel, AeT occurs at ~70% HRmax.
(He also claims AeT+30bpm ~LT.)
For the record, I rely more on HRR calculations than HRmax.

It’s been assumed that MAF is the upper end of Z2 (power)

I have conducted several ACE protocol talk tests to establish VT1.

I have conducted several HRV protocol tests to establish VT1.

I rely on published conclusions from several lab testing experiments to establish a FatMax zone.

To continue the Couzens quotes, “…if I was dealing with beginners or low volume athletes [me], where the difference in output between ‘recovery’ and ‘base’ wasn’t all that substantial, a 3 zone model might suffice…” My understanding is that in a 3 zone model, Zone 1 correlates to 55-85% HRmax/50-70%HRR/55-75% FTP; my training range falls well within Zone 1. Maybe when I turn pro I’ll seek out some of those precise 7 zone marginal gains.

Even the lauded FTP is an estimated anchor (of which I have also estimated using a proxy protocol), so I’m not overly concerned with true exactness, especially, and I think rightly so, at the lower/est intensities. Yup, all ball park, but at this point, the possible differences between lab procured thresholds vs DIY values isn’t causing any great degree of damage (nor would being ‘bang on’ create significantly greater gains).

As Couzens also says, “the number of training zones need to be sufficiently precise to cover the major training objectives of the event.” The training objective of my “event” requires but a single training zone, which I believe is sufficiently fuzzy enough. :+1:

72

Of all the advice you could give a cyclist that has to be the most fundamental, but too often it is overlooked.

The house analogy has a lot to answer for: you should never stop building the foundations, even when you’re building the walls or the roof.

Mike

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My first coach - former East German elite coach - always used to say to us: you can always do basic endurance (zone 2 [coggan]). Always. I must say, he was an impressive coach, so much ahead of time. Developed a great heart rate based training system.

And our second coach - former East German as well - made us do long indoor sessions on rollers just facing a white wall. He called it “character training”.

74

An endurance athlete should never stop training in zone 2. The ideal training plan should include 3-4 days a week of zone 2 training in the first 2-3 months of pre-season training, followed by 2-3 days a week as the season gets closer and 2 days of maintenance once the season is in full blown.

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Your second coach must have been a character.

Did any of you transfer to a career in interior design? :wink:

76

In the past I’ve taken a month away from the bike – rowing and hiking and using the elliptical thing at the gym. This year, I had that month off in the spring with a couple of viruses (we had some days where we were close to 20% of teachers and students out sick – and my wife and I, who teach at the same school, got smacked twice).

Some years, I would just ride easy in Oct – which I’m going to do this time around. Still 2hrs/day, but at IFs of .56-.6. CTL dropped 6 points in the first week – hopefully, I can keep some weight off by 1400-1500 low, low intensity kj/day, and lose ~20 CTL .

Nov-Dec, still the “just hard enough to be zone 2” days, with a couple of SST sessions thrown in.

77

Out of curiosity, how much variance in CTL do you aim for between the beginning of base and peak fitness?

I’ve been structuring my training using the PMC for the first time this year and I’m pretty comfortable with where I can keep CTL without burning out. But, comparing my fitness to last year is apples and oranges.

78

I use to let CTL slide about 40-50%, then build it back over Nov-March My highest CTL has been 120-125 in July. After cutting volume and reducing the intensity of the zone 2 rides in August-Sept to allow for VO2 days, it was at 115 at the end of last week. Now it’s 110 and dropping.

This may completely backfire, but this time I’m going to let it drop by 20-25%, and then have a much slower ramp rate over the winter. Instead of 12 hrs/week with a fair amount of “sweet spot,” 14 hrs/week with more low zone 2.

The risk is that letting CTL drop from 110 to, say, 85, is that I may not be getting enough rest between now and Thanksgiving. I hope – and this may go south on me – that the gentle ramp rate and “just plugging away at 60%” is easy enough on my adrenal system that I still feel motivated and fresh in Feb, when the Spring race season starts.

79

This is a biggie and something I’ve only experienced this year. Doing only Z2 rides over the summer, one of the very first “adaptations” I noticed was that I wasn’t always fried or jacked up etc from riding. Would come home, get off the bike, and continue on with life – almost no (perceivable) stress to the body. Never felt that unmotivated dread associated with the day-in day-out interval session beat down. The more I rode my bike, the more I wanted to ride my bike! It’s a nice feeling. Over 4 months my CTL went from 40 to 90 doing only Z2. Interestingly, my highest ever CTL was 99 after 5 weeks of smashing Threshold intervals. 180-degrees in methodology and effect, and a good point that CTL taken in a vacuum is deceiving.

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Thanks for the input. Keep us posted on how it goes. I wasn’t planning on that big of a drop, or cutting out that much intensity, but it’s good to know should I wind up catching something from one of the kids and lose a couple weeks this winter.

I’ve been between 100-125 all summer and showing no ill effects. Backing down volume as the weather turns and did an impromptu weeklong taper for a gravel race, but even now at 115 it feels pretty comfortable. Just picked up a nice increase in FTP and some power records too. Was thinking 85-90 should be pretty manageable for the winter.

Once I head indoors full time and drop my long ride on the weekend I was going to see where my TSS falls and go from there.

82

You really need to let CTL drop.

Training is about stress → rest —> adaptation.

One form of “rest” is the reduced stress of two or three months of reduced training load – maintaining a flattish CTL year-round (no more than 10-15% reduction in CTL, say) is a perfect formula for plateauing, and for never reaching your best in a peak. It’s also a formula for burnout, if you’re trying to maintain too high of a CTL for too long.

You have to let fitness go to build it back up higher than it was before…