Cycling Workouts: Discussion/Encouragement/Sharing/Banter

[Norry1]

I don’t have enough training years to know. I’d say the last 18 months is the first time I’ve been really disciplined with structured training over more than just a few weeks or months. I have seen that increased volume is what shifts the needle for me, and pyramidal is the structure that best engages me and keeps me consistent longer term.

I ride long distance brevets and the durations are long, 5 hours, 13 hours, 27 hours, 40, hours, 96 hours, 120 hours, 210 hours etc. You’ve got to do a certain amount of long duration outings if you believe in specificity, as well as practising pacing, fuelling and hydration strategies. Managing multi day events needs different and additional approaches and strategies to events you can complete in less than a day.

My pace over brevet durations has gone up, and not insignificantly. How much more I can increase it is an intriguing question. Each year you have a limit as to how much you can improve, and if you do things right then in theory you can improve on that again the following year. Most of us have never hit (or got near) our genetic potential, and thus there is always room to improve each year if you have the time and motivation and right kind of structure in your plan.

I’ll also say I don’t chase CTL, it’s just something I observe. I have been following progressive overload and recovery. Once I’m doing the max volume and mix of intensity I’m prepared to do, and can recover from, then CTL will peak then plateau, and if I’ve timed it right a few weeks before my main event. Then I can taper, go into my main event, recover then move into my transition / chill part of the season.

Thus I doubt I’ll go above a CTL of 120 next season, but that I may be able to apply progressive overload at a lower ramp rate, reducing the likelihood of injury or overtraining on the way.

Great analysis, thanks.

 

[HLaB]

I actually finished work in time to catch the earlier train just. It was getting announced to leave when I got down to the platform just in time for me to jump in with the bike. Net result is I could have done the originally scheduled 1h VO2 max but the other week I changed the default for all my Tuesday workouts to 45mins so I could either do it by RPE on the commute or have enough time to jump on the trainer. That gave me Sleeping Beauty -4. The gear cable snapped on my TT bike last week, after I moved to the new place and I haven’t got round to digging tools out or sourcing a new cable yet so I used the Ti road bike again. I think the combination of better cooling (front door open), the road bike position made it seem pretty moderate. Although in my post ride survey I rated it as hard as I didn't want the intensity of future workouts hopefully on the TT bike being ramped up too fast.

 

[HLaB]

Not sure what I done to my left elbow/shoulder/thigh

Its been fine all day. I sprinted on the commuter bike to car mechanics garage less than 3miles away at 4pm and going down a steep hill with a lot of parked cars I held my position holding a driver on my tail up for about 30m, its a 20mph residential zone and me going 22mph didn’t really hold them up. I was turning sharp left at the bottom so I signalled early and held the arm up straight. So I was a wee bit later on the brake a wee bit later than I would have liked but I never really thought anything of it. After collecting the car I lifted the bike in and out fine too. However, an hour and a half later lifting anything seems agony, like I’d pulled something badly but I cant remember anything. So I shortened with Alternates tonight’s threshold workout to 45mins. Whilst I never got a fail survey from TrainerRoad, it didn’t feel optimal at all and the left elbow seemed to affect my left thigh and shoulder and thus cadence

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Hopefully clear up with a good sleep

 

[Legs]

From the Le Col - Training with Legends collection on Zwift comes Sarah Storey’s 8.5 Minutes of Pain. I don’t know whether it’s so-called because the first 30 seconds, on fresh legs, are quite easy, or because the last 30 seconds feel like your legs are being stung repeatedly by warrior wasps - it’s definitely 9 minutes of ‘on’ efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_sting_pain_index

 

[Ming the Merciless]

38 mins of threshold yesterday. Went well.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Went to sleep in my Duran Duran underpants and woke up hungry like the wolf

 

[Legs]

Went to sleep in my Duran Duran underpants and woke up hungry like the wolf

Wrong thread!? 🤣

 

[HLaB]

I still don't know why I've got no strength in my left hand and the arm is weak and sore in tension (relatively OK in compression) so I shortened my workout to a 45 mins VO2 max session. I also had an inkling to try somewhere different to workout so I set up the Omniun Rollers on the patio. After storm Debi things have calmed down a fair bit and the patio was fairly sheltered. I was in two minds whether to cover the remote control or not. Covered it meant most of my bars were covered by the towel, and I wouldn’t need the fan, afterall it was 0deg C at the weekend. Wrong! Despite the clear sky it was 10deg C tonight and by the last couple of intervals the fan was on full blast.





I didnt really notice the arm on the bike but it seemed a bit sorer again when I was putting things away but IIRC when it happened last about 15 years ago it didn't get better until I started using the arm (making it temporarily worse) 😕

 

[Norry1]

Out for a 3.5 hr Zone 2 ride shortly. Supposed to be tomorrow, but the weather forecast today is much better than tomorrow's.

 

[HLaB]

Ive shortened all my workouts to 45mins to fit my work pattern (allowing time to set up, wind down and get a decent kip). Lol, my line manager said the office would be empty tomorrow and I’d be better to work from home so I could have done a longer workout. I think I prefer shorter workouts anyway. Tonight that was Prater-4. A slightly under, quite bit over, and I was probably pushing too hard in the 30s overs and was more VO2max than threshold (Garmin thinks it was VO2max anyway). I generally didn’t have the best of cadence tonight though, still not pulling hard on my left arm.

 

[HLaB]

After this today



It’s typically forecast to be a torrential Saturday and I have worked from home all week so I gave in and did my Endurance workout outdoors on HR. It was originally supposed to be Birch but the outside workout is 1 flat interval so I changed it to Carter which at least has 3. Other than a burst through a long section of traffic lights on the busy London Road, which resulted in 1min of Tempo, I think I mainly got the intensity pretty ok on the other quieter and flat roads.

 

[Norry1]

I had 3hrs Z2 on my plan but ended up doing nearly 4 hours due to a road closure adding 10 miles to my ride. A big truck had gone down a ditch.

 

[Legs]

Weekend away in Hull so no bike for me. Got a persistent hotspot on the ball of my left foot so I didn’t do the parkrun either - I’d have liked to see what I’m capable of on a flat course, but didn’t want to aggravate it.

Couldn’t face a pre-5 get-up this morning, so I went for a slightly shorter 40-minute workout today - Grin And Bear It - which consists of 20x 30/30s and then a final 5 minutes of VO2 work. Not too brutal, but it had me sweating a bit! 170bpm is a lot for me…

 

[Norry1]

Quite a big Base week in the bank last week. 15 hours on the bike; 260 miles and 710 TSS.