Great read. Good insight. Will be interesting to read your 2028 take on all of this.

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http://www.fitspeek.com the Fraser Valley's fitness, wellness, and endurance sports podcast

Thanks a lot! :) English is not my first language but enjoyed finally dumping all my thoughts about training somewhere

Overall was a good read. Very thorough and I enjoyed reading the steps and progression. I always like reading how other people approach this sport, and if there are things I should think about in my training.

Only item I skipped over was your ripping of Trainerroad from your experience 5 years ago. I have no affiliation with them, but the tool and AI behind it has gotten me big gains. Dylan Johnson has his own coaching service, so has financial motive to go after Trainerroad and turn some of those YouTube views to subscriptions of his coaching service.

Yeah definitely agree. It comes over as bashing a little bit but it's really bashing on TrainerRoad as it was 5 years ago and jesus it burried me. Obviously I wasn't ready for that training load but neither would be now. Intensity was crazy high.
But anyway as I also wrote about the AI and current plans in the post.. I have no experience with it, I followed up on the topic a little bit though. And there were specific episodes on the podcast targeting Dylan Johnson's criticism and I think they agreed to a certain degree that they have to change something to at least outline plans a little more regarding intensity, not only volume. Because 5 years ago plans were only categorized based on volume, not on intensity. And the weekly hours alone were not crazy and totally doable.

Ah and also maybe should add i to the post as well: I still use TrainerRoad as I think it's the best app for indoor training

Understood, again it was a great post.

Thanks a lot :)

Good read, and you are totally wrong about everything.

Just kidding. Thanks for reminding me to get my stretchcords back out.

As regards FTP tests, did you do the required all-out 5 minute effort before the 20 minute trial? A lot of people get the protocol wrong (I did for sure).

Anyway FTP tests are a menace and with a bit of experience you can gauge your LT2 pretty much without testing? Like watch your heart rate drift over each repeat in a 4x10’ at threshold (for it to not exceed 5%), or better yet, try doing over-unders in the version where the “unders” are at 95% (e.g. 4x12’ where each 12’ is 1 minute at 105% and 2 minutes at 95%, repeated four times). If you can do the over unders without becoming suicidal, the threshold is reasonable. This has worked for me, although I always remember what Mikael Eriksson says, as do his podcast guests: for practical purposes, FTP is more of a range than a point estimate.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Haha... Thanks :)

I really do think that stretchcords are underrated despite not enjoying them at all.

Yeah, did the 5min before the 20min. I think it's good to get in a few FTP tests in the beginning and then go from there. And yes, I'm pretty sure most of the time I'd be able to estimate my FTP outcome within 5-10 watts. And that's at least the daily fluctuation of it anyway so yeah.. don't really care about measuring it, just wastes training time for tapering (even if it's just a day) and recovery.
And yeah exactly, watching the progress over similar intervals is *so* much more insightful in my opinion. Imagine doing 1 workout of those 4x10' and having an off-day but that now sets your training zones for the next few months. Pretty silly in my opinion. I think that's where my software engineering background might kick in as well. I'd never measure anything like that and base everything on the results for the months to follow :D