You could focus on heavy power at the beginning and end of Zwift races.

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

Your one hour power.

Kind of pink.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

FTP but based on an hour test, as opposed to the 20 min version I assume you use?

My 20 min power is big, but there is no chance in hell I could do 95% of that for 60 mins. Traijing for FTP based on a 60 min test would be an all together different approach.

Other than that, fastest 100km outside has always been a fun challenge.

raise the roof, raise the ceiling...

I always work on my ENTIRE power profile



that includes from 15 sec to 3 hrs, using GC

I just see what my 'best' last 3 months were at the various power profiles and try to do better than whatever is the worst and this keeps me working on, well, just about everything

100 miles in under 4 hours.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

This is a good challenge.

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

This is a good one. Thanks for the suggestion!

This resonates with me. Do you have a method of tackling this, especially the shorter power profiles?

That reminded me of the good old days.

I rode from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara. It was 120 miles and I did it in 5 hours flat.

Not 25 mph, but very satisfying with all of the hills near Vandenberg AFB and Buellton.

If you race long course here's something to think about.
What % of your FTP can you hold for 2.5h or 5h?

If you've based your FTP on a ramp test or 20 min test what can you actually do for an hour?

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I'm a huge Zwift fan, at this point. Structured training is best on the trainer-even though I love to be outside, it's not practical for optimal training. Zwift and Strava also give a power profile, but I input all my rides into GC as it is more complete. I've become a bit more social when riding on the group rides and using Discord has been a great way to meet people from all over the country/world. Racing on zwift has pushed me to new heights also and has been the main way to achieve my goals. I just look at my 'best power' in the past 3 months for the various categories and if I don't have any in the top 3 or 5, I know that is where I'm slacking.

How?

There are a number of terrific group rides that stay together over a short course like London flat or Richmond flat and many in the group do the sprint. This has been THE best way for me to learn to bury myself at sprints. There are always some great sprinters. I pushed my 15 sec power (*and 1 sec) to new highs watching and learning how to best go into the sprint and then repeatedly doing this over a 45-60 min ride. Never got green jerseys before doing this. Kinetic Group Ride and Kinetic Cruisers go at ~2.7 W/kg steady and then all out for the sprints. These get a bunch of solid attempts at 15 sec power and I'll occasionally continue on to 30 sec, if I haven't worked on that for a while. There are a lot of 'group rides' that don't want you to sprint through their group, though. Some ride leaders get a bit sassy about it. *(which is something I don't understand, if you come back to the beacon and ride with the group as it's the best of both worlds-group draft for the sprint and group respect for the majority of the ride by staying together).

One w/o that I have a love/hate relationship with is a hard workout: 20/20 or 30/30. You need a good warmup, then do 20 or 30 seconds-all out, followed by 20-30 seconds of super easy spinning. It's intense and no zwift needed.

Repeats of 1-3 minutes are classic Vo2max workouts and there are tons of them on line. After a proper warmup, I like doing 5 x 1 or 2 minutes as hard as I can go/resting for 3-5 minutes. It's a quick but intense workout. It's best to know what you can hold for your 'best' prior 1/2 minute power so you try to approximate that effort. I will do these at high or low cadence and try to hold the same power to work on cadence also. I'll occasionally join Crit City and let the group pass and just work on 1/2 minute power here. Sometimes a race that has a long hill in it like, Innsbruck, with it's 'leg snapper' is a great way to work on 1 minute power. It takes me a little over a minute to get up that section and a 3 lap race is a nice ~40 minute workout.

5 minute power is ~1.2 of FTP. I've tried to do the classic vo2max workout of 4x5 min @ 1.1-1.2 and I struggle with it so I'll usually look for a super sprint race like the LaGuardia Super Sprint Race-it last 5-6 minutes (4K) for me.

My 20 minute power efforts are pretty much all done at Crit City as this is about ~20+ minute effort for me as a mid B racer. I try to do that once every 4-6 weeks. 60 minute power is any Zwift race of approximately that duration. I try to do the ones without huge hills. Alternatively, I'll join 'Faster Masters' on Tue or Thursday. Those guys hold 3.5-3.7 w/kg for 90 minutes. My FTP is 3.5 and I have not made 90 minutes yet...

On Saturday, I work steady endurance by doing a 2 hour steady ride at 2.7-3.0 (ZSun Base Builder, 3R Endurance Steady, ODZ Endurance or a Fondo). This is essentially 'sweet spot' training for me since it is ~85-90% of FTP.

There are lots of very long rides also-but it's hard to stay motivated to be on the trainer that long. I've done the Norseman series, which included the Uber pretzel and 5 hours on the trainer would be torture if there weren't others doing the same thing...


I do not do these all in the same week and rotate efforts at the shorter faster stuff. My focus is HIM, so I DO do the endurance workout every week...or at least I try-depending on life.


Holding a certain power using ERG is one other way to challenge yourself, knowing that you have to hold power and the trainer forces that-you only can vary cadence. Many people swear by it, but I only do it occasionally.


Hope this helps. Feel free to PM me with any questions. Best of luck with your training!

Dale

*edited to add:
join me for Zsun Sat 9am EST-I'm a backup Ride leader during the summer
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=1144035

Yes.

Or a real hour of power 25mi or hour, whichever is longer.

The British TT folks dabble in all sorts of distances. 1km, 3km (amateur/beginner pursuit), 4km (amateur/elite pursuit), 10mi, 25mi, 50mi, 100mi, 12hr, etc...

Sounds like you are actually saying raise the floor, ceiling and roof.

Good lord doc! That's gotta be your longest post on ST ever. :o)

Now time to go run.

likely longest in a while, Tom...when I'm not PM'd and giving advice...but I was just spinning so it distracted me...and yeah, it's time for me to run too

;)




well, yeah, the floor too-ha

I've been working on FTP for 13 years and it's been relatively unchanged for most of it. I've had ups and downs several times. I made big gains in the first few years then pretty flat.

I've worked on 2 hour, 1 hour, 20 min and mountain bike efforts without much change.

This winter I'm working on 1 and 2 min power with racing at a local Velodrome. I bought a training peaks plan to help me with the effort and staff at the track are working with me on the skills needed.

It's something new and different to work on. It's also surprising how much my 1 min power lags behind my 5, 20 and 60 min abilities in my power profile but that's coming up.

I'm hoping a boost in short high power will help with longer efforts this spring on the hilly courses at Triple T in May.

So if you've been working on the same FTP efforts for many years maybe changing things up with high power could help you with longer efforts.

I can link you to the Training Peaks plan if you'd like to take a look at it, it was only $39

Go back to Heart Rate based training? Actually half serious!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Thanks for taking the time to respond and share. I sincerely appreciate it. I've been resisting Zwift because I've felt like I could do it on my own. Reading your posts makes me want to give it a try. In one aspect I simply need to ride more and getting in on some Zwift groups while discording may help with that.

Are you a cyclist or triathlete?

If the latter there are way more lifelong GA na by getting you mile and 5km run time down and you 400m and 1500m swim times down.

The reason I say this is because of you improve these key benchmarks they come with lifelong technical gains

Bike fitness you can gain any time as there is no technical element to get better at. I personally regret all the winter trainer cycling I have done when I would have gained so much more becoming a better swimmer. I was already a good technical runner . The bike is largely a waste of fitness time if you are time constrained. It is super easy to ramp bike fitness with enough weeks if you already have high ability in the other two

Triathlete! In the spirit of Lionel Sanders (and in line with what you're suggesting) I thought it would be fun to set some short. To start trying to PR in the mile for the run and 200 meters for the swim. I'll determine where to go next if/when I hit those goals. Maybe bump it up to 5k and 400 meters after the prelim goals are met.

I just don't want to completely neglect the bike. Maybe focus on the goals above will translate over as you suggest (i think that's what you're saying). But wouldn't it be better to at least throw in three 1 hour rides a week focusing on 1 min or 5 min power?

Here's my conundrum.....

I've spent many a winter using a 20 week "out season" plan that focuses on FTP. I'm not sure if it's not enough riding or what, but I always get to where I was, but struggle to break through. Maybe my body just want to respond to it anymore. Regardless, I need to break up the monotony of what I've done winter after winter. Step one: do whatever motivates me to get on the saddle. Step two: find a structure within that to gain fitness. Reading through the comments, I really like the idea of jumping into zwift.

Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it.

Yes, please do share the link! Thanks a bunch.

This is the plan I bought:

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/...00-tss-av-pw-50-vouc

Now I know there will be some controversy about the 20 min FTP test he does because it's a straight 20 min without the 5 min blowout. Personally I do the 5 min blowout which probably brings the test power down a little bit.

The first 4 weeks is kind of boring and you'll be tempted to do more but don't. I soon dropped my running down to 12-15 miles per week so I could complete the workouts as planned. I'm just finishing the second 4 weeks and I'm only capable of doing what the plan calls for while running 12 miles a week.

Here's an example of what I did yesterday:
20 minute warm-up

4x (45 sec hard 15 sec zone 2 or 75% FTP)
2x (1 min zone 2 or 75% FTP 2 min hard)
10 min cool down

It may look easy but do the :45 and 2 min at maximal power and
1x (20 min 93% FTP) and you'll see how hard it really is.

My 1 min power has come up from 310 to 347 in the last 8 weeks (I'm 63.5 Kg) I haven't tracked 2 min power yet. I figure I'm going to need 1 min power of about 425 to keep up with the local fast guys, that's going to take a lot of effort.

Yeah, you got to where all of us have gotten to. At some point, no matter what you do in ANY sport, we will all get to our genetic potential....largely once you get there, its almost impossible to get past that point. But for bike it is easy to get to this point as there is no technique involved. Zero. But run and swim we are limited by form, so this makes it a worthwhile investment to get those permanent gains in technique which have barely anything to do with who our parents are.

By the way, if you are doing a swim or run focus and don't want to lose too much bike fitness, just give yourself four 30 min bike sessions per week. 10 min warmup then 20x50 seconds hard with 10 second zero, or 10x1:50 plus 10 second rest, or 3x6min with 1 min rest. If you do that, and you're seriously doing the other sports, you can almost instantly just back into 10-15 hrs of biking outdoors if you want and 3 weeks later you're close to a 1000% FTP focus because you already have fitnes from the other sports.