Do you think you could produce more power on your road bike for the duration of your planned intervals that would give you more stress?

Up through threshold, probably no. Above threshold, probably yes.

If we're talking hour, they'd be close enough it wouldn't matter.

But for intervals of around 12min and under per repitition.......yeah, I can make about 25w more on the road bike.

I think I may do my sweetspot workouts in TT and my 10min and longer intervals in TT. If under 10min, then I'll go with road. Like 3x8's or 4x5, or 5x5, or sets of 3x3, etc......

I did watch a video where cam wurf said that he tried to do all his training on the tt bike and his ftp went down, so he advocated doing just one session a week on the tt bike. Lionel has done blocks with almost no tt work in the past and still had good splits, and recently advocated un his livestream just doing your quality work on the uprights and all easy stuff in the tt. I imagine his hour record and daytona performance played a role in that theory. Jan seems to always be on a tt bike on the trainer, but he doesn't really make training videos as much as interviews.

Id imagine lionels thinking would be the most appropriate. Maybe do quality tt work during a build but i personally see no reason to do 100% tt if you are comfortable in the position already

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Strava

Cool, thanks!

I tend to agree with that. It also lends itself to the "more is more" given my TT position is much more restrictive than a 4 hour full IM ride is so the "more" on the road bike will be meaningful.

I've got time to experiment with it, so, I'll give it a shot. Go from 75% TT and 25% road to 75% road and 25% TT. Especially for the hi-power stuff.

If I recall pictures from my Obree book, he did a LOT of winter training almost fully upright on an old school spin bike he had rigged up to have really really precise resistance control on so he could track his efforts over time for training.

I will say that your question probably has a much more intricate answer than youd think, and im sure its been a question many pros have struggled with as well. It makes sense to think that triathlon is a TT position ride, so why wouldnt you just do all training the way you race? Like a nfl quarterback practicing throwing a baseball for training...

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Strava

except what if you can generate more power, higher kJ rides, more adaptations by using the road bike? If you do a 3h TT ride and you're going to do intervals after 75 min you may be at 750-800 kJ before starting intervals. On the road bike you may be at 1000-1200 kJ (of course the kJ # depends on your power output, that's for ~ 155-165w if my very, very rough back of the napkin math is correct).

As you expend more energy / the duration increases the efforts demand a greater physiological response.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Could you do those 25 extra watts for 40 minutes of work? Broken down as 5, 10, 15 or 20 min intervals with minimal rest between them?

I have yet to meet a cyclist or triathlete pro or age grouper that wouldn't mind an extra 10w on their FTP.

The higher you can drive it the more likely it'll be higher on the TT bike.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Great analogy. But, it cuts against your argument. Several of the top NFL QBs are former baseball players. The technique has significant overlap. My son has a QB coach who specifically references baseball technique all the time. As to road/TT riding, Jordan Rapp wrote a nice article or post a long time ago to answer your precise question. The reality is the two riding styles have probably 95% overlap (yes, I'm making that number up but its probably very close). There are lots of reasons to ride a road bike as a part of triathlon training--for me personally, overall more enjoyment and group rides are the two primary reasons.

Question: is he expending more energy on the road bike, or is he just more efficiently applying that energy to the pedals? if the answer is that you're actually able to expend more energy on the road bike, that would seem to indicate that you're at a limit somewhere in the TT position (hip angle causes you to not be able to mash the pedals as hard but lungs/heart are fine?)

If so, wouldn't you want to prioritize whatever that limiter is (via more time in TT position), rather than maximize the parts of the system which are not causing the limitation?

ETA: I realize that that goal may also be to maximize watts over x duration (or some percentage so you can still run), but it would seem to me that you're trying to maximize FTP (or whatever time duration) in the aero position, rather than just FTP on a road bike.

This is exactly what I'm thinking. I already do my 3 hour rides on the road bike. Using a 10mi TT bike position to ride for 3 hours endurance is just torture. For 20ish minutes of a time trial, it's nothing as your legs and lungs and stuff are hurting so much worse.

Road bike can just make more KJ's.

"More is more".


Short answer, yes.

Which is why I think I should reduce my ratio a bit. I have gone "mostly TT" for about 6 months now.

If you are comfortable on the TT bike then I would spend more time training on the road bike. That's exactly what I do but I'm not at +25 watts. I'm more like 7-10 watts maybe. (out of 225)

Thanks all.

Remember, my hip angle and all that are meant to be endured for pretty much about 22min and change. Not 4 hours of IM. So, power is always going to be less on my TT bike.

I dunno. My FTP has gone up by 30w in the last 6 weeks or so, and life is a lot harder now that I'm training to the higher number.

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Explain this. I’m not disagreeing; just not 100% convinced that the best way to drive up the FTP on the tt bike is by driving up ftp on road bike and then swapping over (and experiencing that likely immediate drop in tt ftp) as opposed driving up ftp while on the tt bike.

I'll let them answer overall, but I was under the assumption there is no swap. It's just shifting the ratio.

So, you're not flopping 100%/0% to 0%/100% or even 90/10. I would think something modest like 75/25. Like, normally 75% road bike and 25% TT. Then near your event swap it over to the opposite split.

Well, yes I wasn’t meaning to suggest 100%/0%. Just posing the question of what is the most effective way to drive up FTP on your TT bike.

For me then the long saturday rides with the roadies are the platform of my cycling. 4-5 hours of hammer time on the hills, every week throughout the year is just perfect for me for IM. Means that when everyone else is dreading the 'long rides' in the months up to IM then I'm actually reducing the time/distance.

Then I do my weekday zwifts on the TT Bike for about 6 months of the year, steady state power or structured intervals. So I'm still getting the position.

No idea about the physical aspect of road vs TT, but the mental side - both riding with others and 'competition' up the hills makes me get a better workout than even a fully compliant target power ride on the TT bike. The issue is it's hard to have a 'moderate' ride if I'm wanting to recover/rest/taper, so those I do swap to a solo roadie or a TT bike ride.

Also, group roadie rides finish at a cafe. Long TT rides finish with a run off the bike. Therefore doing weekly road bike rides is way way way bettter than TT rides....

It’s funny if you search for lsanderstri as was his handle here, he did a block of work many years ago on his roadie and said he spent significant time trying to replicate that same power in his tt position but couldn’t because he spent so much time on the roadie. Glad to see he has since changed his tune!
I find upright much easier and less mentally taxing indoors. As long as u can hold a tt position and get one in a week I think you would be fine as well.
I know a lot of coaches preach specificity and there’s two schools of thoughts on this topic. I like desert dudes take though. Go for the most power, just make sure you can still ride that tt position.
Didn’t know cam wurf only ride tt position once a week. Good to know, if it’s good enough for him, well....

Nice post Duncan74.

Part of this is driven by Covid also. I'm not doing the group rides. Usually I would do the weeknight worlds. I would also warmup for 30min to an hour before the ride also. That was obviously road bike.

Always a challenging effort of some kind. Some weeks you throw in a couple digs up a hill and then hold on some threshold on the false flat OR the P/1/2 guys show up and all you do for 90min is rotate and pray you don't explode off the back. Then eventually sit out of rotation on the back. While they get done and laugh it off and the rest of us lean on the car in despair after.

I think my road bike volume will go back up with daylight and warmth. When warmer and more daylight I rise early on weekends and do a metric century alone from like 6 to 9.

Alright, given the other poster that just showed up I thought it would be nice to give an update.

I've recently backed off of 75% TT bike 25% road bike and gone 75% road bike and 25% TT bike.

I now am finding that "more is more". I can make more power on the road bike, and burn more KJ per workout, for longer. Which in turn drives more TSS, higher and longer power in zones. The TT bike setup is aggressive, 40k or less. Preferably 10mi. So 120min workouts on that suck.

Road bike now, I haven't retested but with only 3 weeks of doing this at least my Z2 heartrate I've had to raise the ftp of my workouts a whole 20w to keep Z2 high enough HR to be Z2 even.

TT bike has been fine. The power has trickled up over there with the road bike while that %-difference is maintained.

So, cliff notes:
-road bike should probably be most work
-choose a ratio of road/TT that optimizes the gains on road bike with the % loss to TT

Good points. I am looking forward to the Spring and warmer temps so I can start riding more outside and to also balance the road and tri bikes more as well.

One good point somebody made in a bike race only forum was that I can't really do VO2 the same level I would on the road bike. And some amount of VO2 in the diet is necessary. That suffered when I did the TT only stuff.

I think what I'll do come warm weather is a weekly TT simulation ride. Plot a course of 10mi or more (22ish min or longer) and go do it balls out. With a good 20min warmup and 20min cooldown.

I wanted to find this and update my original topic.

In the last month and a half I have altered the ratio of road to TT from what was maybe even more than 50% TT, maybe even 60 to 75% down to 25% TT and 75% road.

I'm now hitting new power PR's on both bikes.

Since I'm focusing on TT work and not short power durations right now, the PR's are not in the 1min thru 5min range.

But, I've simply smashed my 90min power pr's on both bikes recently. I even set a 90min PR on the TT bike (including old road bike figures) outdoors. I did a 10mi practice TT segment I made on the TT bike, and power was really good given the terrain. A few downhills and turns where you're not all out, and can't make up for it really the rest of time.

I think the "more is more" approach is better by biasing more than 50% your work on the road bike so long as you keep the ratio and frequency of TT bike work so that you don't start digging an efficiency hole.

Other thing is I started randomly doing some pushups, plank, and suitcase crunches during the day. I was tired of being kind of shapeless but still decently skinny. Like, just drop and do 10 a few times a day. Build up to doing sets of 25 or 30 to total 100 a day. Not much. This made a HUGE difference in TT bike comfort. Zero fit coordinate changes. But now I don't get any neck or shoulder and arm discomfort at all riding the thing. I used to "call it" on TT bike workouts to having to be around an hour. I built it for 10mi TT and a yearly 25mi TT. Not for Ironmans. So, 2hr+ road rides were sucky. Now, they're fine. Only discomfort now is not having Di2 and needing to reach to shift when off the extensions. But that's an annoyance. Not discomfort.

So, if any of you want more aggressive positions but can't really do it due to discomfort........I'd analyze how strong your core and arms and trunk area are. The pushups and plank don't make you look like a "bro" if you keep them unweighted. Just trim and functional.