Less Biking, Watts Up?

Triathlon Forum
1

Mainly to Sciguy and Jackmott. If you guys recall, last winter, I said that I tend to see my highest FTP in the winter when I am XC skiing and biking a lot less. My theory is that I cannot train as hard as often on the tri sports, and my aerobic engine gets more efficient, even though my bike volume is very low in the winter.

To experiment on this, after my last tri in October, I basically wound down the biking. In November, I did just under 500K and in December just under 400K of riding, most of this was moderate intensity short spinning on my rollers (30-40 min at a time). I ran a fair amount both months, especially a lot of treadmill hill intervals at 8-12% grade. Over the last year, I found that whenever I was on biz travel I would literally get back home after running a lot of treadmill hill repeats and see my bike wattages go up, but that was typically after missing biking for 5-14 days at a time not on low bike volume for 2 months.

In Decemenber, I added a decent amount of XC skiing, mainly classic style and also did 5 hard speed skating sessions, with intervals and also a 5000m TT at the oval. In the past, I had noticed that whenever I do more speed skating my trainer sessions are that much better, probably because by definition every speed skate session is intervals (kind of like swimming, you just don’t go to the oval and putter around in circles for an hour).

Anyway, yesterday, this was an unplanned workout, after training just under 5 hours on Saturday (speed skate, classic ski, skate ski, run spread through the day). I first got on my spin bike and rode 20 min easy, then got on my treadmill and ran 25 min to warmup with a bunch of 30-60 second hill intervals to get my heart rate up and legs working, got on the CT, warmed the tire up, put in a 30 min TT course that I do every so often, and logged a higher wattage than I had through the entire tri season. The week before Vegas when I had my best bike ride of the year, I averaged 248W, yesterday I did 254W and was only going at 95-97% perceived effort, only because I have been biking so little that I was unsure what I could sustain. At the halfway, I was at 250W. With 7 minutes to go, it felt OK, so I biked the last part at over 270W for most of it. I was actually quite surprised ending up where it did. It was hard, but not crazy hard. Ran 10 more minutes on the treadmill and had good legs to actually pick it up. The TT befere Vegas was during a taper week on fairly fresh legs. Yesterday it was on totally trashed legs.

3 other factors in December:

overall training volume up over Novsleep volume up over the last 2 weeks of holidayszero work related stress last 2 weeks
I’ll weigh in later today to see what my weight is at when I get to the gym.

2

so it looks like you are saying training workload is up last month, sleep is up and stress is down. you enter all this info after the title of the thread implying less is more.

not a good troll :wink:

3

Maybe the magic of a lot of months of hard work and then tapering?

4

That was my suspicion too. You should look at your data and see if you might be able to use the same training patterns to taper for tri.

5

Also, though you say you were on trashed legs yesterday, but that is just a short term kind of trash. Sore muscles. In my experience bike racing the last couple years, where I did a lot of stage races, power would be pretty much the same for the afternoon time trials despite a crit or road race in that morning. It just hurt a lot, but sometimes I would set power PRs for the duration.

But after a a few weeks in a row of hard work you start to get pretty down.

6

A lot of triathletes don;t really floow or believe in periodization and tend ot jsut go, go, go, train, train, train, race, race race and not take much rest. Unless your tracking TSS daily and evaluating you fitness vs. form (recovery) you are pretty mcuh flying blind. I think a lot of triathletes are racing with negative TSB values and by the fall might be beaten down running -30 or lower TSB values consistently. So taking just a few weeks where you overall load is lower, could really boost you ablity to perform… basically a taper.

Remember, leg fatigue is not directly related to overall training load. You can do short intenst intervals and really fatigue you legs, but have very low overall training load. Similarly, a 5 hour fairly easy training ride could have a lower overall training load than a very intenst 2-1/2 hour tempo effort or group ride. You might t feel more fatigued from the long ride because of it’s specific demands.

7

Also, though you say you were on trashed legs yesterday, but that is just a short term kind of trash. Sore muscles. In my experience bike racing the last couple years, where I did a lot of stage races, power would be pretty much the same for the afternoon time trials despite a crit or road race in that morning. It just hurt a lot, but sometimes I would set power PRs for the duration.

But after a a few weeks in a row of hard work you start to get pretty down.

Thanks Jack. This is a bit of a follow on from last winter’s discussion. As I mentioned, then, the biggest change is the training load from XC skiing and speed skating, which I can’t really replicate from triathlon sports. It’s probably hard for you guys who don’t do it to understand how often you can do intensity and recover from it. I hadn’t done a single hard ride for 2 months now just doing moderate intensity at best (no power meter, but probably maxing out at half IM intensity on the rollers), and got on the trainer and was able to crank out watts that were as good or better than anything in the tri season. Also, my overall winter training hours are generally just as high as tri season (this week for example was 21.5). The pattern of superior winter fitness seems to always replicate itself every year.

I just find the specificity is a bit overrated if you can get superior fitness through other sources. December training load was 16, 15, 15, 18.5 hours and this past week 21.5, so it’s a good performance out of the legs at the end of 5 fairly decent weeks of training (one of those weeks involved tran atlantic travel so that was, all things considered a massive week from overall stress load).

Anyway, the biking volume has been really low, but I have been doing other stuff, and the biking performance has risen with better fitness that did not come from bike workouts.

I know a lot of skiers say, “it does not matter how much dryland stuff you do, you can never get as fit as when you finally get on snow”. These guys generally have some of the highest recorded VO2max’s around (granted some of the numbers from the 90’s were likely enhanced, but so were the cyclists of the same era).

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are you also running less?

9

are you also running less?

Running more. Nov and Dec were my two biggest run months of the year.

10

well then you are just helluva weird =)
.

11

As I mentioned, then, the biggest change is the training load from XC skiing and speed skating, which I can’t really replicate from triathlon sports. It’s probably hard for you guys who don’t do it to understand how often you can do intensity and recover from it. I hadn’t done a single hard ride for 2 months now just doing moderate intensity at best (no power meter, but probably maxing out at half IM intensity on the rollers), and got on the trainer and was able to crank out watts that were as good or better than anything in the tri season. Also, my overall winter training hours are generally just as high as tri season (this week for example was 21.5). The pattern of superior winter fitness seems to always replicate itself every year.

To build on this from a bike racing perspective - by far my best years were after winters where on weekends I cross country skied a lot. It was just so much better for outdoor intensity, or fairly intense endurance, than road cycling where I lived. It’s hard, at least from a motivational standpoint, to do long, hard rides outside when bundled up like a michelin man, whereas on skis it was easy to do really quality workouts at 15 or 25F.

In my case, midweek was some bike trainer work with intervals which was certainly important. (I rarely can ski midweek) But when it’s near freezing or below, 3 hours on skis each day on the weekend was far far more helpful to my cycling than 3 hours on the bike outdoors each day. Perhaps a 3-hour trainer rides would have been even better, but my mind explodes after 60 minutes on the trainer.

The one thing I found after winters of few or no long hard outdoor rides was that in the first few bike races I’d feel great, but after about an hour my legs would hurt like crazy. This passed within a month.

12

and also did 5 hard speed skating sessions, with intervals and also a 5000m TT at the oval. In the past, I had noticed that whenever I do more speed skating my trainer sessions are that much better, probably because by definition every speed skate session is intervals.

Dev,
Since you mentioned this…In Japan, where track cycling is really big, it’s a well-known fact that good speed skaters always make good keirin riders, and vice versa. I remember reading stories about keirin coaches trying to scout for riders from elite skating teams, or skaters trying to make some money racing keirin in off-season. Actually, there is even a lady here (can’t remeber the name) who raced both sports in the Olympics and got into the top 10 in both sports - 500m track TT and 500m speed skating.

13

and also did 5 hard speed skating sessions, with intervals and also a 5000m TT at the oval. In the past, I had noticed that whenever I do more speed skating my trainer sessions are that much better, probably because by definition every speed skate session is intervals.

Dev,
Since you mentioned this…In Japan, where track cycling is really big, it’s a well-known fact that good speed skaters always make good keirin riders, and vice versa. I remember reading stories about keirin coaches trying to scout for riders from elite skating teams, or skaters trying to make some money racing keirin in off-season. Actually, there is even a lady here (can’t remeber the name) who raced both sports in the Olympics and got into the top 10 in both sports - 500m track TT and 500m speed skating.

I’ve got something better than top 10 :wink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Hughes

Maurice

14

I’ve got something better than top 10 :wink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Hughes

Damn… that’s impressive. I think we should invite her to race the “proper” (betting) keirin over here )))

15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Hughes
She is awesome as an athlete and a person. I met her once briefly - so nice.

16

and also did 5 hard speed skating sessions, with intervals and also a 5000m TT at the oval. In the past, I had noticed that whenever I do more speed skating my trainer sessions are that much better, probably because by definition every speed skate session is intervals.

Dev,
Since you mentioned this…In Japan, where track cycling is really big, it’s a well-known fact that good speed skaters always make good keirin riders, and vice versa. I remember reading stories about keirin coaches trying to scout for riders from elite skating teams, or skaters trying to make some money racing keirin in off-season. Actually, there is even a lady here (can’t remeber the name) who raced both sports in the Olympics and got into the top 10 in both sports - 500m track TT and 500m speed skating.

I’ve got something better than top 10 :wink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Hughes

Maurice

Actually I have been strongly considering adding some in line skating intervals to mix up the summer training. Speed skating is like riding in the aero position at high intensity without aero bars to rest on. When I did my TT, it was the first time in aerobars in around 2 months and it was the best I felt in the aerobars all year. I’ve also been doing a ton of classic XC double poling, so I think the abs and lower back are generally more endurance fit (I realize that with the proper fit, you don’t really use your core at all on the bike, but this is just in theory).

To jt1000, I think it is just much easier to keep a higher level of intensity on a 3 hour ski than a 3 hour bike. You can’t keep up that level of intensity on a 3 hour run and you generally won’t do a 3 hour swim. For example, this weekend, I did 8 hours of training, most of it XC skiing. Really, almost impossible to do that on the bike, even in good weather (at least keep that level of intensity up).

17

A quick read through and some thoughts.

I used to see a jump in FTP type power/intensity when I was incorporating a progressive run treadmill session into my schedule.
Its one of the best I have, and I credit it with at least part of my running ability particular over longer distances.

Start the treadmill at a comfortably hard speed, lets say, 10mph, on 0.5%, then minute for the first 5 you go up by 0.5%, then in the last 5 its 0.5% every 30 secs, so you end up on about 7.5-8% at 10mins.
Stop at 10 mins, well drop the speed right down, and jog as you return the treadmill to 1%, should take about 30secs, set the speed to 10.5mph and off you go again for another 10 minutes.

This continues on until you can no longer stay on the treadmill and you feel like you are going to get shot off.
If you get the speed right this should be about 3-4 10 minute sets.

Record which set you failed on. Next time you do it you start at the speed of the set BEFORE you failed.
So say you did 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5 and failed halfway through 11.5 you would start the next workout on 11. This time you may only get two done, as you failed on the 11.5 before, but steadily you will work your way to finishing the 11.5, then onto 12. etc.

Its a bloody hard workout and to me is the perfect example of a workout designed to increase lactate clearance as you slowly build to threshold then work beyond.

Anyway, long story short, when I started doing this my FTP went up. I spent ages thinking there was a physiological reason behind this, but the timescales just didn’t fit. So I figured it was all about pain endurance management.
This workout taught me one thing, to face my central governor, to look it in the eye and say no. Not kidding, I used to talk to it on the treadmill at the gym ‘mental’ yes. But it taught me that when it hurt, when your body was saying no there was still another gear, it was just being cautious.
This made it ALOT easier to push out truly hard efforts on the bike, particularly the sustained efforts like a 40km TT.

The same principle happens a few days after seeing the sports physio, which with my hips is 2-3 hours of utter pain, making me almost sick. This resets my pain threshold as nothing compares!

There is a podcast which talks about the rituals that some of the kenyan men have to go through to become men, including circumcision and then running with that level of pain. This theory has been proposed as a reason for their dominance. Their pain thresholds have a whole new level that unless you have been through the above you cannot endure.

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I’ m sharing your thoughts on this. During winter I mix up my training with some 2 hour speedskating workouts instead of those boring biketrainersessions. In spring and summer I like to do some inlineskating as well for the same reasons you’ve mentioned. Apart from that, when I’ m traveling it’s easier to take my inlineskates than my bike…:wink:

19

well then you are just helluva weird =)

Jackmott, I wanted to send you another data point. This year (since Jan 6) I have ridden on my computrainer three times (today was the third time). My total riding is 20 hours over those 10 weeks, mainly warmup and recovery rides sitting bolt upright on my spin bike (so around 2 hours of fairly easy spinning per week). As mentioned earlier in this thread, I did some speed skating, decent amount of classic style XC skiing, decent run mileage (like 70k per week) and lots of hill running intensity, plus a number of hard swims although not high swim volume.

Basically the biking has been totally non structured and this was only my third ride in the aerobars on the computrainer since Jan 6. I decided to do a 30 min TT today and average 255W (3.98W per kilo).

I know you guys on ST think that specificity is king, but I think for athletes with experience who have done these sports forever, general overall fitness trumps specificity. No way my numbers should be on par with “race season” given almost zero specificity if we say that specificity is the most important.

I think that on this forum we get too caught up in the specificity of workouts rather than just enjoying ourselves , doing workouts that are fun for the season at hand. My XC ski friends also get totally anal and get caught up in roller ski workouts all summer when they can just ride or trail run and get very good fitness benefits given that most of them already have a lifetime of “technique” and can get back to race specificity in a few weeks when fitness is good.

Dev

20

You mean if we go an exercise a lot, we will get faster?

There goes the coaching profession…