I made a mistake on Garmin with the workout for a rider who I’m coaching yesterday, mixing the repeat bubbles. And being tuned out she didn’t notice until way into it. Instead of 3x10 40/20 VO2 she ended up doing 9x2 (the rest period between sets had slipped into the 10 repeats bubble) before she realized what had happened and stopped.
Would something like this (7x3?) have value for her days that should be easy, but not full recovery, or when she should be doing a bigger VO2 workout but life schedule won’t allow sufficient recovery thereafter? I’m assuming it will have little benefit to her high aerobic adaptation, since whilst she’d be hitting the power zone, she’d either barely be hitting or not hitting the right HR. Even if it would add to her general muscular conditioning and comfort at this power. But anaerobic?
40/20 or 30/15 tabata style in anaerobic / z6 are typically also done with similar periodization 2x or 3x 8/10/12, but since the oxygen and glycogen requirements become exponentially higher much more quickly than VO2 / Z5, would doing something like 7x3 40/20 at mid anaerobic power zone be of significant benefit? Or just not worth it and better to wait for days when she can do a proper targeted workout?
I suspect the latter in most cases. But in her case, it could be different. She’s only just beginning structured training (or really any training) after picking up cycling 3 years ago and doing almost exclusively z1/z2 at more than 30k KM a year. She’s very unusual in so far as she’s already operating at a fairly high level, but almost totally untrained - usually there aren’t so many low hanging fruit. She’s also still wildly under fueling the hard workouts, so when I know she won’t have adequate recovery after a potential workout window, I’m very reluctant to set anything too hard.
70k plus. Her one off threshold efforts are good, but lacks recovery due to lack of time spent in zone and conditioning / adaption, and poor fueling. VO2 she found very difficult to do at all at first - I think more mentally than anything. She’s getting better and can do 7x3min VO2 over-unders with 5 at mid VO2 and 2 at the very top end. But lack of adequate fueling and rest mean 40/20s are preferable due to much greater time spent in zone to fatigue ratio. Anerobic a lot worse. Neuromuscular poor repeatability and ability to hold it, but max sprint is consistently around 800W which is quite good for an untrained female at 58-60kg. All of this expected given what she’s been doing. Obvious answer is as much VO2 as we can possibly fit in to raise her aerobic ceiling, raise her anaerobic floor, and get her used to recovering, repeating and generally suffering. With a bit of anaerobic mixed in. We can add threshold back in once her fueling is better, and spiked tempo, SS etc - but at the moment it’s just not worth the fatigue given that her fueling is crap. Goal is the very highest level of road pro tour. It’s difficult to gauge how efficient one thing is vs another, or one thing that might or might not be totally marginal is working, since she’s so untrained for an athlete of her level that still virtually any training is going to reap rewards. Hence seeking some guidance on the possible utility of ‘unorthodox’ 30/15 or 40/20 7x3 anaerobic. I’d never normally even think about something like that, but she’s an edge case.
Very interesting and of course there is way to little we know about the athlete.
But I guess as you say the key is to get the fueling right.
And personally I would introduce a lot more 8 to 12 second efforts in her easy days
Do you mind me asking for how long she can hold 800 watts
What her 5 min power is and her 60 min power is .
What I will say is that I don’t think your unorthodox session is that unorthodox for the type of athelte you are working with who seems to have a very good natural stamina.
And ps she must have a good background , Nordic skier , speed skater, runner swimmer etc. IE she hardly has never done any sport before … .
3 or 4 seconds but she usually only does it at the end of long rides, and I don’t think she’s ever done it rested.
No background except being ‘sporty’.
To give you an idea of both the difficult experience coaching her is, and how much potential she has, I just got back from my own ride to see a message from her on WA that she’d uploaded her ride.
She was meant to do 3x9 40/20 VO2, 300-320W range and aiming for 310-315W avg, with 145-160W 20s off periods. I emphasized repeatedly to her that she must try to stay in this range for the ‘on’ periods or it would become anaerobic, and also to soft pedal the last couple of 20s intervals of each block if she felt like she was going to blow up in the last couple of 40s.
Instead she did 1 interval at 320W and all the rest over, most over 330W and quite a few over 340W. She soft pedaled most of the 20s periods. So about 3/10 for following the workout, and same for efficiency, but because she’s so untrained it’s still a ‘good’ workout and will make her stronger (if she fueled and recovers). For someone who’d been doing serious structured training for a long time, sitting on the couch might have been of more benefit. The 3rd and last block she did the 320W as the first one, then all the other 8 over 330W, with the final and 27th one at 364W.
I haven’t spoken to her yet, but I suspect either she finally fueled, and / or her VO2 (and lactate threshold) are way higher than I’d estimated. Because she’s never done anything like this before in Z6, and it’s difficult to believe this is truly primarily anaerobic for her. I don’t see how she could have the repeatability if it was.
This is one of the issues. How do you estimate FTP and zones for someone who’s severely under-fueled and often not recovered or rested? And further who’s zones should be constantly shifting upwards. I’d set her zones and the workout based on a 20 minute effort at 273W (262W FTP) 3 weeks ago - which again was the result of her going way too hard on a workout. As usual she was almost totally unfueled, then went on to do the SS and Tempo intervals I’d set for her that day - again way over target power and unfueled - predictably resulting in her legs being dead for about 10 days.
Just spoke to her. She says she fueled this time - though haven’t got any more than that.
do you prescribe what she should eat before during and after the. session?
I would say that is key
if I were you I would suggest you watch her in person or over zoom actually doing a session to see how she moves ,how she looks during the, session when she fuels, what her breathing is like etc
totally armchair estimate but if an athlete rides 70k mostly z1 and 2 in 2 years and. can sprint at 800 watts I would. estimate that her 20min power would be more like 300 watts. and she should be more like 330ish watts for 5 min.
I guess you have to give her a fueled range and a non fueled range so she learns the importance of fueling
the other thing is she wants to go into. cycling what are you doing about skills ie in my mind she should ride a bit less and spend more time on her race craft and learning the basics ie riding in parking lots etc and she she should not yet ride, 35k a year
just some food for thought as I know verye little . congrats for working with such an athlete, what a joy that is , she has obviously drive and a rather good work ethic and she will learn quickly I would say.
I would not yet worry so much if she should. ride 320 or 330 watts ,again totally only my 2 cents.
the other thing I would make sure are her periods regular as I would think the way she trains and fuels they are not. again totally. guessing.
ps. I would use more rpe and make her more aware of that. so power range and rpe as she needs to learn that more.
Yeah this makes little sense to me. Are you trying to maximise stimulus or minimise stress? If you want to improve 320w economy, spend more time at 320w. If you want her heart to grow, prescribe 4min all-out pieces and ignore watts. If you want to improve lactate shuttling, have her redline a TT. For strength, big gear sprints and weights.
In what world does prescribing a complex interval set result in better outcomes than the athlete doing a relevant effort by feel?
No observed indoor training. She hates indoors and won’t do training indoors at all. Though that is probably partly due to having a bad crash and breaking her wrist last year, and being forced to ride on the trainer for a while. I got her to see a therapist (psychologist) who’s been of great benefit to her, but she’s started skipping sessions.
I don’t think it can be quite as high as 300W. But in a make-believe world where she eats enough before rides and fuels with enough sugar during them, it could reasonably be high 280s or low 290s now. But certainly if she’ll follow instruction, hitting 300W shouldn’t take that much work. I think after this session we can reasonably assume her fueled 20min best is minimum 10W higher.
I have to pick my battles. But yes I try to advise her on nutrition generally - which is further complicated by being a strict vegan who frequently opts out of eating fruit and vegetables ( ). She said she had a smoothie with 6-7 medium sized bananas (??) 90 mins before her ride today, and felt much better and more fueled, and hardly touched her sugar bottle. Of course that’s not exactly optimal, and I’m not quite sure how she can ride with that much in her gut, but it’s obviously better than nothing. I’ve recommended she continue doing that, but halve the banana content / smoothie size and consume much more sugar on the ride. We’ll see if she listens.
She’s had hardly any races, and tends to sit on the front for long periods at SS / mid threshold making it uncomfortable for the other girls, but I think up until the last few weeks (and trying to get her to do high aerobic / anaerobic work) she hasn’t really been equipped to attack. The penny does seem to be dropping a bit though.
She’s incredibly physically gifted. But skills and bike handling wise she’s way beyond drills in car parks. She’s way better than 95% of the women’s peleton and most men. She’s a total natural, and has too much confidence in her skills.
She has almost no experience at these power zones, and her cardiovascular fitness significantly exceeds her physical (skeleto-muscular) conditioning for these kind of efforts. She needs to be expending some effort during the 20s rest periods if this is targeting VO2, or her heart rate is going to be too low to be of any great benefit. I need to be very prescriptive or nothing productive will happen at all. As I’ve already explained, her fueling and rest are sub-optimal, to put it kindly. So I’m wary of prescribing longer intervals, because if she freestyles and overdoes things without fueling, she’ll be fucked for a while. But if today is a turning point re: fueling, I’ll happily get her doing longer intervals again, because she’s fairly good at following 3-4min VO2 intervals, for whatever reason.
I guess you have to pick your battles wisely, but seems like nutrition is the key one
also based on the little we know I like that you advised an therapist.
). She said she had a smoothie with 6-7 medium sized bananas (??) 90 mins before her ride today, and felt much better and more fueled, and hardly touched her sugar bottle. Of course that’s not exactly optimal, and I’m not quite sure how she can ride with that much in her gut, but it’s obviously better than nothing. I’ve recommended she continue doing that, but halve the banana content / smoothie size and consume much more sugar on the ride. We’ll see if she listens.