Cycling Fitness / Training Advice

As I think I said on @fredtc 's thread, I understand the traditional view was that 6 weeks is usually the lead time for real physical change to take place, but it's maybe shorter for some people. As @hippy says maybe look back at your history to get some pointers.

Have you been doing a fair bit of threshold till now? If so I would change the stimulus a bit, or at least do it for a few weeks then consider some higher intensity before you start to taper.

On a separate note, has anyone gone through a TTE block and care to share what they did and what worked/didn't work?

That top plan is quite a lot of work sat-mon.

The eve t demands short efforts a d returning to threshold. I'd think and over unders session would be ace preparation at this point.

Want a guinea pig for your new coaching business?

I always mentally felt better leading into an event if I knew I’d done as much as I could fit in. The power of confidence isn’t to be underestimated as long as you don’t burn out.

Ha! It's out of scope time trial coaching. Just think backwards from what the event demands. But it's not a solid state effort. Also the anaerobic component is the one that responds in the shortest time frame (weeks).

TTE time trial endurance blocks? If yes then I've done a few

Volume always helps, I’d add a Z2 ride in on the Tuesday, without knowing to much about what those sessions look like I would also swap a threshold for some thing that accumulates time above threshold such as 40/20s at 120ish % of TT effort or something like 5x5s

Look up Kolie Moore for a lot of guidance on that. He’s shared a great FTP test based on TTE and has multiple episodes of his podcast dedicated to it.

Thanks, I've been through the podcasts he's done on it a few times and do the TTE test periodically when not racing. It's great for 'feeling' your threshold or whatever he says you should be able to do.

For implementing the TTE training blocks I'm interested to understand how people have implemented it more than "just do longer steady state intervals" as he (understandably) isn't going to give away how he actually prescribes it. And moreover what worked and didn't work with it. I'd be surprised if it's 2 x 20' then 2 x 22.5' then 2 x 25 then 2 x 30 given how much he slams TR for being formulaic and boring...

I guess what I'd like to know is how much should you actually structure the progression, how important is TiZ vs lengthening the intervals, what do you do when you plateau, how long should you do it for (3,4,5,6 more weeks) and so on.

Can’t answer, but I don’t quite agree on the assertion that he’d be against steady progression like that. That is his philosophy, AFAICT. He slams TR mostly for the silly ‘kitchen sink’ style workouts and random-length intervals, doesn’t he?

I think he would prescribe what you suggest. But he also might suggest one of his horrid sounding Vo2 blocks so you don’t go stale. You could send in a question to his podcast? He might answer it.

Thanks for the input y’all. Think the suggestion of over-unders makes a lot of sense. Plan to ride the course a couple of times at pace on the weekends too so might just stick with 2 sessions a week. Maybe 1.5hrs for both

O/U's or similar lactate clearance is so good for TT prep imho (for me).

Eg instead of 2 x 20 you can do 1 min 110%, 4 mins 95% and repeat 4 times, even better if the under is right at threshold. Eventually you can push it out to 30-40 mins without rest.

Great shout, I'll send him a message

If you like em spicy and find 20 min intervals long/boring. I like 3x12 as 3min at 100% ftp and 1 min at 110% 2x per week at 4 weeks out off 5 mins z2 recovery. Then again at 3 weeks out off 4 min recovery then 3min for the second one that week and in the last week before taper 3x12 as 2 mins 100% ftp 1min 110% off 4 minutes recovery then the same off 3 min recovery for the last one that week. I've no idea if these are better than anything else similar but they work for me because I have a short attention span and enjoy smashing myself occasionally. If you really like to suffer you can start these a week earlier and progress to 5x9 min @&over off 3 min recoveries 2min@1min over.
Edit: just did one of these myself. Longish warmup required but I think that's more a middle age thing for me now. I had to almost constantly gaslight myself to get though the over parts of the last set. My legs felt absolutely full until almost 40s into the following threshold portion. I've been doing 3x12 @FTP 2x per week for the last few weeks and this did feel like a big bump in effort from those. I'll report back in a month. For any Triathlonists I wouldn't recommend this as part of a Bike-Run brick I did consider 5 miles Z2 run off this but it took my legs about 8 mins to start feeling like they could do anything worthwhile which defeats the object of a brick. Hopefully my running legs will work in the morning. None of these are my own concoctions just some key workouts from a 10 year old pre season block. These were set by Elliot Lipski at the time and he's gone up in the cycling world considerably since then. I have not.

Out of curiosity how is TR marking these workouts for you i.e. productive, stretch, breakthrough?

Productive in the build phase then achievable in specialism

Just re-planned and it gave me this. Not sure I need a rest week but will see when I get there

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Cheers, hope the training goes well!

What are you opting for, in terms of TR choices?

Also anyone else team #nofan?

I’ve used the ai plan builder and made a two month build and speciality program as I figured I was probably alright for base. I am currently finding the interval sessions easier than I would have expected so have changed a few of the productive ones to be stretch or breakthrough and then seeing what adaptations are recommended to future workouts and changing as I see fit. So this was yesterday for instance 5 x 10 minute intervals at 94% ftp.

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Instead of changing workouts yourself, probably better to adjust the intensity up during the workout you find easy, or pick "easy" in the post workout survey, TR will then adjust future workouts to suit

Yes I’ve been experimenting with this too. Upping intensity a few percent and filling in the survey easy when I’ve found it like that.

So far I like TR and find myself much less bored than I thought I would be just staring at the blue blocks

I fucking love me some blue blocks!

Actually I've been watching a lot of psytrance sets on youtube. It's nice eye candy because apparently only sexy, young people go to psytrance parties...