Cycling Fitness / Training Advice

Just do 3 8 min efforts.
A ramp test isnt that good training and doing it once a week is pointless.

As Skinny says, do some short intervals instead..

I must say, since moving in (temporarily) with the in-laws and being deprived of turbo space has done wonders for my fitness. Trying to find training routes with little traffic, few traffic lights and junctions has proved hard, but my body seems to take to outdoor training so much better and it's nowhere near as hard mentally.

It's not as structured, but in a week I'd use the commute home to fit in an hour of hill-reps, hour of threshold work, hour of sweetspot work and some recovery pootling in between these sessions before a longer ride on the weekend.

No wonder, that's a lot of work.

Not all on the same day! Usually a Mon/Weds/Fri with long ride on Sunday early am before a day of Daddy day-care recovery.

I got that, it's still a solid amount of work in a week.

Just done my first trainerroad ramp test. How respectable is 248w@71kg? I haven't done any training before, just rode my bike a shit ton. Guess the training starts now...

3.5w/kg is probably above average for TR users (depending on age), and that survey is from people who already use it.

Great base, enjoy the sudden boost from structured training!

Thanks for the link. I'm 31 in a few days. Looking at the graph I'm about average so hopefully with training I should have some headroom for growth.

@hippy What sort of sweetspot sessions would you (I) be looking at doing? How long should each block be and should I be increasing the length of them this time if the year?

Everything I read seems to contradict each other.

1. Depends how much time you have to do them and to recover from them
   
2. See above
   
3. Yes, in cycles, following the boring 4 week pattern of increasing duration and then throwing a rest week in then lowering duration and upping intensity, rinse, repeat. Does depend on end goal though. I'm looking at racing 12hrs next year as I want to beat my PB so I might not dip the duration so much as do a slower build of intensity and increase the duration.
   
   

1 and 2 - If I'm pressed for time I'll use TRs silly short ones that are like 6min or something. Normally though my meat and potatoes is 2x10s, 2x20s, 2x30s cycled in blocks of intensity, as above.

Which reminds me I really need to get my turbo setup operational. The bike is on and I swapped out the CeramicSpeed RD with a boring one but I have no suitable chain yet and I want to swap out the carbon chainring for the cheaper Geb one so I don't waste carbonz turbo training.

Just use the TR Sweetspot Base plan!

I'll have a look, when I searched for training sessions I put in "sweet spot" and it seemed to give me thousands.

Plans, not workouts

https://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/plans/145-sweet-spot-base-low-volume-i

I don't like their plans. They always drop in VO2 and FTP over/under shit.

Me too, as it reminds me of getting dropped at RP laps

I save my VO2 work for chasing down modded electric bikes and Vespas. :)

Since the big spike in training load from Girona, I've been doing much less TSS in the weeks proceeding races (red dots, HCs around 4 mins). Looking at this chart I'm cruising along in the "Fresh" zone. I have four races this weekend, only one next week on Sunday 20th, then the National Champs on the 27th (14 min all out effort).

Should I continue to do little work over the next two weeks, or can I schedule a hard week next week? The race on the 20th is a B or a C event, just keeping my race game on point, so I don't mind being fatigued for it. My concern is that a hard week next week won't get me past the "Grey Zone" so it won't actually be very helpful, but then if I keep doing easy weeks I'll end up in the "Transition" zone which is bad too...

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Just did a ramp test after 4 weeks of sweetspot training once a week. Now at 260w@68kg so 3.8w/kg.

I don't know if the increase is due to training for the first time or that I knew what to expect with the ramp test.

I reckon the sweet spot will be the major contributor. You’ll see some pretty satisfying gains in FTP if it’s your first time doing structured training.

In answer to my own complicated question, I took it easy for a couple weeks and felt nice and fresh for the Nats, despite a cold.

Yeah no "training" in the past, just riding my bike lots.

Increase from? If it's only your second test then you will definitely be more prepared for it and results will almost certainly be skewed positively, especially if you've been training and are now almost expecting a better result - you will push harder to get that result, actual adaptations be damned :)