Cycling Fitness / Training Advice

I have tried to go long in races, have almost worked, but fare better in sprint finishes.

The main reason I've focused up upping FTP this year was because I would be so cooked at the end of even short races that I was way off any kind of race winning power.
Higher FTP should mean faster recovery from efforts, rather than trying to muster a sprint after 50 minutes at close to threshold...

As a smaller rider, when I was at 250w ftp, I'd be barely hanging on to the 80-85kg riders pushing 300+, and although I've got a good kick, just completely wooden legs at the end.
Ideally need a team to protect me so I can launch an attack/sprint (a bit of a free-for-all in cat 2/3/4) Wouldn't that be nice!

Anyone here done the Zwift Active Offseason? Have now got a turbo and would quite like to follow a plan of some kind. Looks pretty similar to the TR Sweet spot? My free trial on Zwift runs out shortly so figured it might have a few more uses than TR.

If you’d read the last two pages, you’d have learned sweet spot makes you really slow.

Very different to sweetspot from the look of it.

Seeing some 2.5-3h endurance sessions.
Looks like a traditional base miles with some added intervals

One of the main issues I have with the Coggan chart is that it furthers this phenotype idea of being 'a climber' or a 'pursuiter' or even "I'm really bad at 5m efforts but better at 20m efforts".

Maybe if you are at an elite level or at least lots and lots of years training and racing at a high level you can start to make that judgement.

Eg make some changes to your training and suddenly, your 5m power is 'better' than your 20m power because, hey, you're training it (properly).

That's pretty much my philosophy - a good training plan is like a good diet - healthy but varied. Personally I just try to do a range of various training. Some long, fairly low effort rides, some long intervals, some shorter interval training and some HIIT work. Keep it mixed up. Mind you, I'm old, slow, and still a bit fat, so I'm not necessarily well-placed to give training advice.

You are spot on. Variety and consistency and you've every chance of going fast.

By all means specialise/be specific close to an event but you'll likely be faster having done a mix of training all year.

Trainerroad or Sufferfest should release an updated version with bell curves for different power durations. They must have a huge data set, far more than Coggan had to work with.
Not that it makes any difference, but it is interesting to see what percentile you are at.

Listening to trainerroad podcasts, their stance seems to be about improving your FTP and then see where your race winning talents are. And if you have 4.5h of turbo time available, sweet spot work is the best bang for buck.

I thought VO2 max efforts were best bang for buck on limited training time? That’s what the Trainerroad plans suggest too.

My understanding is SS for base followed by vO2 max for the top end. You can't just do vO2 max all year.

Good or effective? They are usually aligned, but effective would be more focused and time constrained?
An effective weight loss diet might be salmon, broccoli, brown rice every meal, but not a good one.
You could also define a good diet/training plan as one that keeps you engaged an keeps you on plan. May end up with better results than a much tougher but more effective plan due to compliance.

In training, I think variety is overrated, as long as you can maintain consistency/compliance.
This might be my brain wired from spending too many hours in my youth drilling scales/arpeggios and doing 500 reps of the same Taekwondo kick in a row for practice...

They did one for FTPs

Top of bell curve for men
18-30: 3.25 - 3.5 FTP/kg
30-40: 3.0 - 3.25 FTP/kg
40-50: 2.75 - 3.0 FTP/kg
50-60: 2.75 - 3.0 FTP/kg
60-80: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg

Top of bell curve for women
18-30: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg (breaks the bell curve a bit, 2nd highest is 2.75-3.0)
30-40: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg (It’s pretty close to 2.5 - 2.75)
40-50: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg
50-60: 2.25 - 2.5 FTP/kg
60-80: 2.0 - 2.25 FTP/kg

https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/the-bell-curve-of-cylists-how-fast-are-the-average-tr-users/5840/124?u=david_lfgss_cc

Sorry, in my rush to respond I missed that part. You are right, ss to build base then vo2 max to get into race sharpness.

Without using their plan builder, their standard suggestion is 2 blocks of 6 weeks of sweet spot base work, then a 8 week build block, then an 8 week specialty block.

If you followed this to the letter, its around 28 weeks, which would take you to summer.
That would be around 126h of turbo time on a low volume plan, and roughly equivilent of 4000km of specific training miles on the road.

If you've followed the plan, there is no way you wouldn't be fitter at the end.

This might be my brain wired from spending too many hours in my youth drilling scales/arpeggios and doing 500 reps of the same Taekwondo kick in a row for practice...

Not the same thing. Muscle memory =\= fitness, but does = accuracy and subconscious repetition

Its quite interesting, and those are averages of those who use trainerroad, so likely to be a more active/fitter snapshot of the average population.

I was referring more to the mentality and willingness of doing lots of boring work to get better at something.
Also drilling scales/arpeggios and doing kicks was not just about the accuracy, but muscle endurance, and good form when fatigued.

Also if you're interested in this sort of "Where am I on a curve" then def recommend using intervals.icu which is free, takes your strava data and compares you to their other users and spits out stuff like this, where you can filter by age etc

On the points above about variety/consistency different people are going to have different mentalities/capabilities. For some people knowing here's precisely what riding I'm going to be doing for the next x amount of days is a straightjacket for others there's a relief in not having to think about it.

8.91 w/kg for 20m, seems legit

If I switch it to W rather than WKG it's 465 it'll be a bonkers lightweight junior I imagine

Does it use estimated watts, or power meter data?
That is clearly an incorrect weight, power meter, turbo, peleton bike.

If you want impressive estimated strava watts, change your bike weight to 30kg, and see what numbers it spouts out.

Big fan of intervals.icu 👍

It uses PM meter data when available. Think the power curves etc are always PM based. A neat feature is a very accurate estimate of TSS from HR (using your historical data as a model) when you ride without a PM but with a HRM. I don't have a PM on the winter bike so this is pretty handy.

The estimated FTP from one-off hard efforts is pretty damn accurate too once you tweak the parameters.

I guess for personal purposes it works well.

If you’re snooping other people’s data, it could be wildly out based on their input weight, FTP, bike weight, trainer/power meter accuracy etc.

Yeah I think the outliers thing is always going to be an issue but seeing how things are on a bell curve etc I found helpful, but you'd also hope someone using a tool like that has at least some interest in accuracy and in aggregate should strip out a decent chuck of device variance and the weight stuff it's only really useful if it's accurate, so should have less of the Zwift disincentive around weight accuracy.