Trainerroad

I need that 'chase the sun' job.

That's 6 months. You'd be better off building up sensibly rather than panicking and throwing yourself into a hole where you end up tired as fuck in March.
Doesn't that power build have all kinds of VO2 shit in it? I'd save that stuff for way later.

This. I'd be going for the Mid Volume SweetSpot Base in your shoes. You say you've never been on a plan before (hence the mid volume rather than high). If it's a totally new thing; the actual act of riding 6-7 hrs indoors a week is hard enough, let alone jumping straight into a build block with little to no foundation of base training.

And as Hippy says, you've got more than enough time for a proper base, build, specialism programme, you might even get 2 builds in tbh.

Think I'll see how disappointing today's effort is, and then decide between a base or build phase.

I realise it must vary person to person @hippy, but what sort of taper would you suggest for this type of event?

It's hard to say because I only targeted 1 x 24hr TT per year. One year I did a 12hr race pace ride the Sunday before (I was doing masses of volume though so it didn't seem unreasonable), other years not so much. The days before the race I would maybe ride alternate days to work, at the start of the week, trying very hard not to race anyone, then I'd make sure I did a ride the Friday before the race start with some short efforts to fire up all the energy systems. Might do a 10min spin the morning of the race and a short warmup before the off.

Well, test done. Ftp now 15w lower than my last 20 min test, but that was at the beginning of November, so I'll take that as being in the right area.

https://www.trainerroad.com/career/bn/rides/47427916-ramp-test

Plenty of room for improvement.

I made it to 21 mins 30 Secs so I'm pretty happy with that! Didn't feel great on my last test but was not expecting a 20+ W increase. Highest I've ever tested and it's only January.

It definitely helped having an approximate target time and also a playlist that had a good song intentionally starting at around 18 mins.

Highest I've ever tested and it's only January.

Maybe winter events are more your thing ;-)

aka "peaked in March" :)

Is that a euphemism?

I am going to enter a few winter series circuit races this year though. Last time I gave bunch racing a go was 2015. I'm 12kg lighter and considerably stronger now so thought it might be quite fun.

Does March know you've peaked in her?

So what was your score?

Top work!
I’m still a way off those heights at the moment but making steady progress.

Here it is.
I'm just using the Wahoo Kickr as my power meter rather than swapping pedals around all the time, but I recorded with my Vectors as well and it was 9w lower

Good effort. Next test I do I’ll try some of those methods! Again some way to get to your level.

Either

a) you have power smoothing enabled
b) smart trainer ERG mode does something to smooth out power data
c) you're a robot

Just did mine. 9 weeks since my last test: 6 training and 3 eating and boozing without a single ride. My score was EXACTLY the same. Which is a good thing I suppose.

Tomorrow starts the proper work; SS base 2 high volume plan.

C)

Surely the smart trainer takes care of all that.

I need to try one of these but it’s hard without a smart trainer. Sometimes it takes me 10-15 seconds of an interval to get the right gear without spinning or grinding.

I did a ramp test for a VO2 max test and it was BRUTAL. Jumped 35w every three minutes to give the lab a more steady state number.

Good work @cjr - spin to win.

Surely the smart trainer takes care of all that

Still not made that step yet.

AI doping

Dan Lloyd is doing a 10 week challenge on sufferfest. Looks quite interesting and I like the lack of ego.
What’s sufferfest like compared to trainerroad?

Just uploaded my test to TP. Got some peaks.

1 Attachment

200bpm... are you part mouse?

Oh wait, no. You're just young

sobs