Jshort’s bike thread

jShort said:
I’m basing that on my race results. I never felt “good” on race day. I had good days training and my power numbers were where they’ve usually been but on race days I was always flat.

I think there was too much intensity in my training early on.

I’ll need to make some adjustments this upcoming year.
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Endurance kills the pop
 
this was a decent watch. My strongest year FTP wise was 2022 after a winter of zwift races. It was bot my best year on the bike however. 2020-21 I had a slightly lower FTP but my higher 1-5 min power. Personally I like a lot of endurance riding in low z2. I was able to do 3 rides/wk totaling about 8-10 hours in z2. I did one day I called Hillz. This was basically anaroebic/NM. I would find 30 sec-5 min efforts and go all out(usually on a thursday). I had one rest day and one group ride. Usually a practice crit, hard mtb ride or hard paceline ride. I am a lazy rider so z2 is easy for me and NM is easy but tempo sucks. I think however what I am saying is my best years were a good 80/20 balance.
 
jShort said:
polarized is on the table for sure
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The big problem that I see with Sweet spot training is that there is no possible way to do all out intervals. You physically will be too tired to do max effort intervals. I feel to be a top level racer and XC, Road or any shorter or explosive type of racing It’s necessary to all out intervals. I talked to Mike Festa and asked what he does and basically said just ride his bike a lot and 3030 intervals.
 
Dave Taylor said:
The big problem that I see with Sweet spot training is that there is no possible way to do all out intervals. You physically will be too tired to do max effort intervals. I feel to be a top level racer and XC, Road or any shorter or explosive type of racing It’s necessary to all out intervals. I talked to Mike Festa and asked what he does and basically said just ride his bike a lot and 3030 intervals.
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Yeah. This recipe has basically worked for 100 years.

1. Ride a lot
2. Race a lot

It pretty much gets you there. All the other plans are people trying to get you to give them money for them to say you don’t need to do those 2 things.
 
Dave Taylor said:
The big problem that I see with Sweet spot training is that there is no possible way to do all out intervals. You physically will be too tired to do max effort intervals. I feel to be a top level racer and XC, Road or any shorter or explosive type of racing It’s necessary to all out intervals. I talked to Mike Festa and asked what he does and basically said just ride his bike a lot and 3030 intervals.
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The Sweet spot I did was only during base. I did plenty of vo2 and threshold work after base. If I didn’t have a job, or kids, or much of a life other than bikes I would do 15 hours a week of z2. But that’s not reality so I try other things
 
jShort said:
The Sweet spot I did was only during base. I did plenty of vo2 and threshold work after base. If I didn’t have a job, or kids, or much of a life other than bikes I would do 15 hours a week of z2. But that’s not reality so I try other things
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This is where I'm at. I think I'm capped at my fitness level within the 8-10 hours I do. I don't expect I'll ever have huge FTP gains, but maybe a better 1/5/10 minute power instead.

I think I may document this now.
 
jShort said:
The Sweet spot I did was only during base.
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I hesitate to insert myself here, but it's Monday morning and I'm on the internet. You'd need to add more color. Some things to add to this:

1. How long was the offseason before Base?
2. What is Base anymore? If you're not riding 15-20 hours a week is it really considered a "Base" period? It may be semantics but your traditional Build follows your traditional Base. If your Base is really Build-Lite, yeah you may run into problems
3. How many weeks was your Base?
4. How many times a week were you doing SST?
5. What numbers of hours per week were you doing SST?
6. How many total hours were you riding in that Base phase, versus the time in SST?
7. If a train leaves NY going 84 mph...
 
Norm said:
I hesitate to insert myself here, but it's Monday morning and I'm on the internet. You'd need to add more color. Some things to add to this:

1. How long was the offseason before Base?
2. What is Base anymore? If you're not riding 15-20 hours a week is it really considered a "Base" period? It may be semantics but your traditional Build follows your traditional Base. If your Base is really Build-Lite, yeah you may run into problems
3. How many weeks was your Base?
4. How many times a week were you doing SST?
5. What numbers of hours per week were you doing SST?
6. How many total hours were you riding in that Base phase, versus the time in SST?
7. If a train leaves NY going 84 mph...
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These are good questions and expose some fundamental issues with my approach last year. It's hard to go back and remember what was going on at the time. But when I look at it, I can't help but think WTF. It seems like I just jumped in and did sweet spot and threshold workouts in the end of January and into feb,
 
jShort said:
These are good questions and expose some fundamental issues with my approach last year. It's hard to go back and remember what was going on at the time. But when I look at it, I can't help but think WTF. It seems like I just jumped in and did sweet spot and threshold workouts in the end of January and into feb,
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Were you just following TR plan suggestions?
 
jShort said:
These are good questions and expose some fundamental issues with my approach last year. It's hard to go back and remember what was going on at the time. But when I look at it, I can't help but think WTF. It seems like I just jumped in and did sweet spot and threshold workouts in the end of January and into feb,
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This is another thing for me, its so easy to pile on hours in the winter (especially on the trainer), but with the FasCat thing, it seems to be setting up a foundation before I even jump into the base phase.
 
Pearl said:
This is another thing for me, its so easy to pile on hours in the winter (especially on the trainer), but with the FasCat thing, it seems to be setting up a foundation before I even jump into the base phase.
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I think one issue I ran into with TR was plan builder. You just plug in some race dates and bam!, you start training immediately. This seems really appealing in the middle of January. I’m so ready to start work

FasCat seems a little more traditional.

One of the hardest things is taking time off. I can’t imagine going 10 days to 2 weeks with zero riding.
 
Norm said:
I hesitate to insert myself here, but it's Monday morning and I'm on the internet. You'd need to add more color. Some things to add to this:

1. How long was the offseason before Base?
2. What is Base anymore? If you're not riding 15-20 hours a week is it really considered a "Base" period? It may be semantics but your traditional Build follows your traditional Base. If your Base is really Build-Lite, yeah you may run into problems
3. How many weeks was your Base?
4. How many times a week were you doing SST?
5. What numbers of hours per week were you doing SST?
6. How many total hours were you riding in that Base phase, versus the time in SST?
7. If a train leaves NY going 84 mph...
Click to expand...
Also, the higher intensity base is less sustainable. It won’t last as long. Exactly why you lose top end ability when you stop training. One thing you may consider is running during base season. It’s twice the bang for the buck.
 
Pearl said:
This is another thing for me, its so easy to pile on hours in the winter (especially on the trainer), but with the FasCat thing, it seems to be setting up a foundation before I even jump into the base phase.
Click to expand...
Are you doing a monthly coaching plan or did you just buy one of the black Friday deals?
 
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