SBR Utopia Season II - OPEN (Page 59)

I think so too, but look more at weekly volume and what's being done during the rides more than frequency. It may be possible to just ride more on the days already riding, but that's part of scheduling availability.

Also record more on what's being done. Not sure if that is elsewhere, but it really helps to see if what we think is what we're actually doing. It sure helps keep me honest and I actually do remember this sort of thing better than many I know. Don't just leave it so vague. You know you're getting in some hard things, but make sure it's what you think. Know for sure where it's at, not just that some things are in there somewhere.

Neil...you have a power meter which is an awesome tool.  My guess is it's time for you to start digging deeper into the numbers than just your FTP and workouts based on a % of that number.  Start evaluating your TSS of each ride, and weekly TSS totals.  Monitor your performance management chart.  You've been using a PM for quite some time so you should have data to look back on.  Hopefully there is a time where you can look back on when you were seeing improvements and see if your TSS was much higher than it is now.  Was it because you were riding more...riding harder...maybe both?  How do your TSS numbers compare now?

Like Ben mentioned, you may need to start paying closer attention to your workouts.  And as Marc alluded, this is where a coach can help provide a third person perspective.  A lot of times we think we're putting in hard work...when really it's not as hard as we thought. 

I know there was a time last year (2012) where I was a bit dissapointed in some of the improvements I wasn't seeing on the bike.  I was riding hard...pretty much what I was riding at during the end of the previous year.  Then it dawned on me...that if I want to make improvements...I need to ride even harder.  So I looked back at 2011 and what type of workouts I was doing in relation to my FTP (at that time) and what type of TSS scores I was recording.  It was like a slap in the face.  Even though technically I was riding at a higher power in 2012, it was still lower in relation to my FTP at the time and thus creating a lower TSS compared to 2011.  So there was a clear reason as to why I wasn't seeing as much improvement. 

I mean, I know lower hanging fruit gets harder to come by, but my numbers didn't lie.  I either needed to ride more, ride harder, or do both to see improvements.  I wasn't willing to add another bike day, so I simply upped the intensity on the intervals.  And once I convinced myself I should be suffering more on the hard days...then it became doable and the improvements started to come as my TSS started to rise.

For triathlons...it hasn't really happened for me other than one race where I was really close to a few of my buddies in a HIM.  I caught up to two of them, ran their pace for a couple of miles, then purposely made a move to drop them with 5k to go.  It was an awesome feeling to have some tactics thrown in there and I wish I could get a tiny bit faster on my run so that I can use it more often in local racing.

But as for the bike racing I do...it's all about racing for position, and sometimes going for broke. 

I don't think I've ever done a triathlon where I treated it as a race in the sense that I made a tactical decision to try to improve my position.  Maybe the closest I've come to that is when lined up at the start I once had a guy line up right behind me because I'm sure he wanted to try to get a draft and I decided there was no way I was letting that happen so I bolted right off the start to make sure he couldn't hang on.  Other than that I do constant calculations all the time when out on the run but it doesn't really affect my decision making.

Now the bike race this past weekend is a totally different story.  Placement and time gaps definitely affected my decision making there and I really enjoyed that aspect.

Michael, what sort of race tactics do you use?

I don't really do anything like that. I am looking to draft more in the swim, but it's to have a better swim. It does help if I know someone there, but I figure it out on the go if I don't. Bike is always what I think is right, on my own. Haven't made a move on the run. When I have a good sense of whether people will be passing or not later on in the run, I might ease off just a bit if I feel I've gotten in enough work for the day. If I come up to someone I just keep running by them. Placement is a nice bonus, but I'm still going off my own performance for the course and conditions of the day.

In knowing my position relative to the field, it depends on where I am. When I start in the first wave (which is happening more with the elite amateurs), I'll have a fair idea. But if it's back in the mix, I really don't know. I try not to worry about placement as it depends so much on who shows up. In my last race, I won the age group and 7th overall, but if I was just the slightest bit older I would have been aged up and been 5th AG for the exact same performance. I don't really like using that as a factor for how I did. I do look at how others did, but it's more to help figure out course difficulty and affects of conditions of the day.

Both this and what Jason said are what I was getting at earlier.

Neil, if you do have power files and are willing to let Marc put them together to use as a discussion in here, I know I would learn a lot from it.  I'm just getting into training with power, so I don't have a back log of power files....otherwise I'd be happy to offer mine up for discussion.

And this is surely a silly question, but where do you keep your power files?  All I know how to do at the moment is upload my workouts to Garmin Connect.  I'm assuming that's not what you mean by keeping it in an organized place, filed away.  Maybe TP or GC has a place to file them?  I currently have three rides with the PM, and have been meaning to look into TP/GC, but have been crazy busy at work...

Well, you don't have to learn how to do everything at once. Build into it. You don't have to have fantastically organized plans going months out into the future. Just write down what you did for the workout. Even if it's just w/u 10', 45' @80-85% or whatever. Start somewhere. Even that much info would be much more than what I can see being done right now. You can learn to add in other things later.

ETA: And going more single sport heavy for awhile can be a very good way to help build up. Many very good athletes do rotate through the three disciplines to do this.

Neil, I was thinking about the discussion about bike improvement, Jorge's program and just plain not working hard enough and I realized that I had some similar data to look at and compare.  I followed Jorge's program for two winters, I think it's a good program to start out with but after working with Shane for the past year I realize now that I could have been working a lot harder.

I went back and looked at my logs from when I was following Jorge's program and from a quick look it seems that the workouts were typically in the 50-70 TSS range for the workouts during the week - sometimes higher but not the norm for sure.  Another quick look at my logs from the past year shows that my workouts were usually more in the 85-110 TSS range.

Seeing that, I would say that Jorge's program is good for a beginner program but now that you've been through it a few times it has probably reached it's limit of what it will do for you (as you are finding out).   The structure of the workouts from the program and what I have been doing are pretty similar from a high level in that there are only so many ways to do 5 x 5 or 3 x 8 etc but then Shane would tack on an extra 10 mins of work.  So as an example Jorge's program would be 5 x 5 @ 265w with 1:30 recovery and then cooldown.  Shane would have me do 5 x 5 @ 265w with 1:30 recovery, 5' easy, 10' @ 255-260 and then cooldown.  That extra 10 mins was often the toughest part of the workout and I think made a big difference for me from both a physical and mental toughness aspect.

Doh, I am starting to build up my run volume again, slowly but surely, now that the job front has somewhat settled a bit and things are a tiny bit more structured.  But I really need to pay better attention to my weekly mileage.  Who stops at 19.95 Mi?  lol

The day's not over.  

Yeah - how long is your driveway?  

What's the issue? How close it is to 20? It might seem trivial here, but I run what I'm supposed to and that's that. This kind of thinking has lead into chasing numbers before.

ha, it is for me.  I am about to get into the truck for a 4 hour drive down to Tucson, and it should be raining pretty nicely by the time I get there