Power Mentor Group with Shane & Marc - Closed. (Page 60)

Originally posted by reecealan

As an example SS for week 8 has 3x15' at 90% FTP. I was thinking I could start at 87-88% FTP, build to 92-93% FTP at 5' then repeat 2 times, someting like that. Sound reasonable?

Originally posted by gsmacleod



Yeah, the sweet spot/tempo efforts would usually be fine to break up that way. The only time I would get concerned is if you're breaking it up with chunks above FTP.

Shane

Originally posted by croyston



I too am curious about negative values for aerobic decoupling. I've had negative numbers for my last three rides (1 - 3 hr outdoor ride and week 9 threshold 1 & 2).

Chris

Originally posted by Jason N

Thanks for doing this Marc.  Shows I've got quite a bit of room for improvement on my position (for aggressive TTing)...which I already knew.  I have a really hard time getting my head down while still being able to see up the road. 

I was using a skinsuit, shoe covers, 404 (non firecrest) front, and covered 404 rear, on my P2 (ETA...basically what my avatar shows).  So i've got most of the aero goodies taken care of...yet a cda of .261 isn't that great.  Probably closer to someone who has a really good position, but missing one of the aero goodies like race wheels or an aero helmet.  0.23-0.24 would be a better number to achieve for me.

Originally posted by marcag Wow, I was looking at a calendar and time is flyyyyyyying by. There were some topics we wanted to talk about so we better get cracking on them One was Scott's questions on the PMC chart, and prepping for two A Oly races, one early June and the other early August. I'll give you how I would tackle it, Shane can probably bring his wealth of experience with many athletes. First of all there is the 'theoritical' PMC chart. As we discussed the CTL line is your fitness. You want that as high as possible. The TSB is your 'Freshness", you want that as high as possible on raceday. But unfortunately you have to balance the two. To be honest, I would ignore the TSB metric. It's interesting, but unless you are balancing it across the 3 sports it's kind of useless. If your TSB for cycling is 0 but you are -30 in the hole for running, you won't perform well. I would simply focus on getting my CTL as high as possible. You want your CTL to peak X days before your race and then in those X days, it will slowly drop while your TSB rises. X depends on two things. The length of your race and just how high you get that CTL up and how much accumulated fatigue is in your body. I find that my CTL peaking at about 10-14days before a HIM works well and a week before an Olympic is fine. Starting a taper too early will just bring your CTL down too much. I like to minimize how low I bring it so I can get it higher for the next one. So I would plan for CTL to peak something like 1 week before your early June race and 1 week before your early August race. Now to get that CTL to it's peak, I would avoid "cramming", ie doing massive TSS in one week and none in the next. I would plan out to get to a target CTL and do it very gradually. Best way to do this is increase weekly TSS very gradually. How much bike would be a balance of how much time I have to train and how I feel I need to split that across the other two sports. I know to swim well I need to do at least 10k-12k per week. Therefore if my swim is deficient, I would schedule that first. I suspect you need to put some emphasis on your swim. If my run is in decent shape, me personally on an Oly, would simply do many very frequent/short workouts (30min) and 1 or two faster workouts per week. I would then take the remainder, see how much is left and decide how to use them For Oly on a limited time schedule I would be doing more the threshold/vo2 mix that Shane has been making us do. I would have more of a tendency to make my workouts align with my surroundings. For example when in Montreal, I have the mountain in my back yard. There is a nice 2km 9% grade. Great for 6min VO2 intervals. Or I would go to the F1 track where there is no cars and I would do 30s hard/30 sec easy intervals. I would do maybe 1 oer week. Of course lots of threshold work, 4x10, 3x12....I would do no tempo style work if training for Oly. So, to start the conversation, figure out where you need most work and plan that first. Then look at your strength and see how you can keep that at a minimum without losing it. Then fit the third leg in. I would put it down on paper, week by week, hours for each and adjust. You should now be able to figure how much time to spend on each and if you have X hours for biking you can roughly figure out how much weekly TSS that represents. Try to slowly increase it week over week, even if in small amounts. This all assuming you are time constrained and for Oly distance. HIM would be another story. I hope this is enough to start a discussion.

Originally posted by Scott71

Marc - this is excellent. 

I actually stumbled upon a blog by Joe Friel that briefly discussed an in-season training program for someone doing mainly shorter distance races. 

One approach that Joe suggested was to stay in the "Build" phase and not move to a "Peak" phase.

Now this was for a race season without any particular "A" race and so wouldn't necessarily translate for me, but something to consider when planning a Sprint heavy race season. 

On the training side, unfortunately I picked up a bug from one of my kids and haven't been on the trainer since early in the week for Threshold 1. 

Feeling a bit better today so may try Threshold 2 tonight - I don't think I could hit the >105% intervals in the VO2 session.

Scott

Originally posted by tallytom
won first in my age

Originally posted by littlewj

Got my first outdoor ride of the year today. I learned a lot about pacing since it was also the first time I got to use my powertap outdoors. It's no wonder I've blown up at a lot of my past races. It was only about 1:45 minute ride but the lessons learned were drastic:

1. It was very easy to go over my target watts when going uphill. I could have easily exceeded my CP by over 200 watts when climbing. I'm amazed at how "soft" I have to pedal.

2. Pedaling downhill requires effort. I have to switch gears must faster and increase my cadence to hit my targets. I used to always coast.

3. It's very hard to hard to do a precise workout outdoors unlike the trainer. I don't know if I'll be on the trainer again as the weather improves, but I totally see the value of it now.

4. I had my Joule set to 5s averaging. It was jumping all over the place. I reset it to 10s averaging and it was better but it still wasn't like the trainer where it's a lot easier to hold a number.

4. Riding is much more enjoyable for me now. I'm now officially a numbers guy - didn't think I could ever really have fun training with a powermeter but it's more than worth it!!

Jim

Originally posted by gsmacleod

One of the things that Marc has posted about is how to progress as your race approaches. This is something that often leads to confusion, especially for those who have spent time studying The Triathlete’s Training Bible by Friel as the way periodization is explained there tends to highlight the idea of base (easy) to build (hard) to peak but periodization is really about the progression from general training to specific training. In the general phase, training should include a variety of training stimuli which is what we’ve been doing. We have easy (level 2) for warmup, between hard efforts, cooldown, tempo/sweet spot (level 3, into low level 4) intervals, threshold (level 4) intervals, VO2max (level 5) intervals and some very short all out efforts (level 6+).

As race season approaches, then you want to look at what your race is going to entail and tailor your training to those efforts. Until the final few weeks before an IM or HIM, I would likely still keep a threshold effort in most weeks as FTP is the best predictor of performance across all triathlon distances, but I would limit anything that is above level 4.

For IM, since your ride will be basically a level 2 effort, this is where you want to focus your long rides and if you have limited time, then I would look at some tempo or sweet spot work to compensate for reduced volume. Your key race sessions should be long steady rides at a level 2 effort and at no point should you exceed FTP and staying under 90% should be your goal.

HIM is going to be a level 2 ride for some and level 3 ride for others – I would suggest that 3 hours will roughly be dividing line. If you plan to ride comfortably under 3 hours, then target steady level 3, if over, then high level 2. Your key race prep sessions should be steady at these levels and you can also mimic the course so if you have lots of hills in your race, practice riding hills at a steady effort where you never exceed FTP.

Short course (both sprint and Olympic) will be very similar to each other as both are raced very close to FTP. Therefore level 3 should be limited and levels 4 and 5 should be your key workouts (with level 4 being the key race prep riding). Other riding should be level 2 so that you can hit your other rides, swims and runs well.

TTers
Workout 1 – VO2max 1
Workout 2 – Threshold 1
Workout 3 – VO2max 2

All Rounders
Workout 1 – Threshold 1
Workout 2 – VO2max 1
Workout 3 – Threshold 2 or Sweet Spot

Sprinters
Workout 1 – Threshold 1
Workout 2 – Threshold 2
Workout 3 – Sweet Spot

Long Course Race In The Near Future
Workout 1 – Threshold 1
Workout 2 – Sweet Spot
Workout 3 – Long Ride
Workout 4 (optional) – Threshold 2

VO2max 1 – 1:05:00
10:00 spin build to 65% of FTP
5x15s all out, 45s spin 60% FTP
5:00 spin 60% FTP
5x2:30 >110% FTP (hard), 2:30 60% FTP
3:00 spin 60% FTP
2x5:00 at 98% FTP, 1:00 60% FTP
5:00 spin <60% FTP

VO2max 2 – 1:10:00
10:00 spin build to 65% of FTP
5:00 at FTP
5:00 spin 60% FTP
6x3:00 at 106% (hard) FTP, 2:00 60% FTP
5:00 at <60% FTP
10:00 at 97% FTP
5:00 at <60% FTP

Threshold 1 – 1:15:00
10:00 spin build to 65% of FTP
5x30s >105% FTP, 30s 60% FTP
5:00 60% FTP
2x20:00 at 96% FTP, 5:00 60% FTP
5:00 60% FTP

Threshold 2 – 1:10:00
10:00 spin build to 65% of FTP
2x2:30 105% of FTP, 2:30 60% FTP
5:00 60% FTP
5x5:00 at 99% FTP, 1:00 60% FTP
5:00 60% FTP
5x30s >105% of FTP, 30s 60% FTP
5:00 60% FTP

Sweet Spot – 1:45:00
10:00 spin build to 65% of FTP
5:00 at FTP
5:00 60% FTP
4x15:00 at 90% FTP, 2:30 at 60% FTP
10:00 at 97% FTP
5:00 <60% FTP

Long Ride – 3:00:00
10:00 spin build to 65% of FTP
5x10s all out, 50s 60% FTP
5:00 65% FTP
2x{
10:00 at 78% FTP
10:00 at 80% FTP
10:00 at 82% FTP
10:00 at 84% FTP
10:00 at 86% FTP
10:00 at 60% FTP}
5:00 at 60% FTP
30:00 steady at 82% FTP
5:00 60% FTP