See the “Chad’s Test” sheet in the link, for the full data set:
Work Week Summary Data:
The summary for each of the 3 “Work” weeks are arranged left to right.
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The Data Label is the first column on the left.
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The “Session Goal Time for Zones” is the middle column.
- This corresponds to the 80/20 Time Goal for Entire Sessions (not finite time in each zone).
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The “Actual Time for Zones” is the right column.
- This corresponds to the 90/10 Time Goal for Actual Time in Zone (not overall Session Goal).
Zone Definitions:
- Z3 = 100-120% of FTP (Red)
- Taken from my interpretation of Dr. Seiler’s info.
- Z2 = 80-100% of FTP (Yellow)
- Taken from my interpretation of Dr. Seiler’s info.
- Z1 = 50-80% of FTP (Green)
- Taken from my interpretation of Dr. Seiler’s info.
- Z0 = 0-50% of FTP (Blue)
- Added by me, to track time below Z1.
- Z0 + Z1 = 0-80% of FTP (Purple)
- Added by me, to track time below Z2.
Zone Labels:
- Duration (h:m:s)
- Total Time with Power in the indicated Zone range.
- Actual Zone %
- Percentage of Time in the indicated Zone range, compared to the Overall Workout Time
- Zone Goal %
- This is the desired Goal % to meet the 80/20 Session Goal or 90/10 Actual Time.
Strike-Through Text:
- “Session Goal Time for Zones” column:
- I crossed out the [Z0] and [Z0 + Z1] sections because the 80/20 approach is intended as a “simple” analysis based on Overall Time for each Session with an intended “Goal Zone”.
- “Actual Time for Zones” column:
- I crossed out the [Z1] and [Z0] sections because the 90/10 approach is intended as “detailed” analysis based on Actual Time in each Zone. I feel including all the time below Z2 is appropriate for this analysis.
Week 1: Test and Work
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This week included a recovery ride and the Ramp test to establish my FTP for this training phase.
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The Zone distribution for 80/20 is very close to the goals.
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The Zone distribution for 90/10 is very close to the goals.
Week 2: Work
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This was a pure “Work” week, but also included an outside ride for my “long” Z1 ride.
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The Zone distribution for 80/20 is close to the goals, but a bit heavy in Z3 (23.4% is over the 20% goal cap).
- Again, this is from looking at the entire session time for the particular Zone Goal.
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The Zone distribution for 90/10 is very close to the goals.
- This is much closer to following the Actual Time Goals.
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There is more variability in the Zones of this week when compared to Week 3.
- This comes mainly from the much more variable nature of outside riding. Not necessarily bad or surprising, but it’s interesting to see how much more control we can have inside.
Week 3: Work
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This was a pure “Work” week, but the “long” Z1 ride (Longfellow) had issues and was a higher RPE and HR than intended. That means the power still reported “in zone”, but the reality is that I was probably working too hard for that entire 4-hour workout.
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The Zone distribution for 80/20 is close to the goals, but a bit heavy in Z3 (27.7% is over the 20% goal cap).
- Again, this is from looking at the entire session time for the particular Zone Goal.
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The Zone distribution for 90/10 is very close to the goals.
- This is much closer to following the Actual Time Goals.
Overall Review of Work Weeks:
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I think I did a decent job of hitting the Session Goals and Zone distributions.
- I did this with some quick review of workouts with the intensity and duration, then placed them on the calendar to follow.
- I made various swaps and adjustments along the way, and am happy with most of the choices and performance in the workouts (other than the Longfellow mishap).
- I am surprised how close I got to the 90/10 time in zone, even with guessing to pick workouts and not actually planning for the finer time distribution before hand. I think it goes to show that you can likely just shoot for the 80/20 Session Goals and likely will be really close (assuming you select "good workouts).
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I do think more variety of having one VO2 Max workout with longer style intervals (like the ones I did) and adding a workout with more 30/30 shorter style intervals would be good. I think the variety would be fun at the very least and you might be able to tailor the TSS ramp rate a bit better too.
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You can see I ranged from just over 9 hours in the first week, 9.5 hours in the second week and nearly 10 hours in the third week. This was manageable in overall stress for me. But the timing and demand on schedule was a bit taxing, even with a simple 40 hour work week, wife but no kids, and keeping some downtime.
- I was close to useless after the long 4 hour rides. It was a mix if fatigue and general desire to maximize recovery after that lead me to hold the couch down after 2 of them. I did some walking and mild errands after one of them and was OK. So that couch surfing is probably more my own laziness and desire to maximize recovery time.
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I am rolling into my recovery week and not feeling too wiped out right now. I seem to remember welcoming the recovery weeks from SSB and such. But I don’t know if it was the pure intensity or the fact that it was 5 weeks of “Work” before the recovery week?
- This POL test, I chose a 3 on / 1 off approach. I think this works better for my 44 y.o. body and lifestyle.
- I have already adopted the same basic approach by modifying my planned SSB1 in mid-Nov to have a similar timing (instead of the 5/1 default). I am curious to see if that feels better and allows for better adaptation, even with the SS approach.