Trevor should tell Lawson and the rest of the EFF crew to stop doing so much tempo and sweetspot during the base season: https://www.strava.com/activities/2012640871
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I took notes of episode 54:
only after considerable discussion did Dr Seiler give out HR %. I’d say reluctantly gave out HR %. For the reasons transcribed in my post.
My take aways from episode 62 podcast:
- stay tuned for 3 more episodes over the next year
- some people using 20 min ftp test protocol are using an ftp above true physiological threshold
- sweet spot has been proven effective
- Dr Seiler has a paper where athletes self-selected intensity of 4x16 intervals, which worked out to be 85% HRmax
At least for me, 85% HRmax is exactly what I see during TR sweet spot intervals.
If true physiological threshold is important to you and your training, then stop being lazy and do a 60 minute test.
Weighted Average Power/IF = FTP that is set in Strava
Assuming that he set that FTP at peak and doesn’t update it in Strava in the offseason and looking at the 3 major climbs the first one was definitely sweet spot range for off-season and the other two were at Tempo.
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Well written very long post.
One point - I think @Nate_Pearson posted the bell curve from TR users and I do not think it supported that view. I think the average w/kg was lower and your numbers are much more top-en (for non full-time athletes). I agree that @Nate_Pearson might not have correlated time trained against w/kg and that might be hard to do as not everyone pulls external rides into TR. and the external ride gives the bigger hours per week than indoor rides.
Seiler has said a number of times that there is a purpose for all training levels. Also, the HR data for XC skiers and rowers shows that, during the early Base period, some of those “hard” days in the 80/20 split are what PM-using cyclists would call “sweet spot,” especially if they are doing linear periodization.
You can’t do VO2 all year long…in some cycles, the “hard” is “medium.”
The Road to Gold: Training and Peaking Characteristics in the Year Prior to a Gold Medal Endurance Performance
Here as well, Zone 5 throughout the year
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I’ll “yes but” on that one, syrke.
The amount of zone 5 is lower in those base periods, and the amount of zone 3 higher.
So sure, you can do some zone 5 year-round, but it’s not like you’re doing sets of 4 x 4min VO2 or whatever. A steady diet of that, like any steady diet of one workout or intensity, would cause adaptation to stagnate.
Also nowhere near 80/20 distribution.
I believe that whenever these papers reference hours/week (h*wk^-1) they are talking about accumulated time in zone. For this metric 20% isn’t correct - it is usually less that 10% and can be around 5%.
Further up this topic I plotted the tables in a way that was (to me, at least) easier to understand:
Mike
There is nothing special about 60 minutes to the body.
Agreed. If someone isn’t already highly trained at holding FTP for long durations, using that as a basis for setting training zones will simply under-report FTP. Mostly because they’ll either hit MLSS for a while, and at some point, will fatigue prior to getting to 60 minutes, or simply ride at a power below MLSS so that as fatigue ramps up, they have enough stamina left to get to 60 minutes.
I’m just paraphrasing Dr Seiler
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Paraphrasing Seiler would be ‘have a LT blood test done.’
yes, do a LT test and do a 60 minute test:
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I’m comfortable doing 2 hour rides on the indoor trainer, but vary the intensity/cadence/ add 6 sec sprints at various points, watch QI repeats so my IQ doesn’t decrease😀
Without a power metre on a MTB you would be surprised how hard you have to work on easy terrain to maintain HR Z2 and it includes skill work, so there’s reason to include indoor and outdoor low intensity…if you have the time.
My family is grown up, so I have lots of time to play!!
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Super late to the game but whatever! Just read the Pinot article…few things I found interesting:
In his first two years, 2009 - 2010, both hours and ‘training load’ rose 60% (45% in 2009, 15% in 2010). Says to me that his distribution of intensities didn’t change, only the time did. His milage increased 80% simply because he was going faster.
(From '10-'13 his hours, TL, and milage increased only 11-13% in total.)
Took him 1 year (2009) to turn his:
5min power into his 10min power.
20min power into his 30min power.
30min power into his 45min power.
45min power into his 60min power.
Took him 2 years (2010) to turn his 3hr power into his 4hr power.
Took him 4 years (2012) to turn his 2hr power into his 3hr power.
Took him 5 years (2013) to turn his:
1s power into his 5s power (and increased his 1s power 5%).
1hr power into his 2hr power.
He has yet to turn his 30s power into his 60s power…but he’s 90% of the way there.
Pinot shifted 50% of his power curve in the same two years he increased his training volume by 60% (or a 40% PDC shift from a 45% increase in training*). I know there’s the matter of getting stronger at what you train, so it’s a bit n=1…but still!
What all this says to me, paraphrasing from another article, is that we greatly over-estimate the importance of intensity and greatly under-estimate the importance of volume.
Makes you think what the average TR user could do if they did 8 hours a week instead of 6…
*(For the record, I’ll be attempting this starting next week w/ SSB2HV – key word – attempting!)
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What’s your take on “volume” here, are we talking hours per week? TSS per week? Something else?
I am in the middle of SSBHV2 but i modified it. SSBHV1 was tough without a rest week, so I added one. I stick to 5 WO where 3 of them are the hardest SWeetspot workouts. The other two are often endurance (wednesday and sunday). The sunday endurance is sometimes replaced with sweetspot if I’m time-constraint. This is allready hard!! Reaching a TSS of 600 on the trainer is much harder than doing rides outdoor…
But I’m wishing you good luck!
In December I did a modified SusPower BuildHV – 5 workouts/week (up from 4) and 3 weeks of double days.
TSS went from 500 to 850. 
My first time doing a Build plan and coming in from SSBLV was pretty shocking! It was all by design, though; I had the last 2 weeks in Dec off work so I decided to really ramp things up. I was eating and sleeping so f-ing much last month!! 
Ramp test at the end of the week so we’ll see if all the work paid off.
In other words – YES!!! 600+ TSS on a trainer starts to push some limits. I think my normal limit (w/ work etc) would be around 700, and it doesn’t leave me feeling fresh at all.
If we’re referring to the Pinot article, I’m making a very general guess that his intensity/zone structure remained similar to his baseline (2008) but that he just did more hours of it. For example, if I was doing 3 hours of Endurance and 2 hours of Sweet Spot a week, if I were to Pinotize my training I’d now be doing 4.5 hours of Endurance and 3 hours of Sweet Spot. TSS would be the result of whatever mixture you put into the equation (also from the article, the “training load” is calculated from perceived effort, RPE, rather than straight watts). Again, that’s an oversimplified and general black box guess. Going from amateur to the pro ranks he obviously had his zone durations tweaked, we just don’t know to what degree (but since his hours and TL went up pretty much the same, it’s a good guess that the framework remained relatively stable).
That being said, I have kind of sketched out a plan kind of based on TSS and working backwards – division rather than multiplication(?). However…this may or may not work out simply because I’m going into SSBHV2 which contains only SS…not sure I can do 1,000 TSS of Sweet Spot per week!! So I kind of have to work with hours, too.
I dunno…maybe someone here can answer this question:
Could increasing the hours of Sweet Spot only training per week by 45% result in a much greater shift in shorter powers (<1hr), and in much less time, than a baseline/non-increased training? (Did that make sense?)
Just looking at Pinot’s increases, I’d say he started doing a LOT more endurance hours and he effectively got those low hanging “beginner gains” in the first year (maybe it doesn’t take 10 years to reap the benefits of 80/20!). By Year 4 his depth of endurance really starts to show itself. In Year 5 he starts to sharpen things up, training his attacking power.
In the end of this super long convoluted post (sorry everyone!), I think all it demonstrates is that almost everyone, even those good enough to be pro, can benefit from riding more…you just have to ride more in the correct way.
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