Performance dropping?

willhub

I'm a bit confused about this.

Basically, I started the season of club 10s with a 23:55, and I managed to get it down to a 22:35.

It went something like this:

23:55
23:35
23:34
23:32
23:18
23:10
23:11
23:03
23:16
22:35

I can't remember them all, but I've being doing them every Monday and some on Wednesdays too and I usually ride out and back to them.

After the 22:35 it went something like this:

23:16
23:53
23:36
23:30 (tonight)

So it appears (I'm hoping) that I'm working my way back down, but why would this even happen? Why has my performance dropped so much like that that I'm having to battle my way back to a PB?

Shortly after the 22:35, on rides my recovery started getting longer (up to 3 days), so I took an easy week (after I did the 23:53 as I was so gutted), my recovery is back to like around 12-24 hour period.

I'd have thought I'd be hovering between the 22:50s and 23:00's now and maybe getting around the PB time now and again, not being a minute slower!?!?!

When I did the Cat and Fiddle hill climb I did like a 23:20 up it, which I knew was pretty crap for me and my effort was crap, and it's pissing me off how erratic my performance is.

dw300

If you're hammering it every week of the summer without any rest weeks then your body won't compensate. Training isn't just a day to day thing, you build up fatigue over weeks too.

At 2 runs per week, you've had one easy week in 8 (minimum), perhaps you should be trying 1 in 6? Don't look at it as wasted time, as if you don't take one you'll just end up wasting a week anyway because you're not up to 100%, and you'll still need a recovery anyway.

willhub

dw300 wrote:

If you're hammering it every week of the summer without any rest weeks then your body won't compensate. Training isn't just a day to day thing, you build up fatigue over weeks too.

Well I'm doing steady riding now and one day a week 4*5min intervals.

I've had a rest week since so surely I should have recovered now?

dw300

Ooops, I added a little more there. Basically you need to work out how long you can push it before you're performance starts to drop, then take a rest.

If you took a week off and feel you are recovered, but the times aren't showing it, then you need more frequent recovery periods. Feeling fast and going fast aren't the same thing.

mattshrops

Apparently as well as short term stress caused by recent activity(hopefully cured by an easy week) there is also long term stress which is as it sounds a gradual build up of tiredness from the whole season (or longer). Me no expert but maybe just a bit longer taking it easy/recovery rides/reduced load?

dw300

In cycling your heart and lungs may be ready to go again the next day, but muscles can take days to recover, if you're going out when you're not quite recovered and try go go at the pace you made when you were fresher, then its your CNS that gets worn out trying to get more out of your body. And personally I think the psychological side of things affects you over a similar period of weeks, you get demotivated and don't deal with the pain and fatigue as well.

jibberjim

10 mile TT's are poor training - you probably replaced some good training before the 10 mile TT's started, with just the TT's and are slowly losing fitness, so unlike the others saying you need to rest more, I think you need to train more.

To really decide between the two, you need to find a way to measure your training volume to see if it really has dropped, or if you're fatigued

dw300

He mentioned 2 x 10 mile TTs, and an interval session. I presumed he was doing a little more mileage in there as well.

Perhaps you could tell us your full riding schedule willhub? I guess if all you're doing per week is like 25 miles then jibberjim is probably right!

willhub

Well it's like this:

Monday - 20 mile to TT, 10 mile TT, 20 miles back.
Tuesday - At most 15 miles easy
Wed - Same or 10 mile TT
Thursday - Same or 4*5min intervals
Friday - nothing
Saturday - not much as of late, but tends to be A: if I can wake up early enough, a club training ride or B: if I sleep in, a 30 mile hard pace.
Sunday - nothing

I think last week I did 2 60 mile rides up the Cat and Fiddle.

I was thinking of just doing some hard 60 mile rides, into the hills and just keeping a hard pace but making sure I can go hard up the climbs too, just for some hard training as maybe my body just needs some hard sessions in?

It's so complicated, I'm in two minds, all easy for rest of week, or, easy till Thursday then do Wills Wheels chain gang which are quite hard.

I don't stick to a schedule, I gave up ages a go, because it's too much hassle, put one thing down and everyone says do it this way or no that's wrong, so I get fed up and think fcuk it.

Alex_Simmons/RST

willhub wrote:

I don't stick to a schedule, I gave up ages a go, because it's too much hassle, put one thing down and everyone says do it this way or no that's wrong, so I get fed up and think fcuk it.

If training is inconsistent, then results will be too.

And if training doesn't change, you'll stagnate.

There are still some basic principles in training for improved performance, whether or not you stick to a schedule, there still does need to be an element of structure in how you progress your training. That doesn't mean every day must rigidly fit to a specific plan, but you need to know what the objectives are for that week, and know how to meet them within your training opportunities.

10-mile TTs can be tricky from a training impact perspective. It's almost like doing VO2max work - if you do it regularly, then you'll see improvements for 4-6 weeks, then after that it can start to plateau, and even go backwards. Depends on how much of it one does and how much other training (and life) stress one is accumulating.

SBezza

You have plateau'ed if that has been your training for a fair while, you need to mix up the training IMO, as Jibberjim said a 10 is very poor training, it is neither hard enough or long enough to give much training load. Wednesday you say the same or a 10m TT, is that the same as Tuesday, if so WHY? A 10 doesn't really take anything out of you once you have recovered for a few minutes, do some decent hard training afterwards.

There seems to be alot of rest/recovery days for very little training load, it isn't surprising the times are erratic to be honest, though even times don't always paint a full picture as the enviromental conditions have been so variable this year that could account for alot of the erratic performances.

ut_och_cykla

My take - your PB is just that - a day when everything is right - food, rest, wind, weather etc. Doesn't happen very often that everything is pretty much perfect and once it happens perhaps your mind/body says that's enough for the moment too. Try working out what you did that gave you your PB?

I would guess the 4*5 min intervals have given you most TT speed - are you doing them at the same level of effort now as before - as you get fitter the effort required (be it measured as speed or Watts or pulse) will be less for same outcome. 4*5 are hard - if you're doing them all relatively easiy you need to increase teh effort to a point where you can barely do all four - or switch it round and do 5 lots of 4 minutes even harder?

Fitness/speed tends to come and go in waves or cycles - so after a few weeks of cr*p it will just come back - 4- 6 weeks is my guess as that is a typical rate of cell replication - cell adaptations to training load.

willhub

So after a 10 should I use the remaining 20 miles as a hard ride? Should I try the chaingangs or do something hard on a Tuesday too? I do the 4*5 on a computrainer, I was doing the 5 mins at 320-360w and around 103rpm, in tt I pedal about 9 so its tough keeping power at high cadence. I really struggled with the last 5 min interval and felt sick afterwards. Someone recommended I do a spin class at the velodrome on a sat morning not tried one yet.

I've not done many interval sessions. I stopped doing club runs and club training rides a while a go. I rest Sunday because Monday is The club 10s and thought I'd have a go at winning Tue club 10 competition.

Would it hurt to do some longer hard rides on maybe wed/thur and sat for.a.couple of weeks?

SBezza

willhub wrote:

So after a 10 should I use the remaining 20 miles as a hard ride? Should I try the chaingangs or do something hard on a Tuesday too? I do the 4*5 on a computrainer, I was doing the 5 mins at 320-360w and around 103rpm, in tt I pedal about 9 so its tough keeping power at high cadence. I really struggled with the last 5 min interval and felt sick afterwards. Someone recommended I do a spin class at the velodrome on a sat morning not tried one yet.

I've not done many interval sessions. I stopped doing club runs and club training rides a while a go. I rest Sunday because Monday is The club 10s and thought I'd have a go at winning Tue club 10 competition.

Would it hurt to do some longer hard rides on maybe wed/thur and sat for.a.couple of weeks?

You could use the ride home as a hard tempo ride, as for the 5 min intervals 320-360 is a big spread, try to aim for a 10 watt window, 360 might be too much, and 320 could well be too low. I don't think a spin class will help much, maybe for general fitness but for TT performance you could do better training on your own. If you find 100+ rpm too much, stick to a similar cadence you ride at on the road.

If the TT on the Monday is important, then yes resting on the Sunday is a good idea, but there are plenty of other days to do some hard training. The rides don't have to be long and hard, you can do 30-40 miles very hard and get a good return, it is making sure you go hard enough during the session, and then recovering optimally afterwards. I have mixed feelings about a chaingang, unless you are really challenged for the duration of the chaingang, for TT's I would personally stick to doing a solo ride, and making sure you work 100% during this ride.

bahzob

To be honest it's going to be very difficult for anyone here to give a specific explanation and solution, there simply is not enough good hard information.

FWIW I would have thought that if a short TT is your main goal you would be best focused on short intervals like the 5 min ones above rather than long rides and I'd couple this by doing some hard 20-25 min efforts at race pace but with a negative split.

Things would be a lot easier if you had a power data for some of the rides. If you can't beg/borrow/steal a power meter then I'd think about having a regular power test you do on the Computrainer, max effort 5 mins would be an example. This should correlate with your TT times. It should also be a good indicator of progress/how tired you are.

One thing folks could do is provide some feedback based on your last post of what a realistic 10 time might be if your 5 min power is 360W. Will need to know your weight/height for this and ofc its going to be very dependent on the course/how aero you are. But at first glance I'd have thought 360W for 5 mins is a bit low to expect consistent 22s. (Assuming you are on a TT bike)

willhub

I weigh around 73kg.

I do miss doing 50/60 mile rides I find doing sort rides all the time does not help my motivation and a lot of time recently I'm like thinking why am I bothering, I dragged myself to the TT last night I did not really want to go, I was ok when I got there.

Would good training be riding 20 miles at low tempo or something, then finding a nice stretch of road and doing 5 minute intervals?

I don't have a GPS anymore or a speedo so I'm going to have to use a stopwatch. I have my phone but can't set laps or anything on the phone like a GPS.

Half the time I don't know what training is right, if I should be training today or resting today and training tomorrow, it's like the lottery.

Alex_Simmons/RST

willhub wrote:

Half the time I don't know what training is right, if I should be training today or resting today and training tomorrow, it's like the lottery.

Like the results that emerge.

Don't forget that conditions can easily make large differences in times, even though power may be the same (or better), speed can be lower. Time/speed is a poor indicator of form as there are too many uncontrolled variables.

SBezza

bahzob wrote:

But at first glance I'd have thought 360W for 5 mins is a bit low to expect consistent 22s. (Assuming you are on a TT bike)

Unless he is heavy and unaero 360W for 5 mins is not low to expect consistent 22's IME, unless on a road bike with no aero bars. I have done loads of <22 mins rides on a fair amount less than this , but that is on a TT bike.

Will for me 20 miles would be done at a very high tempo effort, more likely near on threshold tbh.

willhub

Well I just do my time trialing with aero bars, skin suite, normal helmet, Shimano R550 on the back with Vittoria Rubino, Mavic Aksium on the front with GP Attack or Supersonic.

When I did the 22:35 I was sporting a Mavic Cosmic and an aero helmet but I can't see it making a whole minute difference, maybe 20 seconds, also I've done a 23:11 on the stuff I mentioned in the first sentence and then gone slower with an £800 carbon trispoke.

SBezza wrote:

bahzob wrote:

But at first glance I'd have thought 360W for 5 mins is a bit low to expect consistent 22s. (Assuming you are on a TT bike)

Unless he is heavy and unaero 360W for 5 mins is not low to expect consistent 22's IME, unless on a road bike with no aero bars. I have done loads of <22 mins rides on a fair amount less than this , but that is on a TT bike.

Will for me 20 miles would be done at a very high tempo effort, more likely near on threshold tbh.

I'll try that next time I ride from the 10. Would it be sensible to do 1 hour - 1 hour 30 very steady today considering my legs are a bit tired from yesterday or should I do an effort today?


I'm going to be doing the odd 25 mile tt's too, the last one I did 1 hour 23 seconds on a very wet and windy day.

SBezza

If your legs are tired and you want to go out, do 1 -1.5 hours at a nice relaxed recovery effort, it really does depend on how tired your legs really are, and whether you have an important race coming up. If your legs are tired from just 40 steady miles and a 10 mile TT I would suggest rest, but then again that sort of mileage wouldn't affect me and I would train through the tired legs.

Training should be planned around your events, I rarely do events that I would be totally fresh for, and as such I quite regularly train with tired legs, sometimes very tired legs.

With regards to equipment the £800 trispoke WILL be a faster wheel than a normal box section wheel, an aero helmet WILL be faster than a normal road helmet, the time may not suggest that on the day, but as Alex has said enviromental conditions may hide any gains, as well as your general tiredness etc. Unless you did back to back runs at the same power with the same conditions you may not see any gains.

willhub

Well I pushed on last night on the way home, so I was a bit tired compared to last Monday when I took it totally steady there and back and had fresh legs the day after.

Today my legs feel a bit tired but at the same time I also have a slight bit of motivation to go out and train or even just ride my bike, usually when my legs are really tired or, just the same feeling as today but I might potentially be a bit more tired I have no motivation what so ever to go and train and when I get on the bike I just feel like I want to roll backwards down a hill.

In terms of it could be the conditions, well when I did the 23:53, everyone else had either similar performance or better, and a guy I'm usually around the same time as or faster did a 22:50, so when I heard he did that I knew that something was up.

thiscocks

SBezza wrote:

You have plateau'ed if that has been your training for a fair while, you need to mix up the training IMO, as Jibberjim said a 10 is very poor training, it is neither hard enough or long enough to give much training load. Wednesday you say the same or a 10m TT, is that the same as Tuesday, if so WHY? A 10 doesn't really take anything out of you once you have recovered for a few minutes, do some decent hard training afterwards.

Dont agree- how can you say a 10m tt isn't hard enough!? Any distance tt is just about the hardest riding you can do!

Infact id say two tt's in close succession a week is too much hard work. I certainly wouldnt recommend pushing hard after a tt effort. Thats just a good way to totally destroy your self. Nice and easy riding to it and back (maybe push occasionally on the way). Save the tt for the effort.

Also instead of focusing just on your own times, compare your self to others that do similar times to yourself, then you will get a better idea of how slow or fast the conditions are on the day. Just because you dont get a PB every week doesnt mean you are getting worse.

mattshrops

I realise you have -shall we call them -employment issues at the moment Will, otherwise i would suggest speaking to a coach and trying to get a training plan sorted. I should imagine your times are pretty regularly top ten, as they seem pretty good to me. Makes you wonder how much better you could go with an organised and progressive approachto your training? Tbh at the moment it all seems a bit scattergun, possibly linked to how you're feeling with regard to said employment?one thing you have got on your side atm is time for training, make the most of it while you can. I got a pb a couple of weeks ago after doing far too much for a couple of weeks (and having rubbish times) and then backing it off for quite a few days.Its worthwhile keeping a training diary, so you can see what you've done and try to work out whats going on.

SBezza

thiscocks wrote:

SBezza wrote:

You have plateau'ed if that has been your training for a fair while, you need to mix up the training IMO, as Jibberjim said a 10 is very poor training, it is neither hard enough or long enough to give much training load. Wednesday you say the same or a 10m TT, is that the same as Tuesday, if so WHY? A 10 doesn't really take anything out of you once you have recovered for a few minutes, do some decent hard training afterwards.

Dont agree- how can you say a 10m tt isn't hard enough!? Any distance tt is just about the hardest riding you can do!

Infact id say two tt's in close succession a week is too much hard work. I certainly wouldnt recommend pushing hard after a tt effort. Thats just a good way to totally destroy your self. Nice and easy riding to it and back (maybe push occasionally on the way). Save the tt for the effort.

Also instead of focusing just on your own times, compare your self to others that do similar times to yourself, then you will get a better idea of how slow or fast the conditions are on the day. Just because you dont get a PB every week doesnt mean you are getting worse.

It is hard at the the time obviously, BUT the effects of it are very short lived, and recovery from it very quick. As a training load it is very poor, it is just too little a training effect. If you are fit, doing 2 or 3 of them on the bounce should be possible, you might be slightly lower on power, but similar to the 2 x 20 min intervals.

If Will wants to get faster he needs to do something different to what he is currently doing, and I would either fit in extra hardish training (and 20 miles at a tempo effort isn't that hard to recover from), or can the midweek 10 and do some more dedicated training.

edhornby

maybe you should be selective about which 10s you do and build a litle plan around the next one you are aiming for

at the moment you are trying to race yourself into going faster which isn't working, you're not resting/tapering before the PB attempt so it's hit and miss whether you go faster

willhub

I'm not doing the Wednesday 10s very often, what could I replace it with?

Some weekends i do rest, the Saturday/Sunday before the time I did the 23:36 was an easy weekend, I just spent the day walking round the trafford center on the Sunday.

bahzob

willhub wrote:

I'm not doing the Wednesday 10s very often, what could I replace it with?

Some weekends i do rest, the Saturday/Sunday before the time I did the 23:36 was an easy weekend, I just spent the day walking round the trafford center on the Sunday.

Sorry but I think you need to listen to the advice you are being given.

Root cause of your problem is that at the moment you lack focus and are not following any sort of training plan. So it's impossible to give a meaningful answer to your question above.

Best thing you could do would be take a clean sheet of paper and come up with some sensible training goals and a plan to achieve them. IMO the best way to do this is via this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Time-crunched-Cyclist-Powerful-Time-Crunched/dp/1934030473 because it yields good results for time spent training. However there are lots of other options.

Whatever, any plan is better than no plan.

willhub

As I've said I've tried making a training plan before, but always getting different oppinions, I get confused and just give up then. I'm going to do some job hunting then go for a 25 mile blast.

dw300

Remember that unless you're a complete noob that gains are going to be slow. You don't need to be testing yourself twice a week, or even once. Once a month would probably be enough.

Less testing will mean more training. Motivation to beat your last time will be higher if you're only doing it once a month, rather than knowing a bad showing can be bettered 2 days later, which probably won't happen for the same reason.

Here are your times as a percentage of your best ..

94.43%
95.76%
95.83%
95.96%
96.92%
97.48%
97.41%
97.98%
97.06%
100.00%
97.06%
94.56%
95.69%
96.10%

As you can see, your best time looks like a bit of an anomalous result, 2% better than any other result. If you were analysing performance you'd graph it and do a best fit line, or drop best and worse to get rid of anomalous data. It is possible that non physiological factors like weather could have helped you. Here are the results as a percentage of you 2nd best time with your best time removed.

96.38%
97.74%
97.81%
97.95%
98.93%
99.50%
99.42%
100.00%
99.07%
99.07%
96.51%
97.67%
98.09%

It shows a constant smooth improvement, which peaks and begins to drop, rising at the end after a rest week. How many weeks did it take to hit that best result? Was it 5 (2 tests per week)? Or was it 8 or 10 weeks? I'd suggest just throwing in a rest week more regularly. When you take out the best result it shows a pretty clear plateau after 8 tests (4-6 weeks maybe?)

Perhaps do a 5 weeks cycle where you do 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100% of your best. Still working out with variation during each week, and at the best intensity you can. You're basically just giving yourself time to recover in the early weeks from the cumulative fatigue of the cycle. You're ramping yourself up for to peak in that final test week. Then after that, reset based on a percentage of the (hopefully) improved training performances in the final week of each cycle.

SBezza

willhub wrote:

I'm not doing the Wednesday 10s very often, what could I replace it with?

Some weekends i do rest, the Saturday/Sunday before the time I did the 23:36 was an easy weekend, I just spent the day walking round the trafford center on the Sunday.

Well replace it with a training session, as to what training session though, well that really depends on your aims (well it seems these are 10 mile TT's), and what you have done on previous days etc. I would try and do something that is likely to lead to adaption for the events you want to target, or if you have spare time, get some bigger training load in and do a longer ride, but still do it at a challenging effort.

Walking around a shopping centre can actually be more stressful and tiring than you imagine

Another thing the day before, or even the morning before the evening 10 you really want to do well in, do you do any pre race session. Basically try and prime the body before the 10 with some very short but hard intervals. You will probably need to work out what works best for you, but doing nothing the day before might be detrimental to the 10 performance.

willhub

Well normally I ride out steady, but what I used to do about 1 month ago, is cause then I was riding out on my own mostly, I was taking it easy, but there was bits where I'd do an effort, like up drags, or I might do a bit of a sprint.

The day before I might do a steady 15 miles, but no hard efforts, I could put some hard efforts in though?

Tonight I'm going to do a 12-15 mile threshold training session on a computrainer, because I can't ride on the road as my cleat is broken so buggered there. I'm just going to aim for 320W on this particular computrainer and hold it throughout, I always sprint at the end.

I'm just getting the urge to go and do hard 70 mile ride at the moment, like a craving weirdly, I would do on Saturday but I'm graduating this Friday and because my parents are down on Thursday it means I'm unlikely to get any training in after today until Sunday night / Monday evening.