The official TrainerRoad thread

whojanicanackerov

Hey JGSI your doing pretty well then as I thought you were a young whipper snapper!!

I ended up riding the 2/3 of the Clouds rest http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/73620
Trying to save some juice in the legs for the big one tomorrow.
It will be my first ever Sportive and with nearly 2000 rider`s taking part it`s going to be quite an experience.
I bet I can`t sleep tonight from all the excitement ; )
By the way for those who are thinking of trying TR it`s a great bit of kit!!

dw300

whojanicanackerov wrote:

Hey JGSI your doing pretty well then as I thought you were a young whipper snapper!!

I ended up riding the 2/3 of the Clouds rest http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/73620
Trying to save some juice in the legs for the big one tomorrow.
It will be my first ever Sportive and with nearly 2000 rider`s taking part it`s going to be quite an experience.
I bet I can`t sleep tonight from all the excitement ; )
By the way for those who are thinking of trying TR it`s a great bit of kit!!

Lol .. I slept 1hr before my 1st sportive. I don't think it'll really affect you that much, but you'll know all about it within an hour of getting off the bike .. all you'll want to do is sleep!

Enjoy the sportive. Talk to as many people as you can. Start near the front!

whojanicanackerov

Cheers DW all my kit is ready for the morning I`ve got my number and I`m ready to roll.

dw300

I tried my new position on the road today, it's definitely a better position, but the problem on the road compared to the trainer is that the bumps and vibration mean I end up perched on the pointy end of the saddle. Does anyone have any creative ideas to help me slide around on my shiny saddle a bit less?

It's an OEM saddle, so I'm thinking about taking some sandpaper to it to see if I can give it a little texture.

bigdaveskinnytyre

I thought I would give TR a go as Tacx trainer software can be a bit temperamental.

Set up was extremely easy, I set up as a Tacx Bushido at 1% slope then adjusted the slope on the trainer so that the Bushido's power output and the TR virtual power were similar (0.6% slope worked for me). I then did the 2 x 8 minute test. The virtual power and the Bushido readings were within 5 watts throughout most of the workout, at higher power outputs (around 400W) the gap widened slightly 8-10W with the Bushido being the lower number.

I'm well aware that Tacx power outputs are not the most accurate (within about 5% of a Powertap or SRM) but I do find that they are pretty consistent so I'm happy to train with them.

I'm pod1976 on Trainer Road and quite happy with an estimated FTP of around 335W which is about 15W lower than my measured FTP from when I raced regularly and had a coach 3 or 4 years ago (and I was 12-14Kg heavier then).

whojanicanackerov

dw300 wrote:

whojanicanackerov wrote:

Hey JGSI your doing pretty well then as I thought you were a young whipper snapper!!

I ended up riding the 2/3 of the Clouds rest http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/73620
Trying to save some juice in the legs for the big one tomorrow.
It will be my first ever Sportive and with nearly 2000 rider`s taking part it`s going to be quite an experience.
I bet I can`t sleep tonight from all the excitement ; )
By the way for those who are thinking of trying TR it`s a great bit of kit!!

Lol .. I slept 1hr before my 1st sportive. I don't think it'll really affect you that much, but you'll know all about it within an hour of getting off the bike .. all you'll want to do is sleep!

Enjoy the sportive. Talk to as many people as you can. Start near the front!

The ride with brad done and dusted I finished 112th out of 624 riders in the 160k route
After riding since 1st of Jan I`m well chuffed!!!

dw300

whojanicanackerov wrote:

The ride with brad done and dusted I finished 112th out of 624 riders in the 160k route
After riding since 1st of Jan I`m well chuffed!!!

Congrats, sounds like a decent result considering there were probably quite a few ringers! ; )

Harmon was shirking his Vuelta commentary responsibilities to do it.

Did you get to chat to him or ride beside him or anything?

whojanicanackerov

dw300 wrote:

whojanicanackerov wrote:

The ride with brad done and dusted I finished 112th out of 624 riders in the 160k route
After riding since 1st of Jan I`m well chuffed!!!

Congrats, sounds like a decent result considering there were probably quite a few ringers! ; )

Harmon was shirking his Vuelta commentary responsibilities to do it.

Did you get to chat to him or ride beside him or anything?

No I didn`t get Brad`s company but I saw him on the stage first thing in the morning.
I would of finished in the top 100 but I went straight past the last right turn.
The marshal didn`t shout!! or anything :shock: and I had a Police car chase me and turn me round LOL I did an extra mile FFS. Anyway No one died or anything so I took it on the chin.Although if I`m totally honest I was a bit pist of at my self for not noticing the turn.
Their were race teams there and the National cyclocross champion!! So on the grand scale of things I think I did quite well.

t.m.h.n.e.t

250 was a bit too much lol! http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/74332

dw300

T.M.H.N.E.T wrote:

250 was a bit too much lol! http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/74332

You rode the final 2 intervals at just over 70rpm compared to just under 80 for the first 2. Could you have completed it at a higher cadence / lower gear or do you prefer a bigger gear?

t.m.h.n.e.t

dw300 wrote:

T.M.H.N.E.T wrote:

250 was a bit too much lol! http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/74332

You rode the final 2 intervals at just over 70rpm compared to just under 80 for the first 2. Could you have completed it at a higher cadence / lower gear or do you prefer a bigger gear?

I like big gears

dw300

Argh .. this was tough!

Keith

First 90 mins session .. bunch of records. During the first interval I was really not fancying finishing this one!

bigdaveskinnytyre

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/74754

My first TR 90 minuter, I'm quite enjoying it apart from my headphones being knackered so no music for the 90 minute session

Off to Hong Kong for a week tomorrow so no bike; I'd normally take running shoes but appear to have developed Plantar Fasciitis so a complete rest week. Not sure how I'll cope with that.

DW that looked like a pretty intense 90 minutes compared to your FTP.

markp80

Hi all,

My bike is currently set up with a Cateye V3, with speed, cadence and HRM. Can anyone tell me if this is compatible with the Ant+ dongle, or would I need to change it for something like the Garmin 500?

Cheers,
MarkP

bigdaveskinnytyre

MarkP80 wrote:

My bike is currently set up with a Cateye V3, with speed, cadence and HRM.

Mark,

I've just had a look at the V3 on Cateye's website, unfortunately as it's not ANT+ it wont work with TR.

You'll need something like a Garmin speed and Cadence sensor (GSC10) or the Wahoo fitness equivalent and an ANT+ USB dongle, again a Garmin or SUUNTO one will do the job.

t.m.h.n.e.t

There is a guide to Trainer Road on page 5

I have the V3 and Wahoo mounted to share the cadence sensor, it's ugly but functional

MarkAshton

MarkP80 wrote:

Hi all,

My bike is currently set up with a Cateye V3, with speed, cadence and HRM. Can anyone tell me if this is compatible with the Ant+ dongle, or would I need to change it for something like the Garmin 500?

Cheers,
MarkP

No, that wont work with a ANT+ dongle. Rather than investing heavily in a Garmin 500, you can still do very meaningful training with just speed and HR on a turbo.

Get yourself over to http://www.turbotraining.co.uk or find some plans you can stick to, use speed (keep tire pressure the same) and just repeat them over the winter. Nothing complicated.

This group has some good plans http://www.turbotraining.co.uk/groups.p ... w&group=40

Every year I have the aim of doing loads and loads of turbo training in the winter. The reality is, the weather is never that bad that it warrants months and months on the turbo.

markp80

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated. As suggested I'll give it a go with my HRM monitor first and see how I get on before I invest in an ANT+ system. The V3 is pretty new though so might be worth selling if I fancy the ANT+ system.
Thanks again,
MarkP

dw300

bigdaveskinnytyre wrote:

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/74754

My first TR 90 minuter, I'm quite enjoying it apart from my headphones being knackered so no music for the 90 minute session

Off to Hong Kong for a week tomorrow so no bike; I'd normally take running shoes but appear to have developed Plantar Fasciitis so a complete rest week. Not sure how I'll cope with that.

DW that looked like a pretty intense 90 minutes compared to your FTP.

Cheers bigdave! I did mine watching American Pickers lol. I swear by Discovery Channel / Nat Geo etc. on the trainer!

I was gasping and groaning near the end of the last 3 intervals. The hardest bit was when you 'got off the front of the paceline' for your 45s rest, but the base pace had risen a little overall to FTP or just over .. didn't seem like a rest at all!

Don't worry about taking a break, it'll be good for you. I think a week off once or twice a year helps, so you might as well do it when you're on holiday or not 100%. You might not think you need it but you'll be getting stronger. Use it as a training reset to build up to levels beyond where you were before.

jgsi

I have now sufficiently recovered from this
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/74786
to give a few comments as to how I got through it.
I treated it like a big road ride and had food and drink available.
I used 1500ml of water... started with Gatorade hydration mix, but it is too sweet for me.
2 gels.. just normal.. no caffeine
1 banana
4 tee shirts - essential , as putting on a dry shirt works wonders
oh yes a YouTube playlist of
MSR 2011
Trentino Stage 3 (goes up a silly steep Italian hill to finish)
LBL 2012
on the big screen with TR workout at the bottom on horizontal mode.

You can tell that by hill interval number 3 @ 1:09 I was going thru the first sticky patch.
I sort of recovered thru the 45 minute endurance block but by the end I was beginning to struggle with keeping the cadence up.

The VO2 max intervals were just horrible but did my best and just missed the target power but not by much, so okay with that.

The Sweetspot block, I was crumbling, never really achieved target... it was just becoming too painful to spin up.
The neuromuscular targets of over 500 watts .. well just taking the p1ss.
Finishing with another endurance block.. I was going thru the gears trying to keep a rhythm to finish at least in some sort of decent order.
The perceived effort from 1/2 way was never lower than an 8.... bad .. very bad.

Worth doing..?
Well you will never ever make the same number of pedal strokes on a road ride.. we all free wheel .. but on the turbo, you can't otherwise the workout pauses...so the training effect , I am hoping is huge

Would I repeat?
Not in a hurry.
Will I do 2 hour rides...? Yes and if able to carry out in good order, should derive excellent training results.

dw300

Epic! I wouldn't even try that just yet!

Great job to finish it .. 295 TSS is massive when you never stop pedalling.

I turn off the 'pedal to start / pause' function though. I have to stand on the pedals and stretch and allow the blood to flow still, although I'm practicing changing to 50/12 and pedalling stood up, but it still feels awkward doing that at low power on a trainer, there isn't the resistance at low revs.

Are you intending to ride tomorrow, or rest?

jgsi

dw300 wrote:

Are you intending to ride tomorrow, or rest?

No way I shall take tomorrow off as weather forecast aint too good, but I'll do a club ride on Sunday for the first time since March! if I can remember where we all meet!

t.m.h.n.e.t

For a bus pass holder that is impressive

I'm too much of a chicken still. Due a long road ride,a run and a swim this weekend. I'm on my own in work on monday so plenty of recovery time :twisted:

jgsi

T.M.H.N.E.T wrote:

For a bus pass holder that is impressive

I'm too much of a chicken still. Due a long road ride,a run and a swim this weekend. I'm on my own in work on monday so plenty of recovery time :twisted:

thnking on.... last LVRC race on 2nd Sept...I'll try not to waste me efforts!

whojanicanackerov

JGSI i bow and salute you for your gigantic effort there!

bigdaveskinnytyre

JGSI, that is truly epic!

Road rides of more than 3 hours where I live are a struggle for me as I'm on the same roads all the time, I couldn't even comprehend a 4 hour + turbo session.

DW, yes I think the break should do me good as long as I don't over-indulge too much. The problem will come in October when I have 3 weeks in Australia, if I'm not back running by then it'll drive me potty. Last year I used my Australia trip to do some long runs as it's nowhere near as humid as here in the jungle.

I return to Europe in about 10 months, so if I can target an 8% increase in FTP by that point to take me to 360W and stay consistently under 75Kg then that'll give me around 4.8W/Kg at FTP and probably about 5.4W/Kg MAP for my planned return to proper racing. (Edit to add: Well aware that the Virtual power on TR and the power readings on my Bushido are not as accurate as a proper power meter and probably read a bit high but I feel they're consistent enough to train on. I will get a proper power meter at some point and probably be disappointed by my results)

dw300

Oh, you're in Brunei .. yeh I bet it's humid!

Can I ask how long you've been tracking your performance in one way or another? I'm keen to know how long it might take me to get to a level of maybe 4W/kg from what I believe to be about 3W/kg at the moment. I have virtually unlimited training time.

I currently weigh 70.5kg @ 12%bf give or take, having dropped from 79kg at the start of the year. I reckon I could get to 64kg eventually, which would probably get me to 3.3W/kg without increasing power. I'm thinking 3.5 by the end of the year could be possible, but after that it'll have to all come from increasing power.

Would going old skool and doing 2-3hr endurance rides on days im not doing intervals, taking my training to 12-15 hours a week be beneficial, or is the Time Crunched route just as good? Answers welcomed from anyone.

bigdaveskinnytyre

I suppose I've been doing some sort of performance tracking for about 20 years (I got my first HRM when I was 16), but had lots of time off the bike due to work until around 2004-5. I got a coach in 2007 (Dr Auriel Forrester of Scientific Coaching). Who I worked with for just short of 2 years. In that 2 years I took my MAP from about 400W to about 425W and my FTP from about 320W to 350W in the first year. Most of my training was on the turbo. Bear in mind at that time I was riding at 87-89Kg and had TT PBs of 21:52 for 10, 56:00 for 25 and 1:54:55 for 50. I was also a regular top 10 in my local cross league, (I won't talk about my embarrassing performances in road races). At the end of the 2008 season after a good crack at the three peaks cross things were getting serious with my now wife and I jacked it all in, I even sold 6 bikes.

After less than a year off the bike I was getting really agitated and needed to ride again so I got a bike to keep me fit. That was fine for the next 18 months or so until I moved to Brunei.

After 5 months here I decided to work on losing my excess weight and do some local races I'm now down to 75-76Kg and it seems I haven't lost that much power from when I was racing in the UK. There isn't much racing here (I've managed 2 duathlon type events and one road race). The road race was the local equivalent of a premier calendar which included some of the local riders from the CCN Asia tour team and I held in with the main bunch without too much difficulty until it hit the hills after 100km but still finished far from last (126km race) I thought that was an OK showing for a 4th Cat.

In my experience if you want to ride long you have to do a reasonable amount of your training at the distance you intend racing at, however, when I was TTing I rarely trained for longer than 2 hours at a time and most weeks I was doing 8 - 10 hours total and rarely more than 12. At the moment anything longer than 3 hours is a mental challenge more than anything else but you have a nicer variety of roads in NI than I do here (and the fact that I lose 2kg per hour in sweat doesn't help). You've done the most effective thing you can by losing the weight, try not to get too focussed on the turbo, take a break from it and get on the road to keep you sane, I think mixing it up is best. Can't wait to see what I can do at this weight and power on a TT bike in the UK.

jgsi

Todays racing was cancelled a few weeks back, hence I did that monster Disaster ride on Friday, (because it was there). Legs feeling good.
Tuesday evening, going off to Rhyl for a 1 hour crit.
What workout?
I'm looking at 'Henry'.
I'm feeling good , I suppose I could re test FTP.....
(btw I dont do roads when wet unless its racing or another good cause... and despite forecast it is wet today)

dw300

Thanks for all the info bigdave.

What workout did you do JGSI?