training against or with the wind

Team4Luke

I hate the wind full stop. Being a lightweight I don't have a great high power output so am using a bigger percentage of my max than others just to keep up. Training solo I seem to respond better to higher speeds on less windy days than on hard windy days, definitely training effect kicks in from the faster sessions for the same output.
So, does the body make more adaptations from faster sessions than slower ones at the same given output. Is there any point in training on hard windy days at slower speeds, might be more of a muscular workout but pretty much can't make you actual muscles bigger or stronger, you have what you have whereas training at higher speeds closer to racing speeds must be more beneficial, something I have always believed in doing.

Discuss.

Herbsman

WTF? Where have all the replies gone?!

Tom Dean

Team4Luke wrote:

Training solo I seem to respond better to higher speeds on less windy days than on hard windy days, definitely training effect kicks in from the faster sessions for the same output.

How can you know this?

Team4Luke

there could be many variables, but for this purpose just want to look directly at training on a windy day v calmer day.
My ave speed goes up a lot on calmer days, which it would obviously but once this is up (usually when we have better conditions - summer time) constantly over a period even on a hard day I can still knock out decent speeds.
When it's windy and often the case this time of year onwards, just seem to be battering against the wind for no reason or effect. The old training school of thought whether applicable or not these days, was always to train at your racing speeds, whilst that is difficult but not impossible and could to lead to overtraining, we all gauge our efforts with HR/watts etc. So, is riding close to your racing speeds better than banging you head against the wind doing 16mph whereas for example I can add 5mph to that on a calmer day = less of a jump in race conditions.

alihisgreat

Team4Luke wrote:

there could be many variables, but for this purpose just want to look directly at training on a windy day v calmer day.
My ave speed goes up a lot on calmer days, which it would obviously but once this is up (usually when we have better conditions - summer time) constantly over a period even on a hard day I can still knock out decent speeds.
When it's windy and often the case this time of year onwards, just seem to be battering against the wind for no reason or effect. The old training school of thought whether applicable or not these days, was always to train at your racing speeds, whilst that is difficult but not impossible and could to lead to overtraining, we all gauge our efforts with HR/watts etc. So, is riding close to your racing speeds better than banging you head against the wind doing 16mph whereas for example I can add 5mph to that on a calmer day = less of a jump in race conditions.

Please tell me how you even quantify 'racing speed'?

and there is no reason why training at a given intensity is worse if you're doing it at 15mph into a headwind.. its still 200w whether you do it on the flat, up a hill, with a headwind, with a tailwind etc.

It won't be fun crawling along at 15mph on a Zone 2 HR endurance ride.. but that's just life.

bigpikle

why another thread on the same subject?

speed is an irrelevant red herring in all this - its about the work you're doing (power you produce), regardless of whether you end up going slower or faster on the road due to the wind, road surface etc.

Herbsman

It's Trev in disguise!
If you're worried about speed on a windy day,
just select a lower gear and pedal faster.

Team4Luke

I'm not so sure, we could just train against the wind all the time, simply turn around and repeat against it, could carry shed load of weight on the bike, I don't think riding on the heavy winter bike does any good neither, otherwise we would all be flying out of winter, that's similar to riding against the wind, weight (wind) is just slowing you down, yes I know power is power but that doesn't concern me, what does is being able to complete a session in a shorter time constantly over a long period and seeing that time coming down regulary - not the odd fast session where better speed could be just as a result of a calm day, it's over a period where you see changes. Just because I don't use Power does not mean I am not increasing my power whatsover. There are other ways to measure your performance just the same.
It's entirely possible that there are seperate limitations here, so for example against the wind your leg muscle strength maybe less than your oxygen system, so, say for me I could just be muscular leg-wise maxed out against the wind, certainly feels it, whereas on a less windy day I can really drive my oxygen systems and simply go harder and faster, that system taking more of the work load - load off the legs.
Old training skool would advise training against wind for strength and with for speed

For the record I would train regardless of the wind, but looking closer into this, could be worth doing different session on a windy day than on a calmer day to balance the benefits of the conditions.

It's a very valid question, I am not Trev !

Two posts because one just went AWOL no idea where stuff dissapears to on here or why, seems one has now appeared !

Tom Dean

Strength has got nothing to do with it.

bigpikle

The wind, bike weight etc all have nothing to do with your fitness. The only thing changing is that it will slow you down or speed you up. You'll be turning your legs and producing a power output regardless of the conditions or bike. Riding a heavy bike has no effect on fitness as it just means your power/weight ratio is lower so you go slower. The heavy bike doesnt magically make you produce more power so it wont have any training effect - unless you choose to pedal harder (produce more power) to try and maintain your normal speed.

alihisgreat

Team4Luke wrote:

I'm not so sure, we could just train against the wind all the time, simply turn around and repeat against it, could carry shed load of weight on the bike, I don't think riding on the heavy winter bike does any good neither, otherwise we would all be flying out of winter, that's similar to riding against the wind, weight (wind) is just slowing you down, yes I know power is power but that doesn't concern me, what does is being able to complete a session in a shorter time constantly over a long period and seeing that time coming down regulary - not the odd fast session where better speed could be just as a result of a calm day, it's over a period where you see changes. Just because I don't use Power does not mean I am not increasing my power whatsover. There are other ways to measure your performance just the same.
It's entirely possible that there are seperate limitations here, so for example against the wind your leg muscle strength maybe less than your oxygen system, so, say for me I could just be muscular leg-wise maxed out against the wind, certainly feels it, whereas on a less windy day I can really drive my oxygen systems and simply go harder and faster, that system taking more of the work load - load off the legs.
Old training skool would advise training against wind for strength and with for speed

For the record I would train regardless of the wind, but looking closer into this, could be worth doing different session on a windy day than on a calmer day to balance the benefits of the conditions.

It's a very valid question, I am not Trev !

Two posts because one just went AWOL no idea where stuff dissapears to on here or why, seems one has now appeared !

I don't even know what the bold bit means so I'll just ignore it...

and you say you train regardless of the wind? which is fair enough.. but if you're training you should be targeting an intensity for a set time (either with HR or Power) ->riding at that intensity is generally possible whatever the weather...

There is no real benefit to riding on calm or windy days providing you stick to the intensity and time planned for that session.

Team4Luke

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

and you say you train regardless of the wind? which is fair enough.. but if you're training you should be targeting an intensity for a set time (either with HR or Power) ->riding at that intensity is generally possible whatever the weather...

There is no real benefit to riding on calm or windy days providing you stick to the intensity and time planned for that session.

yes I do correct.

Just trying to find out if personally I see better gains from when I ride at higher speeds at of course the same intensity because I seem to. I feel more efficent at higher speeds once I am trained up to maintain them, training on hard days with slower speeds just doesn't seem to produce gains and just feels like banging your head against a brick wall. If I go with our chainy and it's a hard windy day I will be hanging on and getting dropped, if it's a calm ish day and were riding much much faster I feel far more comfortable. I've always felt my legs to be my personal limiting factor as I can't increase their size or fibre type make up then wondering if balancing training more effectively looking at the conditions is something we, I anyone should look at.

alihisgreat

Team4Luke wrote:

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

and you say you train regardless of the wind? which is fair enough.. but if you're training you should be targeting an intensity for a set time (either with HR or Power) ->riding at that intensity is generally possible whatever the weather...

There is no real benefit to riding on calm or windy days providing you stick to the intensity and time planned for that session.

yes I do correct.

Just trying to find out if personally I see better gains from when I ride at higher speeds at of course the same intensity because I seem to. I feel more efficent at higher speeds once I am trained up to maintain them, training on hard days with slower speeds just doesn't seem to produce gains and just feels like banging your head against a brick wall. If I go with our chainy and it's a hard windy day I will be hanging on and getting dropped, if it's a calm ish day and were riding much much faster I feel far more comfortable. I've always felt my legs to be my personal limiting factor as I can't increase their size or fibre type make up then wondering if balancing training more effectively looking at the conditions is something we, I anyone should look at.

That's because you'll need to be putting out more power for more of the time in a chaingang on a windy day.. on a calm day you can sit in the bunch and shelter.. on a windy day you get much less benefit from being sheltered in the group and
hence everyone works harder for longer.

What you're feeling is because you're working at different intensities... I will repeat myself again!

Training at a given intensity is still training at a given intensity regardless of any wind -> i.e. you don't gain anything more from putting out 200w and going 20mph on a calm day, than from putting out 200w and going 16mph on a windy day.

Herbsman

Next you'll be saying you don't benefit from riding up hills because they're so hard that you can't go fast up them!

bigpikle

I think one issue getting in your way here is that you cant actually compare your rides in any meaningful way. I think looking at 'the feeling' you have is not helping here. Without a power meter to actually show how much work you are doing on each ride and being able to compare cadence/power/work done etc objectively you cant say what is actually going on. I agree with the comment above that your windy chaingang is a harder ride and the reason you cant keep on is that you simply cant produce enough power to keep with the group (or perhaps you dont get anything like the recovery periods that you do on the less windy ride so cant recover as often) - who are working harder on those windy rides. On the less windy rides it takes less power to stay with the group so you can stay with them. You may feel one ride is a slog, as you are working hard and only holding a (relatively) low speed, or your legs may feel good spinning and going fast but that doesnt actually mean much. I know it sounds like a bit of a 'cliche' and another post banging on about power etc etc, but until you actually ride with real time power data telling you what you are actually doing you never realise just what is going on - the amount of time actually spent doing virtually nothing, the actual effort (or not) you are making etc. It was a HUGE eye opener for me and for a while I couldnt believe what had actually been going on during what I thought were good training rides! Even now my clubmates dont believe me that after 'a good hard 4hr club run' I spent 55% of our time at recovery pace (or zero effort) and I'm one of the weaker riders who has to work harder to stay with them!

The other issue is how can you know you 'make more gains' from one ride versus another? Gains are made over long periods of time and are the sum of all the training stress you are applying to your body and the recovery, diet etc you include. There is simply no way to attribute more or less gains to the 'feeling' you have on or after a ride, not least of which is that you have no objective way to measure any gains anyway. Just feeling fatigue when you get back, DOMS etc doesnt mean one ride gave more gais that another.

Team4Luke

Herbsman wrote:

Next you'll be saying you don't benefit from riding up hills because they're so hard that you can't go fast up them!

I wouldn't recommend riding any hills if you say only do TT.

alihisgreat

Team4Luke wrote:

Herbsman wrote:

Next you'll be saying you don't benefit from riding up hills because they're so hard that you can't go fast up them!

I wouldn't recommend riding any hills if you say only do TT.

Why?

TTs have hills in too..

Herbsman

Team4Luke wrote:

Herbsman wrote:

Next you'll be saying you don't benefit from riding up hills because they're so hard that you can't go fast up them!

I wouldn't recommend riding any hills if you say only do TT.

Of course. All TT courses are flat.

Team4Luke

Bigpikle wrote:

I think one issue getting in your way here is that you cant actually compare your rides in any meaningful way. I think looking at 'the feeling' you have is not helping here. Without a power meter to actually show how much work you are doing on each ride and being able to compare cadence/power/work done etc objectively you cant say what is actually going on. I agree with the comment above that your windy chaingang is a harder ride and the reason you cant keep on is that you simply cant produce enough power to keep with the group (or perhaps you dont get anything like the recovery periods that you do on the less windy ride so cant recover as often) - who are working harder on those windy rides. On the less windy rides it takes less power to stay with the group so you can stay with them. You may feel one ride is a slog, as you are working hard and only holding a (relatively) low speed, or your legs may feel good spinning and going fast but that doesnt actually mean much. I know it sounds like a bit of a 'cliche' and another post banging on about power etc etc, but until you actually ride with real time power data telling you what you are actually doing you never realise just what is going on - the amount of time actually spent doing virtually nothing, the actual effort (or not) you are making etc. It was a HUGE eye opener for me and for a while I couldnt believe what had actually been going on during what I thought were good training rides! Even now my clubmates dont believe me that after 'a good hard 4hr club run' I spent 55% of our time at recovery pace (or zero effort) and I'm one of the weaker riders who has to work harder to stay with them!

The other issue is how can you know you 'make more gains' from one ride versus another? Gains are made over long periods of time and are the sum of all the training stress you are applying to your body and the recovery, diet etc you include. There is simply no way to attribute more or less gains to the 'feeling' you have on or after a ride, not least of which is that you have no objective way to measure any gains anyway. Just feeling fatigue when you get back, DOMS etc doesnt mean one ride gave more gais that another.

Good post.
yes many many moons ago I did club rides whilst doing TT, didn't take me very long to realise exactly what you say, zero quality training there compared to solo training.
I've always been of the opinion that you need to train as close as you can to race like speeds, realisticly this can only be done at short intervals for the high cruising speeds and perhaps training on TT bike for longer holding efforts. Many people do train on TT bikes and so do Pro Riders, here they are adapting to TT bike/position which is a good reason and a way to get used to race speed most definintely worth it, now in terms of power you may well be training on the road bike at the same power as TT bike and only difference being speed being considerably higher than road bike.
I just think there is bit more going on here, for me I can't see any great benefit at riding say at 16/18mph on tough days when you then have to make the jump of perhaps 9mph more at TT speeds. It's this gap in between them both that I consider for me anyway I come off physically better training regulary on days when it's calmer and I can close that gap up. Works for me anyway I just thought it worthy topic to discuss.

bigpikle

I think there must be something to training at higher speeds or there wouldnt be so much done with motorpacing as a tool, but I suspect your belief that 'training at race speeds = good training' is holding you back. It might be better to think of it as 'training at race effort...' whatever the speed that ends up being. Of course there is much more to it than simply using 1 effort level in training all the time.

I went out today and it was very windy - 20mph and gusting more than that. I watched the PM very closely and it was quite striking. With the tailwind I was absolutely flying, pedaling fast in 50/11 but the PM was showing me struggling to exceed 170w (barely over my recovery level) yet turn the corner into a headwind (or close to it) and suddenly I'm in 50/16 or so, and producing 285w and yet I'm crawling along and the legs are really starting to feel it... I know which was doing me more good

alihisgreat

Bigpikle wrote:

I think there must be something to training at higher speeds or there wouldnt be so much done with motorpacing as a tool, but I suspect your belief that 'training at race speeds = good training' is holding you back. It might be better to think of it as 'training at race effort...' whatever the speed that ends up being. Of course there is much more to it than simply using 1 effort level in training all the time.

I went out today and it was very windy - 20mph and gusting more than that. I watched the PM very closely and it was quite striking. With the tailwind I was absolutely flying, pedaling fast in 50/11 but the PM was showing me struggling to exceed 170w (barely over my recovery level) yet turn the corner into a headwind (or close to it) and suddenly I'm in 50/16 or so, and producing 285w and yet I'm crawling along and the legs are really starting to feel it... I know which was doing me more good

Motorpacing has nothing to do with speed... its there to help you maintain an intensity and simulate race conditions (not speed though) i.e. you ride at an intensity determined by an external body... for example Wiggins does motor pacing up climbs when he's training to simulate the power level that he will have to put out in a Grand Tour stage to hang with the top climbers.

Herbsman

Any beneficial effect that you feel that high speed riding has on you is purely psychological.

I regularly do training rides at 0mph - yes, zero miles per hour, and these rides provide better training than the rides that I do at >20mph.

Speed is totally irrelevant to the adaptations that occur as a result of training. The only things that matter are the combination of force and cadence, and duration. You can either pedal with greater force and lower cadence, or lower force and higher cadence. Whether you're doing 12 or 32 miles per hour is irrelevant. But why I'm wasting my life typing this, I really don't know.

bigpikle

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

Motorpacing has nothing to do with speed... its there to help you maintain an intensity and simulate race conditions (not speed though) i.e. you ride at an intensity determined by an external body... for example Wiggins does motor pacing up climbs when he's training to simulate the power level that he will have to put out in a Grand Tour stage to hang with the top climbers.

interesting - its not something I've ever done, or plan to frankly, but from what I've read there always seems to be a reference to high leg speed and simulating the speed element that cant be achieved any other practical way?

SBezza

Training at race speeds is irrelevant, it is training at race intensity that matters, speed is just a by product of power against enviromental conditions.

If you like having leg speed, then on a windy day gear down and spin away, you will likely produce the power as normal, just need to accept you will be going slower, like it has been mentioned, it is the effort put in that is the difference, not the actual speed you travel across the ground.

I could travel over the ground at 25 mph + with a tailwind, and put out less than 100 watts, or I could travel at 12 mph into a headwind and put out 300 watts, what do you think is the better training effect.

alihisgreat

SBezza wrote:

Training at race speeds is irrelevant, it is training at race intensity that matters, speed is just a by product of power against enviromental conditions.

If you like having leg speed, then on a windy day gear down and spin away, you will likely produce the power as normal, just need to accept you will be going slower, like it has been mentioned, it is the effort put in that is the difference, not the actual speed you travel across the ground.

I could travel over the ground at 25 mph + with a tailwind, and put out less than 100 watts, or I could travel at 12 mph into a headwind and put out 300 watts, what do you think is the better training effect.

ovbiously spinning a cadence of 200 in your top gear with a tailwind has the best training effect because you're going faster!!111!!!! :roll: