maximum possible effort for a 2x20?

mamba80

whatever - but trust me none taken... you have a good christmas and a great seasons racing

neeb

Well, I've mostly found this thread interesting and informative, you learn a lot knowing what people disagree about.. I'm fairly new to structured training and very much still experimenting, so it's good to know what the different options are, their potential benefits and disadvantages, and especially what's controversial. I'm not about to go away and implement anyone's advice blindly (especially if it turns out that it doesn't work for me), so any opinions backed up with personal experience or reasoned argument are welcome. My FTP is up about 8w in the last 6 weeks or so despite that period coinciding with stopping training out of doórs due to the weather (snow now where I am), so I must be doing something vaguely right..

Trev The Rev

neeb wrote:

Well, I've mostly found this thread interesting and informative, you learn a lot knowing what people disagree about.. I'm fairly new to structured training and very much still experimenting, so it's good to know what the different options are, their potential benefits and disadvantages, and especially what's controversial. I'm not about to go away and implement anyone's advice blindly (especially if it turns out that it doesn't work for me), so any opinions backed up with personal experience or reasoned argument are welcome. My FTP is up about 8w in the last 6 weeks or so despite that period coinciding with stopping training out of doórs due to the weather (snow now where I am), so I must be doing something vaguely right..

Playing devils advocate, how do you know your FTP is up 8 watts or if you have just been trying 8 watts harder?

neeb

Trev The Rev wrote:

Playing devils advocate, how do you know your FTP is up 8 watts or if you have just been trying 8 watts harder?

Because I'm pretty sure if anything I was trying harder during the first 20min test and couldn't have given any more (I wanted my FTP to be as high as possible), whereas for the one I did most recently I could possibly have gone very slightly harder in the last 5mins but I was already content in the knowledge that my FTP was up. All hypothetical of course, but if it keeps going up consistently I'll know I'm getting stronger in some way, either physiologically or psychologically..

skinnyrider

bobones wrote:

I find doing these longer intervals on HR can be a bit tougher because you need to ramp up the power early on to get your HR in the target zone whereas done on power, your HR increases gradually throughout the interval for a given effort.

Your doing it wrong.


I'm not sure why everyone has read over this and not put you right.
You're aware HR is a lagging time variable, so treat it as such. Ease into an effort and wait for HR to catch up, then push up/down if you need to. Run the first 5-10min on PE, so you're in the right area.
Or in effect, you're not doing the training you think you are, if you're smashing it out of the starting blocks to bring HR up as quick as possible, you're well into anaerobic levels of effort.

Lookyhere

Set'asskos you did ask mumbojumbo for his opinions and when he told you what he thought, you went off on one.

But its been an interesting thread guys, not sure what i learnt though

Herbsman

skinnyrider wrote:

bobones wrote:

I find doing these longer intervals on HR can be a bit tougher because you need to ramp up the power early on to get your HR in the target zone whereas done on power, your HR increases gradually throughout the interval for a given effort.

Your doing it wrong.


I'm not sure why everyone has read over this and not put you right.
You're aware HR is a lagging time variable, so treat it as such. Ease into an effort and wait for HR to catch up, then push up/down if you need to. Run the first 5-10min on PE, so you're in the right area.
Or in effect, you're not doing the training you think you are, if you're smashing it out of the starting blocks to bring HR up as quick as possible, you're well into anaerobic levels of effort.

Correct.

What matters more than how fast your heart is beating is how hard and how often your muscles are contracting to turn the pedals - which is what power is telling you. Riding really hard in pursuit of a heart rate number from the start doesn't make sense unless your actual training intention is to start off really hard then ease off for the rest of the interval - which is fair enough - who knows, it could actully be more beneficial physiologically than 'proper' pacing. The only problem is that you may 'blow up' before the end of the interval.

Just remember when cycling you are training your leg muscles, not just your heart

Setarkos

skinnyrider wrote:

Your doing it wrong.


I'm not sure why everyone has read over this and not put you right.
You're aware HR is a lagging time variable, so treat it as such. Ease into an effort and wait for HR to catch up, then push up/down if you need to. Run the first 5-10min on PE, so you're in the right area.
Or in effect, you're not doing the training you think you are, if you're smashing it out of the starting blocks to bring HR up as quick as possible, you're well into anaerobic levels of effort.

+1

Addendum: If you do a specific training for eg. an individual pursuit on the track or a late attack in a road race it can make sense to go harder in the beginning of an interval but heart rate also tricks you toward the end when you do that. Your power is decreasing while your heart rate stays high and in reality you loose time and get caught by the field. So it is important you have other means of making sure you keep your effort steady at the end, if not power then speed/gradient etc.
Doing a steady interval by HR is done as described in the previous posts.

Gabbo

Good read this. Need to keep it bumped

Gabbo

Tried this session on the turbo today.

Was quite difficult, and far less enjoyable than shorter intervals but I feel it's work. Tired legs, now