TT advice

PB dreamer

Hi, I've just completed my second 10TT and need advice on a few things.

Currently riding a Cervelo s2 with magic cosmic slr wheels.

My 2 times for the TT's were 24.58 and 24.14. How many seconds do you think I would be able to shave off if I had the full gear I.e skinsuit, aero helmet, TT bars?

Obviously this season is coming to an end, but next season I want to concentrate on 10 and 25 TT's, regards to training is there much point in each training session being longer than 1hr 30? I'll also be riding few longer sat morning club runs in the winter

Thanks for the advice in advance.

pitchshifter

I have done two TT's. First one I didn't have any aero goodies. Second attempt two weeks later with Aero jersey, aero shoe covers and getting as low as possible holding the bars near the stem I shaved over a minute off my time.

Pretty sure there is some gains to be had, especially with a skin suit.

prawnlover

as pitchshifter said I reckon the best gains would definitely come from skinsuit and aero helmet. Depends if you are comfortable in the TT position with the clipon bars as to whether they benefit you or not i'd guess!

LegendLust

Biggest gains would be from TT bars, then a skinsuit.

xscreamsuk

If you go to an Open TT of any quality then almost everyone is on a TT bike, with Aero Helmet and skinsuit. It's cos it's quicker. If you really want to concentrate on TT's then look to a TT bike.

ozzzyosborn206

xscreamsuk wrote:

If you go to an Open TT of any quality then almost everyone is on a TT bike, with Aero Helmet and skinsuit. It's cos it's quicker. If you really want to concentrate on TT's then look to a TT bike.

that said if you could put out good times on a road bike you will get more respect than being on a all singing all dancing bike and creeping. Try to get a minute or two off your time before getting a tt bike then when you change you will propel yourself into the higher ranks, rather than buying an awesome bike being content with your times and not training as hard

SteppenHerring

This is interesting although I'm not sure how accurate. Cheap aerobars are definitely the best value thing.

If you did those times on your first go on a road bike, you should be able to go pretty fast.

lawrences

I'm in a similiar situation to the OP and was wondering if anyone had any answers to his second question? I rarely do a training session over 2 hours but at the moment I only ever do 10 and 25m TT's, would longer training sessions be more beneficial even though I'm racing the shorter distances?

peejay78

one of the benefits of time trialling as opposed to road racing is that you can be competitive on a relatively light training schedule, so the short answer is yes.

however, it helps to have a strong base to work from and you need to top it up fairly regularly. the vast majority of my rides at below 30 miles and ridden at pace, often specific to the distance or race i'm preparing for. A couple of times a month i do a hefty longer ride to maintain endurance. if you're doing longer distances, like a 50 or 100, you need to change accordingly.

this regime has been good enough for me to do a 19.42 at ten miles and a 50.21 at twenty five. my endurance slipped away after about 10 weeks of racing and I needed to do a bit more 'build' work, long tempo or sweet spot rides.

lastly - the adage of quality over quantity is very important. you can do all the miles in the world but if it lacks any purpose or specificity you'll be slow and rubbish and depressed by it.

lawrences

peejay78 wrote:

one of the benefits of time trialling as opposed to road racing is that you can be competitive on a relatively light training schedule, so the short answer is yes.

however, it helps to have a strong base to work from and you need to top it up fairly regularly. the vast majority of my rides at below 30 miles and ridden at pace, often specific to the distance or race i'm preparing for. A couple of times a month i do a hefty longer ride to maintain endurance. if you're doing longer distances, like a 50 or 100, you need to change accordingly.

this regime has been good enough for me to do a 19.42 at ten miles and a 50.21 at twenty five. my endurance slipped away after about 10 weeks of racing and I needed to do a bit more 'build' work, long tempo or sweet spot rides.

lastly - the adage of quality over quantity is very important. you can do all the miles in the world but if it lacks any purpose or specificity you'll be slow and rubbish and depressed by it.

Those are some impressive times

I'm often pressed for time to do very long rides so it's good to know I can do 30-40 miles at good pace and they will all add up. I do a 60-70 miler most sundays so hopefully my times will come down after this winters training.

cheers

peejay78

i tend to do as little as 15-20 miles in one go, but it is over hilly terrain with two biggish (5+minutes) climbs. This helps build in interval efforts. i do it as fast as i can.

markos1963

Definitely agree with quality over quantity but would add frequency as well. Five or six short hard good quality sessions a week would be much better than three long rides. This means if you can commute every day a decent distance you can combine your training into this.

LegendLust

markos1963 wrote:

Definitely agree with quality over quantity but would add frequency as well. Five or six short hard good quality sessions a week would be much better than three long rides. This means if you can commute every day a decent distance you can combine your training into this.

When you say 'hard', how hard do you mean? If they were very hard interval sessions then doing 6 a week wouldn't be good advice. Where's the recovery rides and rest from these sessions planned in?

xscreamsuk

You can do a long ride with some hard elements built in. ie I did 4 1/2 hrs today, 4*20 at threshold, rest at club ride / bumbling pace. Long ride but with some hard efforts.

markos1963

LegendLust wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

Definitely agree with quality over quantity but would add frequency as well. Five or six short hard good quality sessions a week would be much better than three long rides. This means if you can commute every day a decent distance you can combine your training into this.

When you say 'hard', how hard do you mean? If they were very hard interval sessions then doing 6 a week wouldn't be good advice. Where's the recovery rides and rest from these sessions planned in?

Maybe three very hard sessions,2 x 20m, 5 x 5m, 12 x 1m with some tempo riding in between. Then recovery on day six then rest on day seven. This would obviously be in the run up to the race season and then easing off as I start racing(usually 2-3 races a week) I found that since doing adopting this I have knocked three minutes off my 10TT time this season.

maryka

markos1963 wrote:

LegendLust wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

Definitely agree with quality over quantity but would add frequency as well. Five or six short hard good quality sessions a week would be much better than three long rides. This means if you can commute every day a decent distance you can combine your training into this.

When you say 'hard', how hard do you mean? If they were very hard interval sessions then doing 6 a week wouldn't be good advice. Where's the recovery rides and rest from these sessions planned in?

Maybe three very hard sessions,2 x 20m, 5 x 5m, 12 x 1m with some tempo riding in between. Then recovery on day six then rest on day seven. This would obviously be in the run up to the race season and then easing off as I start racing(usually 2-3 races a week) I found that since doing adopting this I have knocked three minutes off my 10TT time this season.

Most people would find doing those 3 sessions each week pretty hard, so you need to be careful not to overdo it. In any case if you do intervals on repeat days, it's best to start with the shortest duration ones first, then go longer as the week goes on (and your legs get tireder!) Also make sure you know exactly what you want to get out of intervals and you know the proper recovery. E.g., 12x1 is an anaerobic workout with proper recovery (10 min between) or a Vo2max workout with short recoveries (1 min between). 5x5 with 5 min rest is true Vo2max, with 1 min rest it turns into a threshold workout. And the longer the interval, the shorter the recovery relative to interval is needed. Something like 2x20 only needs a couple of minutes between.

Personally I think stuff like 1 min and even 5 min (anaerobic and Vo2max) intervals should be used sparingly for a TTer, as that top end stuff comes on fast and disappears fast too if you stop doing it. So a well-timed block of it will be good but doing it week in and week out you will start to stagnate. Plus it's pretty easy to burn yourself out of those short intervals, they are hard!

The meat of your training for TTs should be threshold stuff, so lots of 3x15, 2x20, the occasional 1x60. Once you have done a lot of work with that, you can add in some 5x5s to raise your aerobic ceiling a bit so you can then go back and do your 2x20s a bit harder. 1 min intervals I would probably not bother with as a TTer, they are more important for road racers (unless you like doing them, in which case, go have fun!)

markos1963

maryka wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

LegendLust wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

Definitely agree with quality over quantity but would add frequency as well. Five or six short hard good quality sessions a week would be much better than three long rides. This means if you can commute every day a decent distance you can combine your training into this.

When you say 'hard', how hard do you mean? If they were very hard interval sessions then doing 6 a week wouldn't be good advice. Where's the recovery rides and rest from these sessions planned in?

Maybe three very hard sessions,2 x 20m, 5 x 5m, 12 x 1m with some tempo riding in between. Then recovery on day six then rest on day seven. This would obviously be in the run up to the race season and then easing off as I start racing(usually 2-3 races a week) I found that since doing adopting this I have knocked three minutes off my 10TT time this season.

Most people would find doing those 3 sessions each week pretty hard, so you need to be careful not to overdo it. In any case if you do intervals on repeat days, it's best to start with the shortest duration ones first, then go longer as the week goes on (and your legs get tireder!) Also make sure you know exactly what you want to get out of intervals and you know the proper recovery. E.g., 12x1 is an anaerobic workout with proper recovery (10 min between) or a Vo2max workout with short recoveries (1 min between). 5x5 with 5 min rest is true Vo2max, with 1 min rest it turns into a threshold workout. And the longer the interval, the shorter the recovery relative to interval is needed. Something like 2x20 only needs a couple of minutes between.

Personally I think stuff like 1 min and even 5 min (anaerobic and Vo2max) intervals should be used sparingly for a TTer, as that top end stuff comes on fast and disappears fast too if you stop doing it. So a well-timed block of it will be good but doing it week in and week out you will start to stagnate. Plus it's pretty easy to burn yourself out of those short intervals, they are hard!

The meat of your training for TTs should be threshold stuff, so lots of 3x15, 2x20, the occasional 1x60. Once you have done a lot of work with that, you can add in some 5x5s to raise your aerobic ceiling a bit so you can then go back and do your 2x20s a bit harder. 1 min intervals I would probably not bother with as a TTer, they are more important for road racers (unless you like doing them, in which case, go have fun!)

I would agree with most of what you have said there. I was trying to keep it simple for the OP. I do the hardest session of the week after a rest day and I certainly wouldn't do this training for a long period perhaps the 13 weeks leading up to my first race. I found the 1m intervals very useful for TTs where there are a few hills involved as it gave me the extra snap I needed to get up and over. A good instance of this was the Little Mountain TT this year where I knocked 31m off my PB on a 39mile course with 3000ft+ of climbing.

Fat Head

Those are good times with a road bike.

Reckon after settling in to a TT bike you'd be doing 22's regularly with a 21 coming after a bit more progression.

SBezza

I would add, that quantity doesn't have to be at the expense of quality, you can do very good quality riding when volume is high. I would concentrate on getting a good base fitness first and foremost before you really start hammering the hard intervals. If done right they wear you out, and if you don't have deep down fitness you will likely burn out fairly quickly or start doing them sub standard. Now building base fitness doesn't mean just tootling around looking at the wildlife, save that for recovery rides. Ride at a decent tempo effort for 1-2 hours and do it on a near daily basis, though rest will be required. These will build fitness very well, and in turn will help you get used to riding hard for prolonged periods.

Intervals are ideally needed as well, though you don't even have to go into threshold level to see good returns, again unless you are fit, drop the effort slightly so that you can get perhaps more done. 3 or 4 15 min intervals around sweetspot can give you as good a return as a 2 x 20 min threshold interval, especially if you can't do the threshold interval at the correct effort for the full duration, you also need to factor in training the following day. As mention above one of the best training things you can do is frequent training, and if after a 2 x 20 min interval session you have to take 48 hours off, you are again training sub standardly.

5 min intervals are good for 10 mile TT's, but these take even more out of you than 15 or 20 min intervals, so use them by all means, but as maryka says, gains can be easily got, but you lose it easily as well. I personally never do intervals below 5 mins, and I don't do many of those either (but I am more a long distance TTer, so do very few short distance TT's)

Deep down fitness comes down to years of training unfortunately, and this needs to be a good mixture of intensity and volume, just one or the other and you are likely to race at below the best you could race.

BigFatBloke

SBezza wrote:

I would add, that quantity doesn't have to be at the expense of quality, you can do very good quality riding when volume is high. I would concentrate on getting a good base fitness first and foremost before you really start hammering the hard intervals. If done right they wear you out, and if you don't have deep down fitness you will likely burn out fairly quickly or start doing them sub standard. Now building base fitness doesn't mean just tootling around looking at the wildlife, save that for recovery rides. Ride at a decent tempo effort for 1-2 hours and do it on a near daily basis, though rest will be required. These will build fitness very well, and in turn will help you get used to riding hard for prolonged periods.

Intervals are ideally needed as well, though you don't even have to go into threshold level to see good returns, again unless you are fit, drop the effort slightly so that you can get perhaps more done. 3 or 4 15 min intervals around sweetspot can give you as good a return as a 2 x 20 min threshold interval, especially if you can't do the threshold interval at the correct effort for the full duration, you also need to factor in training the following day. As mention above one of the best training things you can do is frequent training, and if after a 2 x 20 min interval session you have to take 48 hours off, you are again training sub standardly.

5 min intervals are good for 10 mile TT's, but these take even more out of you than 15 or 20 min intervals, so use them by all means, but as maryka says, gains can be easily got, but you lose it easily as well. I personally never do intervals below 5 mins, and I don't do many of those either (but I am more a long distance TTer, so do very few short distance TT's)

Deep down fitness comes down to years of training unfortunately, and this needs to be a good mixture of intensity and volume, just one or the other and you are likely to race at below the best you could race.

Very good advice.

Just one question. Seeing as threshold is the sort of effort / power you can sustain for approx 60 minutes you should be able to do 2 x 20 min at threshold, so would it not be the case that you have overestimated threshold and are trying to do 2 x 20 min at over threshold over threshold?

BigFatBloke

BigFatBloke wrote:

SBezza wrote:

I would add, that quantity doesn't have to be at the expense of quality, you can do very good quality riding when volume is high. I would concentrate on getting a good base fitness first and foremost before you really start hammering the hard intervals. If done right they wear you out, and if you don't have deep down fitness you will likely burn out fairly quickly or start doing them sub standard. Now building base fitness doesn't mean just tootling around looking at the wildlife, save that for recovery rides. Ride at a decent tempo effort for 1-2 hours and do it on a near daily basis, though rest will be required. These will build fitness very well, and in turn will help you get used to riding hard for prolonged periods.

Intervals are ideally needed as well, though you don't even have to go into threshold level to see good returns, again unless you are fit, drop the effort slightly so that you can get perhaps more done. 3 or 4 15 min intervals around sweetspot can give you as good a return as a 2 x 20 min threshold interval, especially if you can't do the threshold interval at the correct effort for the full duration, you also need to factor in training the following day. As mention above one of the best training things you can do is frequent training, and if after a 2 x 20 min interval session you have to take 48 hours off, you are again training sub standardly.

5 min intervals are good for 10 mile TT's, but these take even more out of you than 15 or 20 min intervals, so use them by all means, but as maryka says, gains can be easily got, but you lose it easily as well. I personally never do intervals below 5 mins, and I don't do many of those either (but I am more a long distance TTer, so do very few short distance TT's)

Deep down fitness comes down to years of training unfortunately, and this needs to be a good mixture of intensity and volume, just one or the other and you are likely to race at below the best you could race.

Very good advice.

Just one question. Seeing as threshold is the sort of effort / power you can sustain for approx 60 minutes you should be able to do 2 x 20 min at threshold, so would it not be the case that you have overestimated threshold and are trying to do 2 x 20 min at over threshold if you cant complete them?

SBezza

Yes you should be able to, but my 60 min power would have been from a race in my best condition, and to then try and crack this out regularly in a fatigued state might just not be possible. If you got your 60 min power from testing in a fatigued state on the turbo, then yes you should be able to do 2 x 20 min at that level, but then your tested FTP might not actually be the best you could do.

Threshold work DOES NOT need to be done at FTP to get good returns, what you can do is entirely based on what other training you are doing and just how tired you are, I could just about manage 12 mins at around threshold the other day, but considering what I had done in the previous 3-4 days it wasn't surprising. There is also the recovery aspect, doing intervals on a daily basis will require a different approach than say doing 2 x 20 on one day, having an easy day, and then doing them again the day after.

BigFatBloke

Certainly doing 20 minutes at say 95% of max 20 minute power is much harder fatigued than when recovered yet they get the same TSS.

Tom Dean

BigFatBloke wrote:

Certainly doing 20 minutes at say 95% of max 20 minute power is much harder fatigued than when recovered yet they get the same TSS.

So, when they said x TSS feels the same for all people in all situations, they were LYING???????????

SBezza

BigFatBloke wrote:

Certainly doing 20 minutes at say 95% of max 20 minute power is much harder fatigued than when recovered yet they get the same TSS.

But the actual training stress is the same on the body, just it will feel harder mentally and physically when fatigued.

BigFatBloke

SBezza wrote:

BigFatBloke wrote:

Certainly doing 20 minutes at say 95% of max 20 minute power is much harder fatigued than when recovered yet they get the same TSS.

But the actual training stress is the same on the body, just it will feel harder mentally and physically when fatigued.

The fatigued muscles and cardiovascular system have done the same amount of work as measured in watts yes. But those fatigued muscles and cardiovascular system have had to work harder to produce the same power - this is why it feels harder both physically and mentally. If it feels hard it is hard.

In my opinion 300 watts fresh stresses the body and mind less than 300 watts when fatigued.

As to which has the biggest training benefit that is another question or set of questions.

Tom Dean

Can you clearly define 'work'?

BigFatBloke

Metabolic cost...............

Read up on muscle fibre recruitment when muscles are fatigued.

To do the same amount of work in watts with fatigued muscles requires greater muscle fibre recruitment. This is why it requires more effort to produce 300 watts when fatigued than when fresh. Fatigued fibres are less efficient they contract less powerfully so more and more fibres have to be recruited to produce the same power.

Recruitment will go up the recruitment ladder, once slow twitch fibres are exhausted intermediate are recruited and in the end fast twitch are recruited which are less efficient at burning oxygen than slow twitch.

300 watts on fatigued muscles has a greater metabolic cost than 300 watts on fresh muscles, thus the training stress is greater.

Normalised Power is an attempt to take into account the metabolic cost of a training session. Yet TSS does not take into account the extra metabolic cost of producing the same power when fatigued.

All TSS are not created equal.

BigFatBloke

SBezza wrote:

BigFatBloke wrote:

Certainly doing 20 minutes at say 95% of max 20 minute power is much harder fatigued than when recovered yet they get the same TSS.

But the actual training stress is the same on the body, just it will feel harder mentally and physically when fatigued.

The metabolic cost is greater though. That is why it feels harder, because it is harder.

VO2 Slow Component.

A lot of people assume that an individual's oxygen consumption at a constant 300 watts also remains constant - it does not. Oxygen consumption will continue to rise as fatigue sets in. If you rode at 300 watts long enough you would eventually reach your VO2Max. Well Froome would take a hell of a long time but a mere mortal would.

Already fatigued muscles will fatigue even faster and oxygen consumption will increase even faster if you try to sustain a constant power.

The Watts may be the same but the physiological cost - the stress on the body is considerably higher.

Tom Dean

Hmm, I won't ask you to define 'metabolic cost'

Interesting though - can you show some evidence that this is a) true and b) significant in practical terms?

BigFatBloke

Tom Dean wrote:

Hmm, I won't ask you to define 'metabolic cost'

Interesting though - can you show some evidence that this is a) true and b) significant in practical terms?

Tom,

There are some papers i have read but I read this the other day and saved the article. It should give you an idea of the sort of things I'm looking at.

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/the-slo ... ster-39797

The VO2 slow component is particularly interesting to exercise physiologists because it indicates that the efficiency with which the body uses oxygen to produce energy is progressively lost while exercise continues at exactly the same speed. In fact, it has been shown that if exercise is continued for long enough the VO2max can be attained even though the exercise was predicted to be, and started out being, sub-maximal(3)!