Increasing Threshold Power, total mileage vs speedwork..

RutlandGav

Background info - 46 y/o Male, just under 5ft 10inch , fastest in school at 100m, never worth much beyond that. During a bout of depression a few years back i stopped exercising and reached a peak of 113kg. Started doing lots of cardio at gym, got down to 96kg, but couldn't get below. Abandoned gym 4 yr ago and started bike commuting - I live 16 miles from work. First year or so was doing it every day, then got a bit lazy (also discouraged by overuse injuries) only riding in every other day. New year's resolution was to bike every day again - did that a couple months, then had a crash and couldn't ride for a month. Celebrated the cast coming off with a new bike. The overuse niggles seem to have gone - the old bike was causing them. I started throwing in longer rides on my days off, and now I've got a power meter and am thinking of having a proper go at this. I'm now down to 73KG.

So long story short, since the turn of the year i've been commuting about 100 miles a week, with a month off due to accident, and have recently been amping things up.

I did a quick n'dirty test the other day, where i tried to hold 200W for a few minutes - my HR was constant throughout at 149 BPM at beginning and end of that segment. When I upped the tempo to 220W, I was at 157BPM after a minute, then 159BPM, then 162BPM. Conclusion : my threshold is beteeen 200 and 220W. 200 feels comfortable, I just need to concentrate so i don't take "mini breaks" every few seconds that lowers my average. 220 feels like hell if i try to keep that going more than a couple minutes.

180W is the pace i naturally gravitate towards if i'm feeling fresh - I can do for 2 hours. 160W appears to be my "all day" pace, i have to be disciplined and hold myself back to that level if i know i'm doing a long one.

Sprinting, I get 800-900W.

I'd like to get into Audax riding, can't see me ever doing races, but would like a better threshold power even so.

My ride to work in the morning is before breakfast, so i have to keep the pace down so as to not bonk, usually with a prevailing westerly tailwind. The return journey is performed into a headwind with plenty of fuel in the tank, but i can't push the intensity too far or i come home adrenalised and can't sleep, and will have sore legs the next morning.

I work 4 day on, 4 off rota with 12 hour shifts. I'm wondering how to get my power up ?

a) just keep increasing the mileage to 200-250 pw and be patient, see where i am in a year or so

b) do more speedwork on my days off, but accept that will mean less riding overall as i find it really takes a lot of out me?

I suppose my current abilities reflect the riding i do. Mediocre FTP but able to hold a relatively high % of that over long distances.

imposter2.0

Speedwork and intervals would be the obvious choices. It might take more out of you initially if you are unused to those kind of efforts, but the more you do, the more you will be able to do.

The only other thing I would say is that you rarely see words like 'audax' and 'power meters' in the same sentence..

maryka

For low volume fairly inexperienced cyclists, more mileage is always the answer. Get up to 200-250 miles per week and see what happens. Now is the best time to increase your riding volume, given the season. It's got to be easy though, below 80% max HR.

In winter you can see if you can handle more threshold/intensity, if you're more serious about it then turbo work is ideal for that.

john1967

Listen to the velonews podcasts on polarised training and the trainer road podcasts are very usefull too.Remember it's not just about quantity it's about the quality aswell. I made big gains from just a 5 -6 hours training a week.

Midlands Grimpeur

Personally I wouldn't get hung up on FTP, especially if you want to get into audax riding, more important is increasing your aerobic fitness so you are able to hold a higher % of your ftp over longer distances. Doing intervals will help, but more miles in general at a mix of intensities could be more beneficial.

Alex_Simmons/RST

FTP *is* an expression of your aerobic fitness.

As for what to do, well that's going to depends on a few things. As a rule of thumb, having a couple of years of consistent riding where the volume of riding you do is gradually increased in a sustainable manner will generally work well for most people. Provided the terrain has enough variability in the mix then hills typically end up being natural intervals.

After that, well customising something to suit all the factors relevant to you will help to improve your power but that's a more detailed conversation. It's not a case of more riding vs intervals or speed work. It's about following a few basic principle of training that consider what you can reasonably execute and enjoy, keep coming back for and being consistent. Improvement is an integral of all that you do and involves many things. It's never an either/or question.

jgsi

Audax and patience go better than audax and power meter.

RutlandGav

maryka wrote:

For low volume fairly inexperienced cyclists, more mileage is always the answer. Get up to 200-250 miles per week and see what happens. Now is the best time to increase your riding volume, given the season. It's got to be easy though, below 80% max HR.

In winter you can see if you can handle more threshold/intensity, if you're more serious about it then turbo work is ideal for that.

I'm happy with that - on track for 250 this week, with two 100 mile rides in 3 days.

To put my original question another way, which intensity for the non-commute riding ?

I could ride near threshold at 200W, but would start to bonk after an hour. 180W (sweet spot?) I could manage two. 160W I can do all day long.

I suppose I could split the 180W/200W session to get around the bonk problem and find more saddle time.

Eg. Session in the morning, then a meal, then go again in the evening.

One pitfall is that I heard the exercise adaptation occurs during rest, so split sessions may not be so useful. The other problem with short, fast rides aren't going to take me very far, and i'll soon get very bored of the local routes. Once I get >30 miles from my house my ears prick up and I start looking interested, which is why i like the long stuff.

So, a week could look like this :

Day 1 working - commute
Day 2 working - commute
Day 3 working - commute
Day 4 working - commute, detour on way home for another hour as I don' t have to be up in the morning. Best not to overdo this , as I'm heavily in sleep debt at this point and i've gone into a hedge a few times by microsleeping in the saddle.

Day 1 off - evening ride 200W 1hr
Day 2 off - lunchtime ride 180W 2hr
Day 3 off - long ride - 6 to 8 hours at 160W
Day 4 off - rest

Total of 20-23 hours over 8 days

Second unrelated question, how much FTP could I pick up ? I've heard that 30% is possible on an untrained individual. Whilst I'm not starting from zero I suppose I've not been doing proper mileage that long.

simon_e

First and foremost you really need to fix your sleep. It's absolutely crucial, not only to recovery but also to day-to-day functioning, both on the bike and the rest of your life.

Some argue that split sessions are not as good as one long ride but provided you're fresh then use them as 2 interval sessions - perhaps do one with short, hard sprints and longer big gear efforts in the other.

Also, it can be of benefit to do several days without a proper break then a longer rest to allow supercompensation to occur. As the fatigue builds, some of those rides with tired legs may not be the most enjoyable but it will build endurance.

Unless you have specific goals for which FTP is relevant I'd not dwell too much on the FTP figure itself. Focus more on doing the sessions/rides that are both beneficial and that you enjoy. It's easy to go chasing various types of intervals promised as 'the best' when it seems to me that there is no single 'best', even for a specific goal. Any fool can make training more complicated but that's not helpful. I found the VeloNews podcast The 3 rides you should do really interesting and brings some clarity and much-needed simplification to the topic.

supermurph09

20-23 hours over 8 days is a hell of a lot of time!

I’m no expert but I’d do a proper test to establish your FTP, not that FTP is everything but it’ll help set some areas to focus on. You could then incorporate some sweetspot into your commute. You’ve done amazing losing the weight but with your volume of training over an extended amount of time a 200W threshold is something you should be going north of. You can make great gains on only 5-6 hours training if you do it right, but you need to push yourself.

Hard to tell from your post but you also need to fuel these workouts and then try to absorb the training. Trainer Road have now become incorporating outdoor workouts that might be ideal for your commutes. A free month code is easily obtainable. Why not try that and see how you go? 3-4 weeks will see gains without doubt.

maryka

RutlandGav wrote:

I'm happy with that - on track for 250 this week, with two 100 mile rides in 3 days.

To put my original question another way, which intensity for the non-commute riding ?

If you're doing 20hrs/week, then most of that needs to be easy. Or you'll dig yourself a deep hole quite fast.

If you genuinely have that much time available to train (and recover from), I would be picking 1-2 workouts a week that are properly hard, and riding the rest easy. Forgot the SST/tempo stuff. When I was doing that kind of mileage, everything I did was either very hard or very easy.

YMMV of course. All I can say is, the years I've managed to ramp up my training volume (and CTL) massively have been the years I've done the best, with no discernable intensity weaknesses (i.e., I was near my best in all training power zones) despite not specifically training more than 10-20% of my time each week >Z2.

Here's an interesting read I saw recently, https://simplifaster.com/articles/how-t ... s-vo2-max/ (skip down to the stuff about his case study)

joe2008

maryka wrote:

If you're doing 20hrs/week, then most of that needs to be easy. Or you'll dig yourself a deep hole quite fast.

If you genuinely have that much time available to train (and recover from), I would be picking 1-2 workouts a week that are properly hard, and riding the rest easy. Forgot the SST/tempo stuff. When I was doing that kind of mileage, everything I did was either very hard or very easy.

YMMV of course. All I can say is, the years I've managed to ramp up my training volume (and CTL) massively have been the years I've done the best, with no discernable intensity weaknesses (i.e., I was near my best in all training power zones) despite not specifically training more than 10-20% of my time each week >Z2.

Here's an interesting read I saw recently, https://simplifaster.com/articles/how-t ... s-vo2-max/ (skip down to the stuff about his case study)

Great post!

RutlandGav

Simon E wrote:

The 3 rides you should do really interesting and brings some clarity and much-needed simplification to the topic.

Thanks for that link, it's a good listen, much to digest.

I'm going to have to go through it again, but here's what i gathered on the first pass

1. Zone 1 training (fully aerobic, no lactate production) is 85% of threshold HR. 80% of your workouts should be long rides at this intensity, with the rides being long enough to fatigue you. The idea being that as the slow twitch fibres tire, you recruit fast twitch fibres and they get endurance adapted as a result.

They talk about "cardiac drift", tbh i don't see much sign of this, i suspect because i've done so much of this riding already. My HR remains constant for the same power, i just eventually run out of glycogen and can no longer hold target power and keep my bike out of a hedge at the same time.

I love the idea of doing more long rides it's the stuff i live for.

2. The high intensity, >lactate threshold stuff, they seem to be saying that one or two sessions a week where you really push yourself to the limit are more useful than four or five where you're too fatigued to really give your all. On the other hand they are saying that exceeding 95% of max heart rate the very high lactate levels may be inhibitory.


Last day at work's ride home could be a tempo /threshold session i suppose, might be more valuable than a 2 hour detour that is not a proper long ride. Can't do it midweek because too much intensity on a ride home causes problems getting to sleep that night and heavy legs the following morning.

That "power test" I did might have been compromised by the fact i felt absolutely terrible when i set off for the thing, but curiosity overcame me, as did naivety "I'm too fatigued today to handle a long ride, but this is ONLY a short threshold power test"

On that 100 miler i did to Stamford i did go over 200W frequently on the climbs, though only for a minute or two. That podcast says it's a bad idea for me to do that, I need to be more disciplined.

The highest intensity workout could be one where i just try to hold a power slightly above threshold until HR hits a certain limit. Rest then repeat if i still have any energy.

Honestly, when I made the OP i was feeling a little discouraged, like my genetics were never going to let me improve much, but i'm already seeing evidence this is wrong. Resting HR is down to 48, used to be 54, i've never seen my resting HR below 50, ever. Day after the 100 miler I was seeing 64 mind, so my body is struggling to cope with the abrupt increase in volume.

Sister wants me to do Lands End - John O Groats. That's 100 miles a day for 9 days, so i'm some ways off that still..

RutlandGav

Update :

I've been keeping at the commute and throwing in a 100 mile ride on my days off since my last post, but my Vector 3 pedals decided to get flakey and I had no power data, until Thursday when I finally received a replacement battery holder. This precluded any notion of speedwork or being more structured.

In the meantime I also acquired a Garmin compatible chest strap HRM.

The power meter part arrived at 2pm and I immediately set off on a 120 miler, arriving home at 2am. As it now has access to both HR and Power, the Edge plus cycle computer has started calculating performance parameters for me, though an Endurance ride like that probably is not the best source of data. Anyway, after that long ride it said my VO2 max was a respectable (for my age) 45. It also upgraded my estimated FTP to 209 (still mediocre ofc).

Yesterday I was back at work, data from the commute upgraded my estimated VO2 to 47 (excellent?). Today, I received a further upgrade to 48 ml/kg/min. A 7.5% gain in VO2 max in 3 days is certainly... beyond what i thought likely.

Unfortunately, I've seen some backsliding on the FTP, back to 200 again.

My house is on the top of a hill, looking at the data from the end of my commute home, I held 200W+ for over 3 minutes and to me it looks like my heart rate has stabilized at 125BPM or so (also note the lovely dropout from my power meter, still unresolved).



(edit - for some reason the PNG image doesn't show in the post, if you right click and open image in new tab you can see the graph)

Therefore I suspect my actual FTP is over 200W, but I'll have to wait for my next block of days off to put this to the test. Assuming I don't wimp out of it - I don't like pain. Long rides are fine because they don't hurt. Sometimes they ache a bit, but mostly I just dissociate and occasionally trip balls. They are a form of procrastination.

ZaWing

The Garmin V02max estimates are total bullcrap so ignore that. You need a proper mask test in a lab for a real one.

Looking at your training hour amounts, your body might benefit and develop more from increased rest.
Anyways structured training and variety is the way for gains. I started more serious training a bit over a year ago. I do about 6-12h a week. Endurance, v02max, sweetspot and threshold rides mixed through out the week/s. Went from 180ftp (63kg) to 277 (64kg).

So keep in mind that plenty of rest, sleep and good nutrition is what your body needs for gains!

wongataa

RutlandGav wrote:

Yesterday I was back at work, data from the commute upgraded my estimated VO2 to 47 (excellent?). Today, I received a further upgrade to 48 ml/kg/min. A 7.5% gain in VO2 max in 3 days is certainly... beyond what i thought likely.

Those VO2 numbers are estimates and I wouldn't put too much faith in them. Also the big increases you saw are likely down to the unit refining its estimate in light of all the data it is now getting and not you actually increasing your VO2 max.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

A couple of free websites and a Strava plug-in which may be of use to you, that need your permission to access your Strava ride data...

https://power-meter.cc/home Is surprisingly enough, all about your power data! 5sec/1min/5min/20min Maximum Average Power trends over the last 42 days and all-time PBs; FTP estimate based on your best 20mins MAP in the last 42 days; fitness/fatigue /form trend (which uses on your current FTP estimate and weight from your Strava account).

https://cricklesorg.wordpress.com/ largely focuses on heart data, giving you an estimated Lactate Threshold Heart Rate to set your heart rate zones by that are very different from the ones Strava gives you simply off your highest observed heart rate that you enter in your profile. It also gives you an estimated FTP off your hardest effort of the past 42 days, as well as a fitness/fatigue/form trend.

https://thomaschampagne.github.io/elevate/#/landing used to be known as Stravistix, which is a free plug-in for several browsers that can throw loads of data at you while looking at your rides in Strava, besides the bits shown on that landing page you get other bits such as comparing your ride segment time to your best this year, your all time PB.

RutlandGav

OK, I tried another "power test", this being six weeks on from my OP.

Unfortunately, the Vector 3 pedals started dropping out (one week old battery end cap, two day old batteries) as the test went on , till I gave up after 10 minutes. I feel this effort would have been sustainable until i hit bonk or heatstroke (UK's second hottest day on record, was humid too). The Garmin Connect site does not count zero readings towards the average, so it says 240w average and 230w weighted average for the 10 minutes. Strava, which must be counting the zeros, said i only did 159w.



I also made a little Excel chart of heart rate vs average power for my commutes. Most of these cluster in the 114BPM/!65W range. Setting off before breakfast, I usually arrive at work quite ravenous. There is an outlier from a day when my legs felt very dead and i wasn't able to push HR over 102. The upside was that I didn't arrive hungry, rather than hanging off the canteen shutters waiting for them to open, I actually took break an hour later than normal, while i was in between tasks. At the opposite end of the scale are the numbers from this "power test".



Garmin connect currently thinks my VO2 max is 50mL/kg but still maintains i only have 200W FTP, this effort wasn't long enough to convince it. I'm going out for a 6 hour jaunt tonight with what passes for a big climb in these parts, so i'll try putting in a good 20 minutes for that and hopefully it'll notice. I'll pay a price no doubt but heck, it's only a 6 hour ride, should be able to finish that even if this brings me to my knees.

supermurph09

As I said before it seems preposterous that your FTP is 200w with the volume you are doing. Something isn’t right.

RutlandGav

Third time lucky with the Garmin Vectors, maybe this time I've added just the right amount of oil to not have the contacts corrode, and tightened the battery door just enough to not have it fall off like the last one or strip the thread like the first one.

So I decided to try a 1 hour effort. I'd been putting it off, but when i finally got round to doing the thing, it was even less fun than i thought it would be.

On Velonews they say, "we overcomplicate training prescriptions but underestimate the complexity of human physiology". I was under the impression that if something's aerobic you can sustain it till you run out of glycogen, but this may not be so, especially if you're a nubcake like me and still riding around without clipping in, trying to shovel 100% of your VO2 max through one muscle group, and are completely unused to working at this intensity.

After a while, I found it hard to maintain target power on the flats. Every time I'd look down at the power meter, I'd slipped back to 180W though my legs were still burning and HR and cadence were unchanged. I'd try to spin or grind to get power back to where it needed to be, but didn't always have the force of will required. Wonder if that's just fibres getting fatigued and me rotating different groups? Near the end of the hour, I reached a big hill and found it relatively easy to get the power numbers back. You can see there was about 7 and a half minutes of 240-245 watt climbing with hr fairly steady 149-152. After finishing, my breathing went to normal very quickly and i started scarfing through the bonk food.



Overall though stats for the hour were -

AVG Power - 218W
AVG HR - 152BPM
Max HR - 162BPM
AVG Cadence - 100 (v high!)

Next morning my resting HR was elevated by 15BPM and my legs were really sore and visibly swollen.

It turns out, I never enabled the "Auto Calculate FTP" option on my Garmin, so it still says my FTP is at the default 200W. No problem, now that i adjusted myself I just need to go out and do that again ! Stuff that.

Apparently the 95% rule for 20 min FTP may lead to an overestimate. According to this guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Gik9lxCek

, who compared Strava data of real athlete's 20 minute vs 60 minute results, the difference was much larger with amateur riders and the less TT style work the rider does on a regular basis, the bigger the delta. Worst case, this can be 15% or more. Well , I certainly don't do any regular riding at this intensity, but on the other hand my anaerobic capacity is also essentially untrained so i could probably game the system and get a 10% better 20 minute test score.

That would mean holding 253watts for 20 minutes, which might be possible for me.

Back to training, I heard something on Velonews that indicates intervals are necessary after all. Apparently there is a separate pathway for aerobic adaptation that is triggered by ATP depletion, rather than just time in aerobic zones. This pathway has faster adaptation than that triggered by LSD riding but less ultimate potential, which is why speedwork often only comes in for a month or two before race season. OK, but pretty sure this was the same voice that said too much over threshold work trains your Fast Twitch Oxidative fibers more into glycolytic adaptation, ie. more anaerobic capacity at the expense of aerobic. Whatever, looks like more torture incoming...

webboo

You mention on the multi day hygiene thread about taking laxatives before a big ride and avoid high fibre foods on the ride.
To me this sounds like a reason you might not be responding well to your training.

RutlandGav

Well, so much for the 20 minute FTP test.



Over the hour I averaged 220W. My average for the 20 minute was 224W, which actually comes out as a lower number when you apply the 95% rule. Yes, it was a heatwave day yesterday, but I'm coming to the conclusion that my threshold really is 220W currently. 110% of threshold power feels ok for 5 or 6 minutes, then becomes torture, then a couple of minutes later i'm unable to maintain the output. Had I maintained a steady 220W instead of trying to chase 250W and blowing up, i'd probably have had a steady HR in the low 150s.

On Velonews they mentioned that anaerobic capacity is usually equal to a minute of a person's output at VO2 max. I suppose it ties in with this.

220W is still a 10% gain in 2 months, which is ok, I wasn't starting as a complete novice either. If I'm showing 230 in another couple months I'll be happy. Incidentally, I've been across a few busy A road roundabouts recently, and have seen a new 1 sec power value too - 947W, which is also up 10%. Even though i'm not doing anything to train this, it's going up just as much ... makes me wonder if i got more fast twitch fibres than slow ones.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

A full-on 20min test effort would leave you absolutely drained, unable to do anything immediately afterwards than very low recovery power (very approx sub 130W) for several minutes.

It would also likely see your heartrate at least hit, if not exceed, your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (a rate roughly equivalent to what you could hold for 20mins).

If I do a Zwift "ramp test" which in total takes me ~20mins (but the FTP estimate it gives me I find very optimistic, way above what I feel I could sustain for 20mins), I'm usually happy to do another session or two afterwards including power intervals.
However, if I do "Emily's Short Mix" and fake my FTP in Zwift to ~20% higher than my current estimated FTP, the final 20mins before the cool down of this 30min workout will result in a marginally improved FTP if I complete it... Which leaves my legs absolutely drained, I then do 5-10mins of ~80W and I'm done for the day, with the next day being very soft pedalling besides perhaps the odd few seconds power spike.

RutlandGav

NitrousOxide wrote:

A full-on 20min test effort would leave you absolutely drained, unable to do anything immediately afterwards than very low recovery power (very approx sub 130W) for several minutes.

It would also likely see your heartrate at least hit, if not exceed, your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (a rate roughly equivalent to what you could hold for 20mins).

If I do a Zwift "ramp test" which in total takes me ~20mins (but the FTP estimate it gives me I find very optimistic, way above what I feel I could sustain for 20mins), I'm usually happy to do another session or two afterwards including power intervals.
However, if I do "Emily's Short Mix" and fake my FTP in Zwift to ~20% higher than my current estimated FTP, the final 20mins before the cool down of this 30min workout will result in a marginally improved FTP if I complete it... Which leaves my legs absolutely drained, I then do 5-10mins of ~80W and I'm done for the day, with the next day being very soft pedalling besides perhaps the odd few seconds power spike.

It did ! As soon as the timer hit 20 i dropped the bike and lay on my hands and knees in the verge for about a minute, gasping. After that I wobbled along at 120W for a few minutes till some nice young lady on a road bike pulled alongside at the foot of Stathern Hill and started talking to me. I averaged 235W on that climb but only for about 6 minutes. I didn't feel too bad during that effort and was able to keep talking but the logs show i hit 167 HR which is the highest i've seen in the last couple years. Shows the value of having a distraction i suppose.

After the 1 hour FTP effort i was pretty ok, just felt like i was nearing the end of my glycogen reserves. My legs hurt and was mightly glad for it to be over, all the same. Think i went deep into oxygen debt in the first half of the 20 minute FTP and didn't repay the overdraft till i stopped.

I wonder how many people base their FTP on that Ramp test. There's a vlogger i follow who quotes a very impressive number, but none of their Strava rides for the past few months has average power over 200 watts, even when they were racing. Maybe that was a historic figure, after losing weight and switching training emphasis their FTP is no longer what it used to be.

dannbodge

My last FTP "test" was an event at Goodwood.
Went from the gun as hard as I could for the first 20 mins and was pretty difficult to maintain power due to the weather (huge headwind/tailwainds) and gradient changes.

I managed to average 272w (288w NP) for the first 20 mins and then went on for another 3 hours (FTP - 258w)

Coincidentally I have done the ramp test in Zwift and my FTP came out as 271w, which I reckon is about right ( I could have gone harder but knew I had another 3 hours of riding to do)

I've found the best FTP test to be the Sufferfest one (4DP).

norvernrob

Supermurph09 wrote:

As I said before it seems preposterous that your FTP is 200w with the volume you are doing. Something isn’t right.

Agreed. Mine is higher than that, I’m 68kg and have ridden around 500 miles this year, if that, as I started a new job which requires loads of training (non-physical!).

I’m currently in the Alps and my only bike riding at all in the 2 months leading up to the trip was to go on Zwift with 3 weeks left to go (nothing for 5 weeks before it), and ride the Epic KOM as hard as I could every 2-3 days. So around 8-9hrs training in 2 months. I managed 211w average up the south side of the Col du Forclaz last week (45 minutes), and that was feeling a bit fatigued still after climbing the north side of the Semnoz 2 days before. I’m having another go on Thursday, aiming for 230w.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Sorry, I read the update as you did a 20min and 60min FTP test on the same ride.

cycleclinic

I do around 400km a week. Mostly without a power meter. Audax and power meter are not good fits. Audaxing is not about how fast you are. Aldo power meters don't make you faster. As someone who has r of them I do wonder why I have them.