Training/Racing Advice Needed

Originally Posted by jsirabella

...Tomorrow I am suppose to do 2 Hour Tempo Ride with 10 X 3 min VO2 intervals, tempo 80-85% with 95-95rpm, Intg 88-92% with 75-80 rpm, hard gear, rest 4 min.

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming

Frankly I'm not much of a fan of mix and match workouts. If I go out to ride VO2 Max(L5) then that's the focus for my workout: warmup, 5x5 or 8x3 or whatever, ride L1/L2- between efforts then cooldown. I find I can focus my efforts better that way than doing Tempo or SST along with my hard work. If I want to do both in the same day then I'll do the harder workout in the morning and the easier that evening with plenty of mental and physical regrouping between the efforts. Just my 2 cents, obviously your coach works on a different theory.

You've obviously got to scale the power to your own FTP and since you're just getting started with L4 work you'll probably need to start with shorter efforts like the 12 minute efforts you describe. Just make sure they're at least 10 minutes long and as steady as you can do them. You should probably work the very low end of L4(or the high end of SST) for a couple of weeks before launching into solid L4 work. It'll help you get the pacing and power dialed in and get your body used to long interval work. I fall back to SST quite often and it hasn't hindered my FTP progress and is a great way to build CTL and to avoid overtraining while still getting good hard work.

That sounds like L6 anaerobic hill intervals. If the entire loop takes 5 minutes I assume you're sprinting the hill for 1.5 to 2.5 minutes per lap. If you hit this as hard as you can then it falls into L6 work. If the hill is less than 30 seconds long and you hit it as hard as you can then it's L7 work.

Basically you can look at training levels in terms of duration as well as power assuming you hold your best steady power for the duration. It breaks down like this based on the fuels you're burning:

- L7, neuromuscular sprints fueled by phosphocreatine; 5-30 seconds
- L6, anaerobic tolerance fueled by glycogen&lactate without O2, 30 seconds - 2.5 minutes
- L5, VO2 max fueled by O2, glycogen, lactate, 2.5 - 8 minutes
- L4, L3,L2,L1, Threshold fueled by O2, glycogen, lactate & fat(higher % fat/lower lactate at lower levels), >8 minutes

Each of these trains a different metabolic process so it's important to target those most suited to your events or long term development and it's important to hit at least the minimum duration for each system you want to train. There's overlap between adjacent systems and relationships like the way VO2 max sets a theoretical limit for aerobic performance or your "aerobic ceiling" so it helps to keep pushing that up especially after you realize a lot of gains in FTP.

-Dave

Originally Posted by jsirabella

...Do you feel right now I should focus on SST/L4 work before doing any sort of L5/6/7?

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming

That's what I'd do. It's a tradeoff since you're starting this midseason. Ideally you'd spend your winter and early spring doing L4, SST and Tempo(L3) work to build both FTP and CTL. Then as the racing season approaches you'd add L5 and L6 work. Some folks advocate L7 sprint work year round (Lemond for instance pushed this) others only do it as the racing season approaches. But since you're in your season and playing catchup you'll probably get advice to do L5 and L6 work to help you survive your crits. It comes down to your goals and whether you have a short or long term view. Bringing your FTP up will help a lot but may or may not give you the speed you need to hang with other guys who've been building both aerobic and anaerobic fitness all season. But in general I'd advise folks to build their core aerobic fitness(L4 and below) before hitting the hard short stuff but that's the long view. This is a really good discussion to have with your coach.
Sounds great, I personally wouldn't do the 1 minute efforts at the end. I'd save that motivation and energy for whatever I had planned the next day but that's just the way I like to focus my efforts. I think Hunter advocates something like you described and I'm sure he gets really good results that way. There are a lot of ways to approach this stuff....
Move up to pure L4 work when the SST feels too easy or you're really motivated to find out what you can do for your longer intervals. Drop back to SST when you're more tired than usual, less motivated or having trouble completing L4 repeats. When you drop back to SST try to make the intervals longer so maybe 25-30 minutes at 85-90% instead of 15-20 minutes at 95-100%. Same goes for adjusting training levels, you don't need formal tests very often, bump the levels up when they start feeling easy but be aware that you might need to drop back to SST after raising your training levels since you won't feel 100% everytime you train.
In general cadence is secondary to getting the power levels right but especially for someone focused on crits and getting used to speed it's helpful to work the high end of your cadence range while producing SST, L4 and L5 power. One possibility is to mix it up a bit wrt cadence. Do one of your long efforts at 100+ rpm and the next one at self selected or 80-85 rpm to get used to producing power at a variety of leg speeds.
Don't get too far ahead of yourself, but you might try the hour of power L4 workout or a variation of it for crits. It'll help you get used to repetitive accellerations while still holding threshold power overall. I sometimes do a scaled down version I call "tempo with a twist" it's basically the same as Bill Black's workout described in the book but I ride a Tempo pace between 10 second bursts every minute or two. It's a bit easier mentally and I can do it longer but it still averages to L4 overall.
VO2 Max is typically measured in units of ml/kg/min or how many milliliters of O2 an athlete uses per minute normalized for their body weight. 80 is a big number and 90 or above is world class. An accurate VO2 max test requires special breathing apparatus and is generally done on a bike ergometer in a lab. There are ways to estimate it based on your best 4 or 5 minute power but those are just estimates. I had tests done years ago but never really found a good use for the resulting number. It's interesting (and generally depressing) to know your VO2 Max but not all that useful in terms of planning your training.

-Dave

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming

That's what I'd do. It's a tradeoff since you're starting this midseason. Ideally you'd spend your winter and early spring doing L4, SST and Tempo(L3) work to build both FTP and CTL. Then as the racing season approaches you'd add L5 and L6 work. Some folks advocate L7 sprint work year round (Lemond for instance pushed this) others only do it as the racing season approaches. But since you're in your season and playing catchup you'll probably get advice to do L5 and L6 work to help you survive your crits. It comes down to your goals and whether you have a short or long term view. Bringing your FTP up will help a lot but may or may not give you the speed you need to hang with other guys who've been building both aerobic and anaerobic fitness all season. But in general I'd advise folks to build their core aerobic fitness(L4 and below) before hitting the hard short stuff but that's the long view. This is a really good discussion to have with your coach.
Sounds great, I personally wouldn't do the 1 minute efforts at the end. I'd save that motivation and energy for whatever I had planned the next day but that's just the way I like to focus my efforts. I think Hunter advocates something like you described and I'm sure he gets really good results that way. There are a lot of ways to approach this stuff....
Move up to pure L4 work when the SST feels too easy or you're really motivated to find out what you can do for your longer intervals. Drop back to SST when you're more tired than usual, less motivated or having trouble completing L4 repeats. When you drop back to SST try to make the intervals longer so maybe 25-30 minutes at 85-90% instead of 15-20 minutes at 95-100%. Same goes for adjusting training levels, you don't need formal tests very often, bump the levels up when they start feeling easy but be aware that you might need to drop back to SST after raising your training levels since you won't feel 100% everytime you train.
In general cadence is secondary to getting the power levels right but especially for someone focused on crits and getting used to speed it's helpful to work the high end of your cadence range while producing SST, L4 and L5 power. One possibility is to mix it up a bit wrt cadence. Do one of your long efforts at 100+ rpm and the next one at self selected or 80-85 rpm to get used to producing power at a variety of leg speeds.
Don't get too far ahead of yourself, but you might try the hour of power L4 workout or a variation of it for crits. It'll help you get used to repetitive accellerations while still holding threshold power overall. I sometimes do a scaled down version I call "tempo with a twist" it's basically the same as Bill Black's workout described in the book but I ride a Tempo pace between 10 second bursts every minute or two. It's a bit easier mentally and I can do it longer but it still averages to L4 overall.
VO2 Max is typically measured in units of ml/kg/min or how many milliliters of O2 an athlete uses per minute normalized for their body weight. 80 is a big number and 90 or above is world class. An accurate VO2 max test requires special breathing apparatus and is generally done on a bike ergometer in a lab. There are ways to estimate it based on your best 4 or 5 minute power but those are just estimates. I had tests done years ago but never really found a good use for the resulting number. It's interesting (and generally depressing) to know your VO2 Max but not all that useful in terms of planning your training.

-Dave