My first timetrial with power. Advice please

PaulMD

Yesterday I did my first timetrial with a powermeter. After I received my zipp 404 in the beginning of july which I ordered in march/april. I decided to build up some CTL with L2 and L3 rides because I didnot want to make the same mistake as in march/april and have some base. After four weeks of L2 and L3 I did my first timetrial but without any L4,L5 or L6 training. My CTL is about 35tss/d.

2 x 6.08km with a total of four viaducts and eight corners. Below is my power during the timetrial. I did the 12.15km with an average power of 310 watts (NP 314) but my AP dropped a lot from 318 watts in round one to 303 watts in round two.

I want to train for two other timetrials in september. What should I do? I have 4days a week that I can train. Shall I do something like this per week:
1day 2x20min L4
1day 4x5min L5 (average power 310?)
1day 100 minutes with 2x30min L3
1day 120 minutes with L2
I think that I should use some L2 and L3 because I want to build some base also and increase my CTL to 50tss/day.

What power should I use for L4 and L5? I don't know my FTP. I only know my 17 minute power is 310 watts and I haven't done any anaerobic workout (ok, 1 timetrial) this year.

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NomadVW

Unfortunately, 17 minutes is simply too short to make any guess at FTP or training zones. The good thing is, all of the methods of determining FTP can also be great training days. Take that one day and get a good FTP number. Until you do that, there's not much folks can tell you about training zones.

CTL will be a real guess if your FTP isn't set correctly because your TSS values will be "best guess."

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daveryanwyoming

Is your CTL really 35 Tss/day? That implies less than 250 TSS/week over the last 6 weeks. Are you coming back from time totally off the bike or did you start the Performance Manager without a CTL or ATL seed in July?

I'd drop the dedicated L2 workouts for sure. L3+/SST is the best bang for your buck when it comes to raising CTL as well as FTP. Sure you'll get plenty of L2 (and L1) along the way, but I wouldn't schedule L2 workouts unless you just want to go ride long weekend rides.

I'm a big fan of the intensity before duration approach to weekly scheduling. So I'd put the L5 day first, followed by L4/SST followed by SST/L3 then rest and a weekend of something like L4/SST Sat. followed by L3/L2+ Sun. That way you have your hardest workouts scheduled when you are the most fresh but they're also the shortest of the week. Each following day the workout intensity drops a notch but the duration goes up and you finish both the midweek block and the weekend with the most enjoyable, longest rides.

You'll figure out your FTP soon enough by just seeing what you can hold for your L4 repeats. I'd probably try something like 300 watts based on your race and see if you can hold those steady for several 20 minute efforts. It won't take long for you to dial those up or down as necessary. NomadVW is right, you do want to figure out your FTP soon for both training levels and to get good Performance Manager data.

Good luck,
Dave

giannip

gettig a block here... SST ?

daveryanwyoming

Sweet Spot Training, ~85-94% of FTP. A level that's hard enough to encourage FTP improvement but easy enough that you can do a lot of it. Great for building both FTP and CTL.

-Dave

giannip

ah yes.. :-)


Had a blank moment there. Yep, been including that in my training as time allows.

I do think it's a great way to slowly increase CTL.

As there's still racing going on I haven't been sure on how much to do so usually once a week between 10 - 20min per workout of around 1h15m.

The reasoning for this is that up untill the past weeks there's been raxing 3 / week.

giannip

what would your suggested % of FTP be for a 16km realtively flat TT ?

patrick_

Depends on your expected time for the course. Something between 102% and 105%. The faster you are the higher.

daveryanwyoming

Yeah, it's tough to train with 3 races a week. During those periods folks typically have to spend a fair amount of their accumulated CTL, tough to build when you're racing a lot. FWIW during those times I think nearly all additional training should be SST. You should be getting plenty of high end work during the races and you need to minimize the CTL bleed and not get mentally fried. SST has pulled me back from the brink during periods of back to back weekend stage races this season and helped me keep my CTL from dropping too fast. Anyway, I probably wouldn't do much else during heavy race periods and I'd shoot for more than 20 minutes per SST session.
Depends on your particular Monod CP curve and how fast you expect to ride. Assuming 16 km takes you 24 minutes(40 kph) then you should probably ride it somewhere near your best 20 minute training intervals starting a bit lower and trying to finish hard with the extra race motivation. If you've done a recent Monod CP test: http://velo-fit.com/articles/critical-power.pdf and you trust the results then you can pick a point that corresponds to your best time estimate and ride at that power. You could also pick a fairly recent point off of your Mean Maximal Power chart that corresponds to your target time. A pure SWAG would be to aim for 105% of your FTP again starting a bit lower and trying to finish a bit harder.

Good luck,
Dave

giannip

Thanks.

Yes, I will be adding more SST time now that some of the leagues have ended and there are less races in the week.

Well in yesterday's race my Peak 20min was 306NP (278AP) & Peak 30min 303NP (273AP).

I was thinking I'd create an interval at the start, set it to AP and start at around my FTP (290 which I don't think has changed much in the past few months) and just try and wind it up as I get closer to the finish.

105% is around 304, so should be interesting..

PaulMD

Thanks for all the input.

I will try to test my FTP soon. I have calculated it from some rides in the French alps during my vacation. I could climb approx 1050m in one hour (VAM 1050). So I assumed my FTP was around 280 watts (i am 70.0kg)

My CTL is now exactly 31.9 TSS/d with 7.5 weeks of data from my powertap and probably an underestimated FTP. I am surprised how often and how hard most of you train. Thumbs up! I hope to join the club of people with a CTL > 50TSS/d this winter :-)

I am going to change my trainingsplan (which I did't have). Every training is having a specific goal and I am not going to do a L2 only training anymore. Those easy L2 rides will have some L7 or a 30min L3/SST section. I will try to ride 4 times a week, 5 times a week is too much.

Today I did my first L5 training. 4x5minutes with a tempo which I could sustain for only 4x5minutes. I am waisted now... I did :
Interval 1 5:19, AP 330, IF 1.176, C 99, HF 183, S 41.4
Interval 2 5:02, AP 338, IF 1.202, C 101, HF 188, S 41.2
Interval 3 5:04, AP 336, IF 1.193, C 102, HF 190, S 41.6
Interval 4 5:05, AP 332, IF 1.175, C 104, HF 190, S 41.2

My peak 5 minutes is now 338 watts and my peak 17 minutes is 310 watts. According to the monod formula my FTP is approx 302 watts. But my 5 minute power is not my real max because I could do it 4 times.

pistole

- hi.

- you averaged 42.88 kmh , yes ?

- nice.

PaulMD

I said in the first post that I rode 17 minutes @ 310 watts. To be exactly it was 17 minutes and 23 seconds. With those extra 23 seconds my average speed goes down from 42.88 to 41.94km/hour, sorry. But if you asked everybody else about that timetrial or look in to the results the course is 12.2km and I averaged 42.1km/hour. Most important for me was my power output.