Sucking wind on the bike
Here goes my random and probably lame question for the week.......be gently...this is my first season with EN
I'm in week 16 of the OS and have finally gotten off the trainer and begun biking outside again in prep for jumping into my first IM plan. The past 2 weeks I have bumped my weekend ride up to 2 hours (approximately 40-42 miles 
( 10' warm-up, MS, rest at Z3 ) and I am spent afterwards. While I spent last season doing all Z2 rides so I don’t have a reference point, I am a little taken back by how I feel at the end of my 2 hours. Is there a transition period from going from the trainer to the road? WTH.......I feel out of shape
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Jason,
This was my first season in the OS and here was my experience.
For reference, I started in the NovOS just cycling. Started running in the JanOS. At 18 weeks I was pretty shelled but finished up the 20. I then took 2 weeks off, transition, and came back to 5 more weeks of OS. I'm now in general prep block one and feeling much better. Also I was in the beginner program as I am coming back from a 3 year lay off.
At week 16 I was getting pretty tired and at that point had taken a couple extra days off here and there. You have put in a ton of work in the OS and now you are getting outside and adding in more distance. I know it's only 40-42 miles but that's still 30 minutes extra work on the bike.
Once you get through the OS and get in a transition week or two things will come around. If you are feeling really tired I'd look at how much z3 time you are getting compared to the shorter trainer workouts 2 weeks ago.
Gordon
Jason - have faith! I went through 16-17 weeks of OS before jumping into my HIM plan with 4 weeks to go (for NOLA this year). It took about 3 weeks for me to hit the long numbers (3-3.5 hr rides) without feeling killed. BUT, what was interesting is that, when I did, I hit the times with MUCH more speed than I had previously done.
So, have faith...it just takes a few weeks to get the distance laid down on top of the speed!
For me at least, when I started training with power and following an EN plan I was just shocked at how hard I was going on the bike. Night and day from what I was used to. When you go from the OS to the Plans you are doing even more work than you were and riding much longer. The good news is that you will adjust. The bad news is that the way you are feeling is kinda the point. Instead of 5-6 hours easy with coffee stops they are mind bending hard for 3-4. You are really doing all the "work" of a much longer ride so it hurts a lot more.
In sum, you have worked hard to be able to work this hard. The reward, you get to be shelled when you get off your bike :-)
Thanks everyone.... I'll drink a nice tall glass of suck it up and push on to glory.......Jason
Wait till you get up to four hours, then get up and ride three again next day. Week in and week out. Tough stuff, but you taper down to race, and the fitness bank you build is huge.
I'm like a broken record here, but because EN is so arduous--huge payoff, but it's hugely tough--you have to pay attention to rest and recovery. You have to. Don't go over the bell curve into the land of diminishing returns. When you start to get too cooked, back off for a day--or two. Then come back at it.
Welcome aboard the pain train!
I am sure glad to read this thread. Thought maybe I just sucked! I'm in week 5 of IM training, and I did a 45 min. workout on the trainer Thurs. a.m., only hitting 10,1 miles. Swam Friday, which was terribly slow. Then Saturday, I rode my road bike (aluminum Cannondale) for 2:39, on lots of hills, and only garnered 34.78 miles. Then today, I rode 3/4 of the ride on flats, BUT, into 20 mph+ wind! Ended the ride with about 3 miles of hills, into the wind for half of it. By the time I got home, had done 34.8 miles on my tri bike, in 2:24:15. I'm looking at my mileage and worrying what the H_!! am I going to have for a bike split in Louisville??? Feeling very tired, cranky, and discouraged.
Barb,
FWIW, I rarely look at my bike mileage at the end of a workout--or speed for that matter. I only review how I got the work done. If I hit my intervals, rode the numbers I was supposed to, and stayed in the saddle the prescripted time, that's all that matters. You'll have the RRs to get in the miles you need. In EN training, the rides are all about the work getting done. It all falls into place in the end. Really, it does.
The other thing that was not really metioned as much is that I think there is a small tranistion period of going from indoor to outdoor. My assumption is because inside I ride sitting up with my hands on the drops and when I go outside I get down in the aerobars. My body seems to adapt to pushing on the trainer each year and when I go outside it takes 2-3 weeks just to get back into the swing of riding out side. Typically, even for the same lenght workouts, my power outside is actually slighly lower than it was inside for thouse 2-3 weeks and then I adapt and don't want to go back to being indoor ;-). Again, not much you can do other than just suck it up. I personally just push myself as hard as I can, and don't beat myself up if I can't hit my power targets for a few weeks and they body will come aronud when it is ready.
Back story: I discovered EN last fall shortly before I raced IMOO last fall and started listening/reading the publicly available stuff. By then I had committed myself to doing the Boston marathon this spring; I had just qualified for the first time, and being a pretty mediocre athlete - this was a big bucket-list thing for me. So all winter I focused primarily on the marathon, but was doing EN-style bike workouts 2-3 times a week. I worked up to a 20 min test (using the Coggan protocol from TaRwaPM, 1st Ed) of 253 W, but I also made the mistake of doing those tests entirely sitting up (for the obvious reasons of it being a little easier to get air!), so I wasn't even training exactly the right muscles, as I discovered shortly after resolving to start riding down in my bars, even while on the trainer. Anyway, I tapered for Boston (including the bike), joined EN officially, and had a fantastic race for me. Almost perfect pacing and a 9 minute PR. I was seeded ~12000 and finished ~3900 with a 3:16:40. So, box checked. Felt great. No regrets. I'm 46, so a little slow to recover... so I took a couple of weeks rather easy and eased into training for HIM at the end of July. I'm in the second week of the 12 week program now.
So today was my first outdoor FTP test on the bike using the EN protocol. I just substituted it for one of the normal FTP-type rides in order to get a better estimate of where I was. I had a cold last week and knew that it would be dumb to test under those conditions. Now I'm good to go, but....
I sucked.
Although it was gusty/windy, there's no getting around the bottom line result: 220 W.
I'm feeling pretty discouraged, especially considering most people seem to have a HIGHER outdoor result than indoor. There's another test actually on the schedule in a couple of weeks. It's not like I started out way too hard and faded badly this time, so I'm not sure there will be a lot of change, but I will go ahead and do it again when it comes up. Time to suck it up for me too. But if you have any words of wisdom, I'd love to hear them.
1 test isn't the be all and end all. Lots of variables come to play. Running a mary takes the pop out of the legs for weeks at our age.
Vince
Best,
William
FWIW, running a marathon takes the pop out of my legs for a while as well and I'm only 29! Don't underestimated the affect of a marathon on your year. I am 100% confident that I have impacted my overall year by doing Boston, but I choose to do that and am ok with that. When I get serious about an IM again, I will not be running a spring marathon.