JOS 2018 Bike Week 2 - Welcome to the Discomfort Zone
Really great first week of work & learning under our belts! now it's time to get to work.
The important thing aside from doing the work is to be conscious of how hard you are working. By the end of your last set, do you have more? or was it REALLY hard. For those of you that are new to this, that is the sign of a good vs not so good FTP #s!
This also creates the opportunity for working harder this coming week. Remember, the goal is to be doing your WKO where your Avg Watts are at 95-100% of FTP. If you are finding it easy(I hope not) or just difficult, this might be the cause for bumping your FTP and doing harder work. Remember, you are capable of much more than you believe! The phrase "get comfortable being uncomfortable" should resonate in every workout.
harder work now = faster YOU in the race season!
Beyond the physical work, is the psychological work of pushing through the pain, this will help you oodles on race day!
Comments
Now starts the beginning of building of the "mental six-pack" for me. The newness and excitement starts wearing off and I must get down to business.
Rock on, everyone!
Scotts comment above is right on: "The important thing aside from doing the work is to be conscious of how hard you are working.....".
Its OK to overachieve but be aware of how the extra TSS might effect your downstream workouts & accumulative fatigue. Its been my experience that the OS gets very hard on about week 10. In other words don't dig too deep of a hole early because weeks 11-14 "is where the training happens".
Thanks @Al Truscott for the nudges.
P.S. The ride time is PST, not EST. Thank goodness. :-)
Did the Tuesday's bike tonight as I prefer to split Tuesday in 2 days cuz its easier for me to manage time and I dont think a 30' run can screw my rest as I dont run hard on the 30'. Maybe later in the plan I will combine both days but thats what I did in the past 2 years and it worked well for me.
first 15' : 256
second 15': 258
Target was 260, considering I had work almost 24 hours in the last 28 hours I will take it. going to bed early tonight so I can be ready for rest of the week.
@Sabra Gonzalez I felt the same way Sunday. Was trying to hang on as long as I could. Kept saying maybe Ill make it to 1:30, ok now 1:45...finally got to 2:30 but I was sagging at the end.
https://app.box.com/s/pgme43yqtyy11w2bvzdrbst4oak9a59s
@Andrew Lustigman - best to get the zwift advice in the Zwift forum!
the Sunday ride is an APB ride. are you doing run or bike focused OS? I think you told me RF?
the BEST thing to do is to load up your workout for the day rather than trying to hang with a bunch of people. riding steady intervals will do more for you. The long workouts are insane, caution to the uninitiated! I had to toggle my effort down for my last long interval (1 hour) and even that was tough at 90% of what the interval was supposed to be! plus i cut the wko 45' short as I had to leave with kids for a LAX weekend.
@Sabra Gonzalez - see my comments in paragraph above! thankfully I am not riding the next two weekends, @Al Truscott will be schooling me at Aspen & Vail - i promise to torture you all with pictures!
https://www.strava.com/activities/1359731621
2x15' this AM on Zwift. .94/1.0 I did a little better with the ErG issues. Kept the bike in a very hard gear and had less drift. Max concentration on steady cadence. Last minute decision to NOT race as I wanted steady FTP work. Then Steady VO2/crusher work for awhile and then deal with races where the steady FTP pace is mixed with VO2+ efforts and no real recovery. I need to build a little more high end to keep up on the climbs. The Sunday ABP are a better mix for me as I can recover a bit better in Z3 then Z4 and still give effort for sprints and KOMs. This is all about figuring out what works for each of us and that may change by week depending on how are bodies are feeling.
Keep up the great work.
Did the FCC Crazy Train on Zwift this morning. Great one for Tuesday FTP work. Not so good trying to wake up....felt like a bad dream at the time: https://www.strava.com/activities/1359899664
The biggest difference I see between the "A" and the "B" levels on Zwift is that those "A" turn 5+ w/kg on the uphill climbs/sprints......
Coffee time.
SS
With that said, I thought I'd share what I did on Sunday. I decided to follow the OS workout as I don't want to get too sucked into what everyone else is doing with ABP's, race's, etc. I studied the Zwift EN WO so could understand how the author put it together (I noticed each block is at the low end of the the zones). I decided to "ride" the course so I can practice holding a steady power output (rather than erg mode). This way I know what to do when it comes time to get outside. I used my Garmin to set a lap timer so I could watch my power output for each block of the WO.
Comments / suggestions?
Yes, I purposely put the blocks at the low end. In Zwift, if you find it "too easy/hard", you can adjust by using the Up/Down arrows to increase/decrease the required effort as needed.
You're the first one to catch that!!
Last week the VO2 was easier than I thought. Difficult but not the "gasping for air hard" I expected. This week I'll dial it up some.
Sunday long ride I cut to 2hrs simply because my bum was burning. Next week I'm committed to 2.5hrs even if I have to get off the trainer for 5-10mins to give the backside some recovery.
I wanted to try the workouts on my Garmin 820 but couldn't figure out how to import them into Garmin Connect. Unless someone has a trick up their sleeve, I think I'll have to create them in the GC wo creator.
In my TrainingPeak workouts, I cut that out and made the rides closer to 2 hour mark. (TrainingPeak workouts because I'm using an AppleTV while my wife is using the laptop)
I had to use the Workout Builder in TrainingPeaks to create each of the workouts. From there, you can basically build them the same way as you would for Zwift (create a warmup, create the main set (2 x 10 for example), and create cool down). If you link your Zwift Account with your TrainingPeaks account, you would then see the current days workout in Zwift under "TrainingPeaks Custom Workouts"
After I created all the workouts in TrainingPeaks, I was able to drag them over and create a "Workout Library". You can share that library with other TrainingPeak users.
I hope that helps!
Ride on!
Used a climbing route in Zwift and boy was that hard. 55-60 RPM was a grind. I prefer 90+ RPM.
~ Starkles
Do you have the "paid" TrainingPeaks account? I have my entire OS scheduled out in TrainingPeaks, and each "bike" day, my workout is there in Zwift.
I think the "free" account won't let you schedule out your workouts and have them show up.
I don't like Zwift in ERG mode. With steady power, climbing and descending just feels strange. I'd be better off watching TV than watching the course. But it sure makes it easy to hold the watts as Zwift adjusts the resistance based on cadence. Additionally, it's very hard to ride with a buddy because you cannot catch once you separate; you'd have to start at the exact same time and ride the exact same watts
Regular riding mode is better for me. This was killer hard today because I rode at 250 and Matt was at 275, so I had to be mindful of staying on his wheel. Lots of power spikes when he got ahead -- here's the Strava file for the second ride: https://www.strava.com/activities/1360124573/analysis
The power profile matches the profile from a race ... and actually I may try a race for the next FTP workout