I wanted to circle back with an update. In the last 12 weeks priority has been all about running, I have tried my best to "maintain" the work done on the bike earlier this year. Pretty much NO structure but have tried to continue the short/hard FRC type work, almost NO long work. Most weeks have been 1-2x bikes where I have targeted 8-10 1' hard with 4' rest, that is 8-10 minutes of work. I managed 1 wko of 3 x 6' and 1wko of 2 x 15'....
And then last week I tested on a local hill... 23' @ 240watts vs. 20' @261watts.... So bottomline is I have lost 20 watts in 12 weeks, FRC has fallen from 10 to 6, and V02 Max has gone from 3.8 L/min and 312w down to 3.7 L/min and 307 watts.
While the numbers are moving in the wrong direction I believe the type of work done has been a very good way to minimize losses. Giving even further credibility to this type of work.
Pics below with a few notes.
Last 12 weeks of bike training time/miles. quite minimum.
PMC falling like a rock since April.
Happy with these results relative to the work .
Even a new HR for the year validating the 23' effort.
Tim. Thanks for the update. Since our talk I have mimicked some of your HIT and pushing my left sided power up. I haven’t formally tested but my FRC has pushed up over 11 and my FTP dipped slightly but now holding steady.
I LOVE this post! I have basically done the same thing. During my races on Zwift I noticed what my weaknesses were. I worked hard on those and saw big improvements. Those red sections in WKO are awesome. Sometimes you can get on a roll and get a tone of those. Other times it just won't happen. Tying this training to Zwift makes you MUCH better at zwift racing as well as increasing your long term power. So much fun!
@Ralph Butler - it is a relic of the WKO4 model that when FRC goes up, mFTP drops (or when mFTP goes up,FRC drops). This is just a weakness in the approach - they do a least squares fit to all the 'maximal' points in your MMC curve. When you get new maximals at short durations, the curve 'refits' to the new data and the mFTP goes down. If you look at the 'PD Curve Chart with Error Calculations,' you should see that while the mFTP went down, the standard error around the mFTP went up. When your training move to longer intervals (10' - 60') the mFTP will improve and the FRC will go down a little, but overall, the error calculations will show a better fit.
I was wondering why you chose the wkos you did (1 min work, then 4 mins rest)?
I could understand 1 min (or less) work, then 7 - 12 mins rest (to target Pmax), or something like 2 (or 3) mins work and 2.2 (or 3.3) mins rest (to target FRC).
Obviously I am still getting my head around this stuff and could therefore be totally wrong!
@Peter Greagg Why I chose those wko's? Very good question. During that same 12 weeks I have been focussed on my training for the Leadville 100 Run, pretty big weeks of time/mileage/elevation with 1x per week speed work run wko. The Run has been the priority all along but in the last 12 weeks the bike has really taken a backseat to the run. Maintenance was/is the key word , IOW trying to maintain as much as I can with the least amount of time and the least amount of stress. On paper my intentions after discussing with @Rich Stanbaugh many times were to do at least 3'-5' min intervals. To be honest I just found them way to stressful and difficult to recover from while carrying the run focus. 30"/30"'s were my original idea but found them too easy and not enough rest . I found the 1' interval the goldilox just right time frame, the 1' on 4' off just came about as a way to max the work I was doing in a 1hr wko with a 10-15' warm up and 10'-15' cool down. Even those 1' intervals were not done at 100% effort as the earlier ones were. So the structure just kinda emerged through trial and error and by feel, there were several wko's that I started with intention of doing 1' hard intervals and just ended up spinning at IF .5 or less for some active recovery.
I think the biggest takeaway is this type of work not only seems to produce gains (given applied correctly and 2-3 wko's per week) but also seems to maintain a very high percentage of fitness with minimal time/work.
Will be interesting to see where I am at in 1 month, there will be almost zero bike intensity in the next few weeks and then I need to recover after Leadville. So I fully expect a major drop from here. But I believe I will be starting from a much higher point than normal afterwards. We will see
Comments
Who wants to experiment with me and my power curve? 🤩
I wanted to circle back with an update. In the last 12 weeks priority has been all about running, I have tried my best to "maintain" the work done on the bike earlier this year. Pretty much NO structure but have tried to continue the short/hard FRC type work, almost NO long work. Most weeks have been 1-2x bikes where I have targeted 8-10 1' hard with 4' rest, that is 8-10 minutes of work. I managed 1 wko of 3 x 6' and 1wko of 2 x 15'....
And then last week I tested on a local hill... 23' @ 240watts vs. 20' @261watts.... So bottomline is I have lost 20 watts in 12 weeks, FRC has fallen from 10 to 6, and V02 Max has gone from 3.8 L/min and 312w down to 3.7 L/min and 307 watts.
While the numbers are moving in the wrong direction I believe the type of work done has been a very good way to minimize losses. Giving even further credibility to this type of work.
Pics below with a few notes.
Last 12 weeks of bike training time/miles. quite minimum.
PMC falling like a rock since April.
Happy with these results relative to the work .
Even a new HR for the year validating the 23' effort.
Tim. Thanks for the update. Since our talk I have mimicked some of your HIT and pushing my left sided power up. I haven’t formally tested but my FRC has pushed up over 11 and my FTP dipped slightly but now holding steady.
Still need to lose the LBs
I LOVE this post! I have basically done the same thing. During my races on Zwift I noticed what my weaknesses were. I worked hard on those and saw big improvements. Those red sections in WKO are awesome. Sometimes you can get on a roll and get a tone of those. Other times it just won't happen. Tying this training to Zwift makes you MUCH better at zwift racing as well as increasing your long term power. So much fun!
@Ralph Butler - it is a relic of the WKO4 model that when FRC goes up, mFTP drops (or when mFTP goes up,FRC drops). This is just a weakness in the approach - they do a least squares fit to all the 'maximal' points in your MMC curve. When you get new maximals at short durations, the curve 'refits' to the new data and the mFTP goes down. If you look at the 'PD Curve Chart with Error Calculations,' you should see that while the mFTP went down, the standard error around the mFTP went up. When your training move to longer intervals (10' - 60') the mFTP will improve and the FRC will go down a little, but overall, the error calculations will show a better fit.
Keep hammering!
@tim cronk thanks for the update.
I was wondering why you chose the wkos you did (1 min work, then 4 mins rest)?
I could understand 1 min (or less) work, then 7 - 12 mins rest (to target Pmax), or something like 2 (or 3) mins work and 2.2 (or 3.3) mins rest (to target FRC).
Obviously I am still getting my head around this stuff and could therefore be totally wrong!
.
@Peter Greagg Why I chose those wko's? Very good question. During that same 12 weeks I have been focussed on my training for the Leadville 100 Run, pretty big weeks of time/mileage/elevation with 1x per week speed work run wko. The Run has been the priority all along but in the last 12 weeks the bike has really taken a backseat to the run. Maintenance was/is the key word , IOW trying to maintain as much as I can with the least amount of time and the least amount of stress. On paper my intentions after discussing with @Rich Stanbaugh many times were to do at least 3'-5' min intervals. To be honest I just found them way to stressful and difficult to recover from while carrying the run focus. 30"/30"'s were my original idea but found them too easy and not enough rest . I found the 1' interval the goldilox just right time frame, the 1' on 4' off just came about as a way to max the work I was doing in a 1hr wko with a 10-15' warm up and 10'-15' cool down. Even those 1' intervals were not done at 100% effort as the earlier ones were. So the structure just kinda emerged through trial and error and by feel, there were several wko's that I started with intention of doing 1' hard intervals and just ended up spinning at IF .5 or less for some active recovery.
I think the biggest takeaway is this type of work not only seems to produce gains (given applied correctly and 2-3 wko's per week) but also seems to maintain a very high percentage of fitness with minimal time/work.
Will be interesting to see where I am at in 1 month, there will be almost zero bike intensity in the next few weeks and then I need to recover after Leadville. So I fully expect a major drop from here. But I believe I will be starting from a much higher point than normal afterwards. We will see