Theory: Higher Sweet Spot will improve IM times

Dave Tallo

I'd like to hear reactions and input about the notion of raising watts at ABP / sweet spot riding as a way to improved IM times.

After 5-6 seasons with EN and CF, I acknowledge that I underachieve at FTP tests, but I overachieve at sweet spot (or ABP, or 80-85%) riding.   My data set for this is pretty big - I have probably 50 to 60 42' FTP tests in the books and thousands of Sweet Spot miles in my legs.    And despite all the cajoling, wagering and mental toughness to raise it, I also acknowledge my FTP is probably the same number it's gonna be from now on.   (In real numbers, this is typically a 270-275 FTP in-season.) 

With that said, I also notice that I'm pretty proficient at ABP riding.  I can put in a lot of work at 80 - 90% FTP, and sustain this over multiple days / weeks / etc.  (Again, real numbers, this is 225-230).

If I just let my FTP land where it always lands - of course, while continuing to test and train it through the EN-style 95-100% sets, but just accept that it's going to be around 275 on race day  - and instead try to raise the watts I'm pushing in ABP work, could this result in a faster IM bike (assume: impact on run is kept constant)? 

I'm thinking "yes."   Let's say making an effort to cultivate more time at a higher sweet spot - say 235-238 watts - lets me ride a slightly more agressive bike and push a slightly higher IF on race day.   And because I'm still sub-threshold and working the aerobic system in these higher training sessions, the downstream impact isn't too great.  Or at least not as great as me trying to overachieve on FT sets. 

Any thoughts on this "Ranch House" approach?   Chris G, do you recall any discussions about this in Gordoworld or the wattage forum in past years?  

GMAN 19030

I've been thinking about something similar as well. I'm interested in the responses.

mancona

I haven't thought much about what you are suggesting so this is more of random inital thoughts and in no way a thought out response.

If you thought you performed well on your FTP tests and intervals but had issue holding 85% of that for long periods (or long rides) than I would take consider approach you are taking, as I would see this as a way to force your body to adapt to holding a higher % of your maximal.

Do you really think you FTP is as high as it is going to go? How much VO2 or other high intensity cycling work have you done? How does you 5' and 1' power compare to your FTP?

I ask because I have read in a number of places (including within EN) that a common cause of your FTP to Plateau is that your attic space is getting small. Therefore once you can raise the roof you then have room for the ceiling to grow. I'm biased and always bring this up as this is my issue that I run into each year and I see great results after the power hack/clinic. The challenge of course is balancing this VO2 type work with the need to do longer work and not burning the body out.

I'm guessing you have already thought through all of this but I wanted to make sure.

At the end of the day our bodies all respond differently to different training, if you have tried everything the approach you suggest may just be what your body needs.

Norton

I can't wait to read this continuing discussion as I'm in exactly the same position as Dave; I can drill hour after hour at z3 but my FTP is stubbornly slow to move. Up that is...

Chris G

Interesting issue. I do remember some discussions in the wattage forum in the past but think the consesus was that the subject just was not pushing hard enough to raise FTP like matt said. Regardless, if you can hold .90 forever, along the lines that someone usually holds .85 it might be worth doing a HIM rr at .90 and seeing how you feel. Same with an IM rr i guess, try running after sitting on .80 for 5 hours and see how it feels. I would not use any of this as an excuse to keep trying to raise your FTP or as a general excuse to race at a higher .if. Need to remember that all of this stuff is what works for the vast majority, not the ticket for everyone. The biggest mistake however is to assume that you are special when you are not and there is another answer. Being special is kinda like how everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor.

Spokane_Al

Being special is kinda like how everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor.

My wife's periodic reminders and raising of the eyebrows ensures I don't fall into this category.

Paul Hough

Assuming that cycling training is somewhat analogous to running training, then my experience suggests the answer to your question is yes. I.e., some people are able to redline better than others. Two people might have the same FTP but one is more capable of racing closer to their max than the other, either because their running/cycling economy is better or they have greater mental capacity to suffer. On the negative side, I think economy comes from volume which is EN anti-matter.

mgraffeo

Paul, what makes you think that economy comes from high volume? Most of the info I'm familiar with would suggest that the best way to develop economy is very fast sprint-type work.

Paul Hough

@ Mike - That's a small part of economy. But given a fixed VO2, you get more economical by repetition. Your body makes minute adjustments adapting to any sport over time. Comparing extremes is the best way to demonstrate this. Compare an olympic miler's stride to that of an elite marathoner. The latter is doing 100-130 mile weeks and has developed an extremely efficient stride from repeated miles...many more than milers do despite the milers doing much more sprint work. The marathoners have more economy. Below is from Running Times:

Accumulate more mileage: More economical runners generally put in more miles per week and have been running for more years than less economical runners. There is a chicken-or-the-egg aspect to this theory, but it does seem that the most important factor for improving economy may be your accumulated mileage. As we discussed last month, the mechanism for improvement may be that with additional endurance training your fast-twitch muscle fibers gain more of the characteristics of the more economical slow-twitch fibers. Another factor may be that high mileage leads to a reduction in vertical motion, which reduces the amount of oxygen required to maintain a given pace. Obviously, increased mileage brings a tradeoff between improvements in economy and increased risk of injury, so increase your mileage prudently. The law of diminishing returns applies, but you can still achieve small improvements in economy even after many years of running.

Al Truscott

The Kool-Aid sez: ya gotta do both. Fast before far. For those who've been doing fast (95-100%) for a long time, it may be pretty easy to ramp up to max potential there, and then continue to get further advantages (for racing) from the 85% stuff.

For you, Dave, you are looking for that last 5-20 minutes reduction in your IM race time to get you to the Big Dance. We discussed this last fall, that it will probably require maximizing all aspects (the fast AND the far, and maybe even some non kool-aid volume) of training, both biking and running, and then going someplace dark (or blank) in the last hour of the race. Paul had a run-up and race like that in Arizona.

Every little detail matters at this point, there is no one secret.

Al Truscott

@ Paul - In another EN Forum thread, check out my 2007-2010 mileage totals. My IM times did improve from 2007-2010, with no increase in volume and an increase in power/pace during workouts. Volume is ONE way to get there, but there is a limit to how much is helpful. I think you were right on the edge of it this Sep-Nov. Neither volume alone, nor 85%, nor 95-100%, nor 120% alone will produce success in IM. All are needed, in the right proporation. With unlimited time to train and recover, it is possible to do more (of all types of training) than what's in the EN plans, but the value added is quite small, I think, at least at our age, where recovery becomes the rate limiter.

Dave Tallo

Thanks, all - I can always count on the group of First Responders to give great food for thought/  

To refine my question a bit more (or refocus it):  Setting FTP aside, how does someone train to successfully execute a IM bike at, say, a TSS of 295 instead of 285?  Or 300 instead of 285?   I think Al's response gets to this, but would be happy if others chimed in.   

Al Truscott

Dave - great way to approach the issue. I assume you implicitly added "... and still run to potential afterwards." That is iimplied in the phrase "successfully execute an IM bike", right?

Let's see, your IM Canada bike split was 5:25. So the EN chart of Time/TSS/IF has you ideally at IF 74% and TSS of 295. The number you DON'T want to move is the TSS. At your speed/time, trying to top 295 is a big risk, I think. To go faster (5:20 or better) means a higher IF or maybe lower VI for you, but not by much.

Have you looked at your race file to see if you were hitting 74+% on the DOWNHILLS there, especially the last one into town? The IM Canada course with its relatively long climbs may offer some more speed to you without an increase in FTP, if you can get the IF to be as steady as possible by taking advantage of working on the downhills.

I'll keep posted here if any other ideas pop out of the percocet fog I'm still in after surgery last week (really, just one pill at night, to help me sleep slows me down for 12+ hours it seems.)

Paul Hough

@ AL - concur with everything you said. My premise is that once you've run out of gains from intense work, then volume becomes more important assuming you have the time, energy, and capacity to handle it. I do bring a bias to triathlon from my running background. It's well documented that the quality over quantity training model directly coincided with the American fall from greatness in distance running. For elites, 70 miles a week doesn't cut it no matter how hard they hammer. And it's no surprise that Ryan Hall has put America back on the running map by doing 120 mpw of...quality work. The best are hammering and logging the big weeks.

But triathlon is a different sport and the time demands of three sports and the recovery issue you mention are real limiters. I'm drinking the kool-aid, but I'm still going to err on the high end of volume as long as my body can take it.

Coach Rich

Interesting discussion.

I recall a conversation that Gordo and I had on his forum back in about March of 2003. I had been training my ass off for 3yrs, with a steady diet of interval and banzai training on the bike, with probably the exception of the long ride during which I would sit at Z1/Z2 (I think) thinking I was building some magical endurance. But minimum of 2x per week I was riding some very, very hard intervals, probably much harder than what we have you doing here. I remember testing my CP30 at 250w (that's what we used back in the day, before FTP) in about...November of '01(?) so about a 230w FTP. By the time I got to IMCDA'03 my FTP (CP60 we called it) was probably right at 300w.

Anyway, I remember the conversation we had as I began to swallow the pill of steady volume. It was something to effect of "the purpose of interval training is to raise FTP, but the purpose of Steady riding is to increase the percentage of your FTP that you can hold for 112 miles. The later is more useful for Ironman training." I bought it, turning away from getting faster by getting faster and instead focused on getting faster by going longer through AeT and other non-scientific, made-up term nonsense.

My training partner, Jon Pedder, and I switched from 2 x weekday interval session to 2 x 3hr z2, with some z3 time, rides at 0530 before he had to go to work. We backed this up on the weekends with 2 x 5-6hr rides on the weekend, with the usual running and swimming around it. Easily north of 20-25hrs per week, total. I recall that we did some HARD weekend rides: I TT'ed 112 flat in 4:45 (was hacking and coughing my ass off at the end), RR's of about 4:52, etc. Jon went 9:55, good for 19th AG'er overall back then and a Kona slot. I crashed BAD at mile 26 of the bike, flatted at mile 45, and rode about a 5:12 (I think), ran two miles with Jon and called it a day. I was tore up pretty good, had 27 athletes on the course and already had a Kona slot (at IMWI'02). That summer, as we both now trained for Kona, was more of the same. Monster mileage on the bike as we tried to get faster through Steady state training. I did 1400 miles in 16 days in September 2003.

Looking back at that experience and now reading this thread, these are my thoughts:

I think it's potentially dangerous to have a powermeter on your bike (objective) but to focus on lifting some subjective, hard to define metric. In other words, EN now has 4yrs of experience that says:

• Higher FTP = you go faster on the bike
• Best way to lift that FTP is to do training focused on lifting FTP: the 95-100% stuff, Vo2 intervals, etc
• You then do endurance work, the volume of which fits within your schedule, but you try to cram as much work/TSS into the hours that life gives you. Within that bullet...

Volume, for 95% of you there, shakes out to a 4-4.5hrs Saturday ride and 3hr Sunday ride. These are the volumes we've found, through much, much experience with coaching AG'ers, to be the volume that 95% of AG'ers can handle, physically, mentally, lifestyle-ly, etc. The net is that the cycling volume of 95% of the AG'ers out there (not just EN athletes...everyone) sorts out to be about 7-9, maybe 10hrs per week.

Cramming = the Z3, 80-85% stuff that we have you do. Though I pay zero attention to what other coaches do or say out there, I'd like to think that this is probably what makes EN so unique: our "discovery" of the missed TSS potential of this intensity zones and it's implications for time efficiency, etc. We have the power data that says that a our 4.5hr EN-style ride of FTP work + Z3 work = TSS > or equal to an IM bike or "normal" endurance ride of 6+hrs = we get in the TSS of an IM bike in 4.5 vs 6hrs+, saving you 1.5hrs. But, more importantly, our flavor of long ride makes you faster (the continued FTP work) while it makes you longer/builds your endurance).

So, Dave, my fear is by shifting the focus away from FTP as the answer towards "I want to build this undefined (?) ability to hold a higher percentage of my FTP while assuming that my FTP will remain constant," you're getting into this wishy-washy, I'm special, I'm the outlier kinda space. That said...

Can you get there through the application of volume: in my experience, yes. And if you have the time, it can be done. However...

In my experience, cycling volume as the primary tool only starts to pay off above about 15-17hrs per week of cycling. In other words, I've done more than my share of 300-400 mile (15-20hrs weeks for me) cycling weeks. By definition, you need to dial the intensity down with volume like that. NO DOUBT they made me stronger/faster on the bike. But that's a LOT of cycling and not sustainable, might as well be training on the moon for 98% of AG'ers.

But a lot of people try to swim in this grey, doesn't do much at all for you area of 10-15hrs per week. I'm absolutely convinced that at 10-15hrs you're not riding hard enough, or long enough, to lift FTP. Again, in my experience, good and tasty stuff happens above 15hrs...but that's a LOT of cycling!

In my experience, the coaches who espouse this kind of training are either former pros (Gordo) or cult of personality coaches (Gordo) who's coaching is a reflection of what worked for them and, more importantly, the lifestyle they like to have: one in which high volume training is as much of who they are as the car they drive, the books they read, music they listen to, etc. These coaches tend to gather a squad of wannabees who sort themselves out and, after a couple years, are left with core group who's lifestyle, personal $$ situation, etc allows them to accommodate this wannabee pro flavor of training.

Damn, not sure how I got on the Gordo topic?

Anyway, my point is that, in my experience, unless your life can accommodate regular, consistent cycling weeks of >15hrs/wk, you are better off sticking with the more "normal" 7-10hrs per week and working with us here to figure out how to miracle you another 10w on your FTP, find watts through bike setup, equipment, etc.

mgraffeo

Hall of Fame post right there. Belongs in the wiki.

Dave Tallo

dammit dammit dammit . Coughed up a good response to this discussion, a colleague walked into my office, I toggled from EN to a spreadsheet, and lost my message. 

Two-minute manager recap: 

@ ;Chris G: you have crushed my worldview: 41 years thinking I was funny and had taste.  Why don't you just tell me I wasn't always my parent's favorite child for the trifecta?  

@ ;Al: descent from yellow lake at Can was 0%, full coast.  But in the spirit of making the most out of what I've got, you're on to something.  I'll explore some of Lakerfan's posts and RRs on same, and particularly the discussion on race VI earlier this year.    I finished on his heels at AZ a few years ago, and where I coasted on the return descents each lap, he pedaled.  Emphasis: finished on his heels, instead of the other way around.

@ ;Rich: Just trying to squeze more juice outta the lemon.   To your post: true dat.  Ask a real estate agent about houses, neighborhoods, schools, what his kid's names are, or whatever, and he'll answer  "location, location, location."  Ask an EN principal about LC biking, and he'll tell you "raise FTP, raise FTP, raise FTP."    Probably a reason for both. 

 

 

cwhyte

Somebody brought this thread to my attention so forgive me for being so late to the game. I'm super swamped this year so I haven't had the time to spend on the forum.

From a training perspective:

Dave, interesting enough, we definitely have some similarities. I have tons of 2 x 20s and thousands of SST miles under my belt. There is a downside to SST though. It can get you into an extended monotraining phase. The body needs to experience a change in training stimulus and that change shouldn't necessarily be limited to increases in SST volume or increases in intensity that sit within the SST range. I don't believe adaptations are limited to a simple overload in training stress. Sometimes you really have to mix it up and introduce more variability. My suggestion would be to something different than you have done before. Matt's suggestion is a good one. Do a series of VO2max intervals. I've been throwing in about 6 weeks of 5 x 3 (3')s for the last 3 years now. Maybe do two blocks with a series of 2 x 20s in between.

From a racing perspective:

Let's make sure you're getting the most of out of your execution. A good thorough analysis of your ride would help. VI is especially important for you. Minutes are clearly going to make a difference in your case. I'm an absolute nut when it comes to race execution and that focus seems to have served me well. I pedal a lot but I also keep my IF/TSS well within the "acceptable" range. My power sits within a relatively narrow range. I coast when I run out of gears or have to back off to prevent drafting. That's it.

I'm leaning more toward the conservative side too, ie, yielding a lower TSS/IF and focus on outrunning my competition to get my slot. I think there's a huge mental advantage when you set yourself up to run well. Passing a lot of people is a huge mental boost. My bike at IMC was shit. I knew it was a bad bike day but I kept telling myself to take it easy and that I'll just run myself into contention. I almost feel like I steal some mental energy from everyone I pass on the run.

Just some ideas to talk about...

Thanks, Chris