ABP Ride - What are your strategies for keeping it in Zone 3?
Tell me if I just need to nut up and I will. I'm new to the EN way of training. I've been doing Long Course for 5 years and 3 IMs under my belt. In my opinion, the Sunday ABP ride is the hardest thing in the EN IM plans. Period. I stumble out of bed, in a fog on Sunday morning and will myself out the door. Don't get me wrong, I love riding and love to ride hard.
Here are some things I have tried to keep the wattage up. At present I am able to "hang on" for about 2.5 hours on average for the ABP ride. A competing challenge is most Sundays I don't have more than 2.5 hours.
1. Do the full 30 min warm-up. Make sure I'm not pushing it to soon. Let it "come to me".
2. I do a circuit around a rural area in my city. A 25 min loop that has flats, long hills, short hills and rollers.
3. I play a game and do the circuit and try to beat my time each lap.
4. I don't allow myself more than a 1 min coast/easy break to drink about every 15-25 mins.
Anyway, I'm interested in what others do to hit the numbers. I'm also interested if other people think this is as hard of a workout as I do.
Comments
Jim,
I think it's 95% mental. After training like this for so long, riding at 85% or more, as much as I can, is just my default way of riding the bike. Not sure my training partners enjoy it, but the idea of warming up at < 75% would just drive me nuts. I'm pretty much on the gas as soon as coast down the street to put my gloves on, etc. For me, this is what makes the Joule such a good powermeter monitor for how I ride: that IF just stares at me and I'm constantly working to drive it up. Any 3hr ride less than about 85% is a no-go for me, unless I'm doing a ton of coasting and descending.
In short, before long this will just be what you do and you won't have to think about it much at all.
What Rich said. I almost never end a ride sub-.8 IF. I like to be as close to .85 as possible. And as Rich noted, over time it just becomes "what you do."
The end result is on race day. When you do your IM bike @ .7ish IF it will be your easiest ride all year and you will come off the bike in great shape to get to mile 18!
Yeah, I got my Joule with the IF in my face the whole time. Like I said, this (among some other things) are new to me. Good, but new and it seems there's some adaptation that is going on as well.
What Mike said. I'm doing something similar @ 18(2). Then each hour is really only three intervals. Mind games, totally.
Like Rich said I try to get on the gas from the start. Unless I am really shelled I almost never take it easy at the start. Once I start to go easy it becomes too easy to stay that way. Much easier for me to just go hard. For pretty much all my rides I let the terrian dictate the intervals for me. If its a hill I am on the gas, let up down the other side etc. Joule is an evil device, there is no hiding from it.
Maybe I'm a wimp, but I have found that if I am always hitting .85 on the Sunday ride that means either I sandbagged Saturdays Ride, or my FTP is set to low and I need to retest. For me being able to consistantly hit about .82 to .83 every ride feels about right. Under .8 and I need some recover or soemthing else is wrong. Over .85 on a sunday happens once in a while when I am very motivated or when I am definitely due for an ftp bump.
Also, my IFs above are based on always having a VI of under 1.1 and usually 1.07 or lower. In my opinion if the VI is 1.15 or over it is much easier to hit 85%. I know many will disagree with me but 3 hours @ .85 with a VI of 1.05 riding very different than 3 hours @ .85 with a VI of 1.2.
This is good insight. I've noticed that .81 to .83 is just about right for me on these rides. And I find (as you noted) that bumping up that IF is a lot easier to do if there's climbing involved. Something to be aware of I suppose.