Demonstration of a few EN training principles, in the adventures of Coach Dick
Ok...so I had really good cycling week, one that would do me very, very good if I could just repeat it consistently over time. As I was walking SnR today after my ride (they wanted to buy me coffee), I came up with a few thoughts I'd like to share with you.
My Week:
- Tues: 2 x Chantry Flats hill climb. This is a 5k, 6%, 19-22' climb, depending on fitness (and weight) that I usually do at about 105-108% of FTP. Ride to climb (16') up, down, up, down, home, done. Stoopid efficient.
- Thurs: 2:04 ride, as a rolling TT we call "bridge to bridge." Time for TT = 29:40 @ 246w Pnorm
- Saturday: Long climbing day. 4:30, 315 TSS, .84 IF, 72 miles. Brian and Fred, this was Hwy 39, East Fork, GMR, and out to Mt. Baldy, but we didn't drop down into the town. Just flipped it and came back. This included bridge-2-bridge in 29:02, 260w Pnorm
- Sunday: Identical to Thursday ride. 1:45 ride time, 28:22 for B2B at 266w Pnorm
- Total: 720 TSS in ride time of 9:45, averge IF = .85
Observations:
Training with other people is a very good thing:
Thursday was me, Rich Sawiris of Wheelbuilder.com, and his GF Vikki. Rich is about 35-40lb lighter than me and a climbing fool. I stayed with him for a bit then decided to settle in and just ride my own tempo. I was able to keep him in sorta-sight and he only beat me by about 30". An aside is that, while climbing, had a not-very-small guy blow by me like I was standing still. He caught Rich and went right over him, just kept going. He had to be holding >400w, just crazy.
Saturday included the same TT route + about a total of 6500ft of gain, with my tri club. More people, more egos, same climb = 14w more than what I did just two days before and likely not as painful as I was motivated to drop some guys, catch others, etc. Fun stuff.
Sunday, same thing: Rich, Vikki, and Mike, a former client that I haven't ridden with in years. He has put on, no kidding, about 130lbs in the interim and has lost all of it and more in the last year. Conversations at the bottom of the climb:
- Sawiris: yeah, I'm pretty cooked from yesterday (he did that 4:30 ride with me), I'm just going to ride easy.
- Mike: ok, I'll save it for the backside of Glendora Mtn Road (GMR).
- Me: BOOM!!! I'm off
They couldn't resist, Rich gapped us, I tried to drop Mike on a short, high speed rise, got a gap, lost it, and blew up spectacularly not long afterwards. Continued drilling myself and went over 1' and 20w faster than the same ride 3 days ago.
Lesson: training partners are worth an easy 10-15w vs training solo and that stuff adds up.
Saturday = why we have you focus on intensity not volume
A quick primer for the non-power-peeps, and please take the Power Seminar to learn more. You'll find it in the Power and Pace or can sign up in the Bike Station of the Train Map to have it delivered:
- Training Stress Score (TSS): power geekage that puts a number on how much you've "worked" during a bike ride, as a function of the how long you rode (time) and how hard (relative intensity)
- Your typical, well-paced Ironman bike leg is between 270 and 300 TSS for people riding faster than about 6hrs. Slower than 6hrs is about 320+ TSS.
- So, in general, when you power peeps are out on the bike and you put up 280 TSS points in a ride, you can say you've basically done an Ironman bike leg. It provides us with a frame of reference for what you'll see/do/experience in an Ironman, in other words.
So, let's forget that it's January and let's pretend that it's early May, I'm training for IMCDA, and I'm only about 7wks out from my race. I go to Slowtwitch, TriFuel or some other non-EN forum and say "yeah, I did a pretty solid 4:30 ride. However, about 20-30' of it was descending (true story) so maybe I was actually pedaling and stuff for about...4:15 (I work the descents pretty hard)?" The responses I'll likely get: Holy shit, dude, you're only riding 4:30 8wks out from IMCDA? I was riding 4hrs on the trainer in January! You're never going to be able to have a good bike and IMCDA! You're fooked!
Our EN notes:
- Note that I got in 315 TSS points, 30 more than I did at IMCDA'08 (was 287 TSS) with a 5:25 bike split, in only 4:30 ride time...and this includes a 9 mile continuous descent. Figure I was probably at about 285 TSS at ride time ~3:50 or so. In other words, I got in 30 points more than I would in an Ironman, with over one hour less time on the bike. I could have stopped at 3:50, with an IM bike split's worth of good ness in my legs. What's that time worth to you?
- A good bit of this ride time was stuff that actually makes me faster, not just "longer." I TT'ed my brains out for 30', and several other very solid 10-15' pushes througout the ride.
Yes, this was a climbing ride, I wasn't in the aerobars, wasn't practicing anything close to race nutrition so, no, this was not a race specific ride. That aside, I did in 4:30 the work that your competition will take 6hrs to get done, riding z1-2. And that 4:30 included much time at or near FTP = the stuff that makes me faster vs z1-2 time = will NOT make you faster.
So for EN peeps thinking that a 4:30 ride just isn't enough for IM training...go take a ride with an EN athlete on one of our measly little 4:30 rides 
and tell us it's not building endurance 
.
The Power of Bleeding through Your Eyeballs
Like I said, Saturday was a ride with my tri club. I founded the club in 2004 and have spent many, many years riding with many of the same groups of people. All flavors, all types, all manner of race distance goals, etc. I've observed a pretty big data sat, in other words. My observation for you is that the people who get faster the fastest are the ones who are not afraid to just WORK. Not go long, not show up every day, not think they are working...but rather they commit themselves to absolutely crushing themselves beyond any sense or reason. Screw the training plan, screw the tri mag, I'm going to stay on _this_ doodes wheel, or die trying, no matter what. The problem is that I can name about a half dozen people who've I've never really seen work really, truly hard and, guess what? Same pace, same results, year after year after year.
The mental toughness you guys are learning right now, the ability to just crush yourselves day after day, is going to pay off HUGE in a few months. Many of you are going to have to seriously rethink training partners, and maybe even continued friendships, because your perspective of work and what is hard work will have changed so dramatically.
Comments
Can you please send a few of your friends to Indiana for me to train with and crush myself? I've lost all my tri riding (I should say LSD riding) friends to train with. I only have the visions of your bald head to go after when I'm out there.
Travis, the larger point is the tri-world compulsively measures volume only: "I went for a 4hr ride, I ran 1:30, I have to ride 6hrs last week." We, however, through the use of powermeters and GPS, have learned that all rides and runs are truly not created equal:
Trent, ride with roadies...seriously. I think that roadie group rides tend to have a little bit more social time on the front end (when "all" you're doing is riding 4-5x per week, there's less rush to get the work done
) but I've had good luck with doing my own thing on the front end, intersecting the route where the fun starts, and then using the group/race dynamic to do a lot of work.
Trent, if you are willing to head to the Chicago area or we can find somewhere inbetween, we can get a few rides together this summer and crush ourselves.
I'm in!!! If I'm lucky enough to get into Leadville, I'll need some "crush myself" rides.
tom
Sometimes the same peeps will join me for a run session or I'll go blowing by them on their Sunday long run on one of my intervals and they will be like WTF?
So, on Sunday, one of the Kona vets, who is already WF, joins me during one of my 1.5 repeats and says, "hey I was reading an article about the "long run" in Triathlete and they were talking about not running any longer than 2.5 hrs at given time. Is that the program you are doing?" Not exactly and I sent to the website to check it out. I found this very interesting that a vet (10 time IM finisher with 3 being Kona), should be asking me, a 1 time IM finisher about training!
For me, being new to endurance training, and having done my first training/build/IM race last season the LSD way, and having trained with others from that same LSD philosophy, I can soooo see Rich's point and feel the power building in me by training the EN way and I think some of the vets I train with can see it too. I can see very clearly the value of having the PM and GPS numbers to lift against (work against) on the bike and the run. Makes such good sense!
Glad to have discovered EN
So Rich and maybe some of you women out there..I tend to get very frustrated on group rides (especially when I crash 500 yards from the end, but that's another story
) and am looking for some opinions/insight...
When I do a group ride, it is with a bunch or roadies (mostly men, but often mixed) who for the most part can generate a lot more power than I can, but not enough for me to truly get a great workout when drafting/holding onto their wheels. So I spike my power tenfold when I climb a hill to stay with the group and for a couple minutes when they'll let me pull on the front. But if I'm not climbing , I find my power is significantly lower than I would ride if I were by myself. The result is that my NP will often be close to what it would be if I were on my own, maybe even higher due to huge power spikes and brief pulls. But my AP will be significantly lower and I spend a lot of time coasting, or soft pedaling behind someone. The result is that my VI is through the roof (1.2+) and it takes me longer to do the same amount of "work" as I'd do on my own.
Case in point...Saturdays ride numbers:
AP: 141
NP: 174
Ride time: 2:24
TSS: 186
VI: 1.24
Time spent coasting: 18% of ride
And these numbers are actually high for a group ride...I've had averages in the 120's and 130's with NP in the 150's and 160's. On my own, I'd average in the 150's normally, and often have close to the same NP, sometimes higher for a ride of this length. So guess my question is for someone like me who's strong, but not strong enough to really do a lot of work on these rides, is there a lot of value to them, or am I better off drilling myself and doing my prescribed intervals?
Thanks!!
Melanie
Trouble is, I'm never quite sure who's gonna be at the ride- and there are times when I need to "sit in" at .9 just to stay with the group! So I'm always a little too worried about shelling myself before I join these guys.
On a similar note- I'm really trying to work on being more "steady" with my peddling while in the paceline. I've almost broken the habit of coasting (soft peddle instead) but I'd like to be more smooth and steady with my effort within the paceline. It's still got a pretty high VI and I'd like to fix that.
I'm coming from road racing background so I want to offer a different point of view.
while doing group rides, road races and crits improve your overall cycling fitness, they do not help much with your time trailing skills.
1+ years into triathlon, riding my TT bike most of the time and still, my power output on my road bike is 10-15w higher.
I still do the occasional group rides and race but I do my interval workouts on my TT bike and the closer I get to race day, the more time I spend on my TT bike
The key is as always - balance
Melanie:
Hey Rich,
Thanks for the feedback. I think you're right. Smaller group with more focus would be better. I'm often riding with groups of 15-30 people and it's just too hard to get much work done in the middle of the group and their egos get in the way when a chick is pulling them down the road at 25+mph. They can deal with that for about 2' until someone whips around and kills it for me. Will work on finding smaller group with similar goals.
Nemo, when you lived in the MD/DC area, did you do a lot of group rides...who'd you hook up with? I live pretty far out west in VA, but ride with the Reston Bike Club some.
Cheers,
Melanie
So when someone goes around you, just move over to the side and continue doing your thing, or drop in for 30" to rest, then go back to front and get back work...seriously, what's the worst that can happen? "I'm sorry I'm doing so much work at the front for you. Maybe we can chat about what a bitch I am at 25mph in the wind?
If you clearly demonstrate that you're a worker, will always do your share, etc, you'll start to have people watch your back, offer you a wheel or give you a push to get back on a wheel.