Base Building in the Winter

[Cyclopaat]

So, if I read that correctly, I should cut my TL 70+ - that would feel like a walk in the park every day

Also, not sure how accurate the numbers are. They are from intervals.icu, but I believe that’s a one-on-one relation with Strava’s calcul;ations.

I used Xert until last month and that calculated about the same, so, I don’t know, maybe it is what it is.

Basically it comes down to ~3 hr SS per day, which is fine for me. My outdoor rides are longer and a little less intense, indoors it’s usually as hard as I can for the estimated duration.

[Alex]

CTL = 70 means averaging about 70 TSS per day so approximatly 7 hours a week. This is what virtually all top coaches would recommend. I am not saying it needs to be exactly that I am just saying you are way outside the recommenced amounts of training and if you are going to do a large # of hours it should only be for a few months before your peak season. These pros hit 160 CTL for only a few months of the year. So what I am saying is sure this might feel really easy but going with the right training load is what is going to produce your best results. Maybe you recover faster than others so you can average 10-hours a week in the offseason but surely you can’t recover faster than the 20-year old pro riders unless you are some type of genetic super human.

[Alex]

Strava fitness calc is based on TrainingPeaks and so is intervals.icu. Not saying it is exactly the same calculation but close enough.

[Alex]

It’s possible if you really want to do a lot of hours that doing most of those hours below the ventilatory threshold might not require much recovery so you could do more than recommened # of total hours. I would need to ask some coaches if they agree with that. So maybe 3-hard days a week and the rest seriously easy.

[Cyclopaat]

I definitely recover fast, as otherwise I wouldn’t be doing these non-stop climbing tours.

Here’s this year’s Giro: https://www.bikerebel.com/2020/08/giro-ditalia-2020-report/ (you can find more crazy tours like that there).

I just don’t know; for me, it’s fun, relaxing but also demanding and taxing. That may sound weird, but that’s just who and what I am.

By no means is there anything ‘super human’ about me - a pro leads a completely different life and my ‘Giro’ will make most of them giggle, so…

[Alex]

I am sure you do. But the question is do you recover faster than the 20 year old pros? If you recover as well as they do then you could theoretically train as much and similar to what they do and get maximum benefit, you currently train more then they do. If you require more recovery then them you should be training less than them to maximize your performance. Again. If you just love the way you train and enjoy it, then don’t worry about maximizing performance. I am just saying if you want to get faster you probably need to train in a combination of less hours and less intensity for most of your seasonal riding. Build up to full volume right before your tours. That tour looks great. I will read in more detail soon.

[Cyclopaat]

How would I know if I recover faster? If I can cycle a Maratona and do Solda/Stelvio the day after, did I recover like a pro? I’m still slower than most, if not all, of them

My normal road average is around 34, or more broadly between 33 and 36 kph.

If I would be in a peloton, I’d go faster, as it’s way more easy to ride in the middle of the pack. I wouldn’t mind taking turns at the head of it either.

That they are preparing for the sprint at 60 kph, is incredible, but I’m really too old for that.

The only thing I would like to do is get a bit faster on my climbing, but while I’m an average climber, I can do so for a very long time.

It wouldn’t be enough for a Gold at the Marmotte though. Or maybe, now I’m 60 it would be - I need to look that up.

Anyway, the Marmotte is impossible to get into, lest you’re willing to spend the money for 3 weeks of cycling in the Dolomites for a one day event.

Between this and my previous post, I was out, err… cycling a bit. But that’s it for today, I swear https://www.strava.com/activities/4379688679

[Alex]

I will respond later but not sure if I told you but I lived in Haarlem for about 9-months. Amazing experience, my first time living outside the US, in 1999-2000.

[Cyclopaat]

You didn’t and I won’t hold it against you. I am, however, curious as to the nature of the amazingness of the experience

If it has anything to do with the ‘great, cycling friendly’ environment, don’t bother. It’s a myth, or rather, it has become a distant memory, albeit I can see why some people believe we are better off than anyone living elsewhere.

[Alex]

So testing recovery the only way I know how is with HRV, which is pretty reliable if you practice it. Orthostatic can work. In my case sleeping lowest HR on Garmin is a good indicator. The problem is you never rest enough to get a base line of a fully recovered state. Once you know your recovered baseline you can just compare it the day after a hard effort to see if you are back to your baseline. I am telling my pro-friend coach about you and see what he has for an answer on how to test recovery. He is probably the top lab science coach in the world so if anyone knows he does…

[Alex]

So I was wrong at least partially. My coach friend says if you feel good, sleep good and don’t have bad days you are probably recovering. He said seems like too much but not so obviously like I thought. Also he said it is not normal you did that kind of Giro week without a day off in the middle. He said not impossible, especially since you did it

So, this all means it’s not so clear that you really would do better with less hours. I also did see in Strava you have reduced hours in the winter so that is probably a rest phase for you. It’s just so out of the ordinary that I find it very interesting. So in the end keep up the good work…

[Cyclopaat]

I do keep an eye on my HRV - I have an Apple Watch and the paid HearthWatch app.

My resting HR is below 40 and I have been woken up while in the hospital, as it may drop close to 30 when I’m in deep sleep.

Apparently they fear you can go into cardiac arrest, but once you tell them this is normal, as you’re an active cyclist, they stop worrying

I was hospitalised three times after being hit by a car, which probably is one reason why I’m not a big fan of our ‘safe cycling network’. The effects of the first two have added a lot to the long term effects of the car crash I had in 2002, when a van hit me from behind.

I started indoor cycling/spinning after I came out of rehab 1.5 years later. I used to be very active in all sorts of sports, but my ‘career’ got in the way and after my car crash I decided to start as an independent contractor.

In the winter, my load normally drops, as I do not get out much and train indoors. I used to do more and longer sessions, but I try to avoid anything over 2 hours. I may occasionally do a longer session, but I usually do two sessions of 1-1.5 hours.

However, in the winter of 2018-2019, I was out for 3 months because of a triple hernia. That has been a problem ever since 2002 and it’s still there, but I get shots every 3 - 6 months.

Not sure how long that will continue to be effective, but so far, it’s helping, although getting them is excruciating and the benefit may last shorter or longer, you never can tell.

Maybe one reason why I do not ‘suffer’ a lot and recover more quickly, is because I’ve adapted to my usual SS training and my HR is relatively low. Perhaps your friend can shed some light on that.

[Alex]

Amazing and strange. Meaning how can you spend most of your time in Z4 power and at the same time most of your time in Z2 HR. This is incredible. I don’t know what type of chart analysis that would be but I would love to see how that actually maps out on some type of plot curve or something. Makes a lot more sense why you can train so much without the need for more recovery. You are taking easy out there at least from a stress stand point in Z2 HR. And yeah I read Lance Armstrong has resting HR of 32 so sounds like you might be in your 30s as well.

I will send this to my friend. That is what he said yesterday, he said sounds like you are taking it easy but they he saw the Z3/Z4 power said maybe not… Anyway very interesting. Those crashes don’t sound good.

I also have been a contractor since about 2000 but functioned similar to an employee a lot of that time but my career has not gotten in the way of my life too much.

[kcblair]

Hello Alex, I’m currently using Winter base II/III with day 4 free riding in VeloReality for about an hour. Anything over an hour, I lose interest. That’s why I find HIIT the perfect plan for me. Sometime in January/Feb , I’ll get into more intense stuff, as I did last year.

Lots of new programs, it’s great how this site has grown.

[Cyclopaat]

VeloReality is an excellent alternative. Also simple (software, interface) and great quality videos, like BigRingVR.

I own many videos, but these days, they offer a streaming subscription, starting at a free (lower quality) one. At least, they did when starting the service.

Software is free anyway.

[Alex]

Cool, I had not looked at this veloreality before, I don’t pay much attention to the Windows world. Yeah free software for 3-months. That’s nice, 720p seems decent as long as it is not giant 4k screen you are watching on.

I don’t see how you are importing ERG/MRC files into veloreality. Is that what you are doing?

[kcblair]

Yep, 3 mos. Free at 720 resolution . No, no, when the training plans for riding outside or Swift, I switch to Veloreality.

[MedTechCD]

I used Veloreality back in the days where smart trainers were not even available. It’s been around for a while. It looked like a Mac program but ran in Windows. Think it was developped for cross-platform. Haven’t checked it for years, so can’t tell what it looks like today. Did some testing for BigRingVR to get the Tacx Vortex working and helped out a bit during development of MaximumTrainer. Last one unfortunately ceased to exist, not profitable. Liked that one a lot, because it was simple . It had the possibility to add text messages during the workout. It appears I’m always coming back to something simple, because I loose intrest in RLV and gaming things (Zwift,RGT). I prefer structured workouts and watch TV or a movie while riding. Now that we have PowerMatch, I don’t even have to look at the numbers anymore. Just keep pushing

[Cyclopaat]

It’s all about video, no other frills. There is multi-player and ‘ride against yourself’ using a previous recording, but that’s it.

As @kcblair/ Ken pointed out, if you cannot do a workout while playing one of their videos, you can look for something else.

Like with BigRingVR, which is also Ant+ only, I use your app (or any other app that supports structured workouts) on the BLE channel to control my trainer and send the Ant+ channel to the software running te video.

Watching TV or play a movie also works

[Alex]

Oh I get it now. Thanks for the explanation. Yeah I can’t find ERG mode in Netflix either…