I have to shuffle things a bit depending on weather. I have been pretty lucky and managed to get 2 commutes in most weeks recently. In a bad weather week, I struggle to get in the hours.
Past 3 weeks, I have been doing more at lunchtime in order to free up Sundays. I have also been doing less on Saturday afternoons
Overall this is a pretty accurate representation of time and TSS that I am doing each week
Were am I lacking? Long bike really stands out. I am strongest on the bike, and still getting plenty of miles in, however, it would be very complacent to go in with so little on the bike. I have Lanzarote Camp coming up, where I will get in plenty more cycling miles and has a full IM distance bike. As the weather improves, and clocks change, I will take one Friday afternoon off work each month to do a full IM distance ride.
You have some really low TSS/hour there - 40 from an hour on the turbo? 60 for the commute, that would be the easiest way to lift TSS I’d say, 40/hour is barely worth putting the shoes on, same with the 1 hour lunch run.
For me, based on my knowledge of myself, I’d do more short running (~30mins) most days and lift the intensity of all those short rides - and that’s not 1 minute at 600w intensity it’s just harder for the longer durations.
’Vinokourov is a past national champion of Kazakhstan, and a dual-medalist at the Summer Olympics. In 2007, he received a two-year ban from cycling for blood doping. In 2019, he was accused of race fixing by prosecutors in Liège.’
No, I bloody well would not, unless I’d done some “after hours” training
Agree with the commute runs - but that’s not realistic if your work is 20 miles away (I did it…once!)
Nice week planning, too.
But…your commutes - do you have structure to them?
Or are they just commutes?
I mean, I’ve seen the blistering pace you do them at - is that an effort? Or just the silky smooth roads and your equipment choice, as in, are you doing it on a nice carbon roadie, or a 15kg winter hack?
Thursday morning I organise a Club Zwift ride, which is pretty social, and I tend to go pretty easily
My commute really depends, yesterday for example was 51 and 62 TSS (NP 200 and 220W), this was a really easy ride, while on Monday my commute was 69TSS and 85TSS (NP 250w for both, return was extended distance) That was a really hard ride, but 8km of my ride is through Zurich Centre, which limits power a bit.
Lots of my lunch runs tend to be really low Z2 intensity hence low TSS numbers - however, pace is normally around 5m/km, I tend to start at 5:20/km and end at 4:40/km, with HR at or below 140bpm average (MHR is 190)
When you look at the blogs from Alan Couzins, Dan Plews etc, they are training athletes at significantly lower intensity that I am doing, for example 21hrs with a weekls TSS just above 1000
Finished reading the thread, love it already and want to re-read/read the links. Anyone new coming in to dig out TT1.0 sub-10/some of the stickies on there as well.
Motivates me to find some magic hours, thought I was training well but clearly a long long way behind what is required.
For Matt, I’d agree with suggestion of more run days, but thats likely going to mean lots of bricks to try fit in with that schedule and not have to spend an extra 30 minutes a day showering and changing (pink font @Poet). Even if just a 20 minute run ere and there.
From a purely training perspective, I’d train Sundays. I don’t think IM needs a rest day and think its better spread out with a pure recovery day. But if life says no to a 30-60 minute Sunday session then we’ve discussed this!
The trouble with KQ is the arbitrary nature of it all. It’s not like an exam with a pass mark to aim for, to make the grade.
That’s why I CGAF about it all. Better to go for GFA or similar for most of us here IMHO. This year my goal is at age 46 with a day job, to get a comfortable SAS pass time on the Fan Dance. I would be up near the front in that case, and only a couple of dozen manage it each year from around a thousand-odd; but to quote Dave Scott ‘it suits my physical talents’
Yes, but that’s 'cos that his philosophy, (I also suspect in part because he expects his ego athletes to overstate their FTP as that is part of their whole ego thing)
For me (and I am only talking about me), there is absolutely no reason to waste time on something that is that low intensity, because I can go harder with the same no-risk of injury, no impact on other workouts etc. Obviously I’m not a KQer, I’d drown long before I got anywhere, but I have kept mixed run and bike over 110 CTL for long periods.
My commutes always have structure, It is 34.5km door to door, 27km is open road, 7.5km is city centre riding. For the City centre section, safety is the priority, so no structure, with one exception on my way to work, the final 3km is a climb, so that is structured.
I am using a decent carbon bike for my commutes; I do have a winter hack… however I struggle to get motivated to do structured training on it, so this year it rarely gets used.
An easy commute is 200w (20% of my commutes)
A typical commute is 73% IF on ride to work, and 82% IF on ride home (most common)
A fast commute is 80%+ on way to work, and 90%+ on ride home (20% of my commutes)
I actually function better without a recovery day, however, at the moment life dictates that I spend a day without training. As Lanza approaches, and I need to get more hours in, Sundays will start to feature more.
As it is, Sunday is not a rest at home day, it could be a Hike or sight seeing, typically walking 15-20,000 steps
Agree, I understand that. I’m not saying you must train harder as you’ve picked up on in the next post it’s about balance with life. But you’ve asked for advice on how to potentially improve your training, and so that is one hour that isn’t optimised from that point of view.
