But it does correlate.
EXACTLY 
That’s good. 
Did you think of that yourself or is it a meme I’ve missed?
Lots of 2-2.5 hour rides …
Lots …
50/50 outdoors/ indoors.
Several 3-4 hour rides and three 5 hour plus outside of races in 2019.
Probably why my 70.3 bike splits are fair to good despite power numbers that are laughable and IMUK totally ruined me… but I’m really not alone there …!
Take a look here:
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Are you offering him out? 
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The Long ride thing is very related to ramp rates and CTL, Poet is rightly concerned in these sorts of threads about burn out and injury, and I do believe that “big” efforts, be they on a bike or running have high risk, they also have very low reward, you don’t get much training benefit from an effort that is “big”. It’s not just stimulus and your body has to recover rather than simply improve.
So a big enough ride to get the benefit without the risk might only be 2-3 hours, anything more and you’re either crawling home at the end, spending the rest of the day on the sofa eating all the chocolate as you try to recover - or you drop the intensity of the ride down so low it’s no longer bringing much stimulus anyway (but could be enjoyable, but let’s assume this is about training)
For me, over the years I’ve found around 2 times my sport specific CTL can be done every day for many days in a row, that means I can have extreme ramp rates but never in the period am I remotely floored - too tired to do anything, and I’ll pretty much continuously improve through it (I’ve never had the time for continuous 220+ TSS rides to know if it works when fully fit) However a 3 or 4 times my CTL ride can wipe me out, with little benefit.
So for me, if I have a CTL of 50, a long ride of the 4-5 hours of this thread would be nothing but mental resilience and probably either harm my training and run the risk that Poet that talks of, or nothing but a chance to smell the flowers.
If you want to do a long ride, get fit enough to do them - it does surprise me how many people manage to do ironman on such low fitness, often with really good times too, and I wonder how well they’d go with full fitness.
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Seriously guys, it’s a forum, we all have opinions, we can’t all agree on everything, sometimes things get taken out of context.
Can we draw a line under the current spat on this thread and leave it as it is? Nobody needs the last word, just leave it please.
Stumbled across this whilst trying to understand a discussion about vlamax and The Lionel on ST. I don’t know enough to say if it’s right or wrong but I found it an interesting read and somewhat related to this discussion.
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The problem with sweet sport and threshold work is the heat build up damages cells so whilst you do get better bang for bucks in aerobic conditioning, it comes at a larger cost and potentially a loss in consistency. Too many people relying on metrics from a software package to govern training is why you end up with under recovery and illness or injury. Just because TSS is high in a certain type of session, doesn’t necessarily mean in the long term that is better for you.
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@JibberJim excellent post. I’ve never really thought about it in the way you describe, however, as I read it, I fully agree with you.
My bike specific CTL is around 70, A ride with a TSS of 150 creates very little fatigue. My biggest ride, 290km 7000m climbing, had a TSS of 640, the final 90km was painfully slow, however, looking back at my history, a ride with a TSS of 280 I can maitain a constant IF of 75% with no drop in performance through the ride. Although I will feel tired by the end, and do lighter training the following day
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In my opinion, long rides (and runs) have a place for everyone and any distance. Obviously what this would actually look like in terms of duration and intensity depends on a lot of things - prior training, race distance, available time, physiology, COMPETE or COMPLETE - are you just getting round or trying to race to your potential etc etc.
The main thing is adaptation to the duration - metabolically, comfort wise, mentally, as well as the simple fitness adaptations (yes I do think a 4 hour ride is better than 2 x 2 hour rides), but it’s about managing load (ramp rate for newbies and those increasing as much as planning your week out).
Clearly it would be unreasonable to replicate full IM race distance and effort all the time but for experienced IM athletes I would not expect a 4-5 hour ride at IM sort of intensity (65-80% FTP?) to be debilitating if planned and ridden correctly. For an n=1 reference I will include a weekly 3.5-4 hour ride at 70-75% FTP/HRM and I’m currently training for an Olympic distance in June, followed by a HIM in September.
There’s more to weekly TSS/CTL etc - infinite ways to come up with the same number but it needs to be relevant to your goals and available training capacity
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Yikes. Not been on TT much last week as away for week visiting family. Read the thread from the start and was surprised which direction it went, came across to me as a well intentioned hypothetical discussion starter.
Less relevant to add a week on, but I’ll try quickly summarise some of my thoughts and the thread so far on why the answer is, as always, it depends.
Average first-timer: Very big benefits from many consistent weekly rides over 100km, building to 5-6 hour/rides. This would be one of the main key session for someone trying to complete, to know they are used to time in the saddle and have that basic strength and aerobic endurance.
After that, it of course depends on what your goals are. Very long rides (defining for this paragraph as ~120-200km) are of physical and mental benefit for 99% of us. *But the crux to this thread was how much benefit are they to make it worth the trade-off on life.
First question would be motivation. Those super motivated/chasing KQ etc will do them every week +/- a second “long” ride (say ~100km) mid week, regardless of whether they are the single most important session, because they have (or have made) the time to devote everything to getting better. In the same way they will also likely be chasing other marginal gains in equipment, recovery etc.
Of more interest is the bulk of us who fall into varying parts of the same camp, those who want to get better but are slightly less singled minded about it. Trying to keep it simple, yes most of us would benefit from long rides - but by how much?
There is a small proportion of us for whom the 5hr rides might only be the icing rather than the cake itself. These are the ones who have a very long established background of endurance and have done previous IMs to know they react to the long bike and long run. These guys could very likely have a brilliant season, maybe 2 off barely any long sessions if they targeted focused intensity. Any longer than a year or two though and they’re likely to see that endurance become the limiter again.
Add on thoughts for those firmly BOP. These are probably a mix of people who physically still need to train as beginners due to being under-developed physically/genetically, or those who do just want to complete the IM each time, and probably just rock up without stressing about what training they’ve done. Of course some of these people might also be well established MOP. Either way they’re probably less interested in reading this spiel in a long “training” thread, instead just exercising whatever they feel like and what works for them.
My actual thoughts are probably a bit more nuanced, but thats definitely enough of a spiel for now. Gypsy King documentary has almost finished.
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Walking proof (N=1 ) of that. I had a couple of great seasons with limited long rides and a shift in training approach to intensity and strength work, ( compared to my first IM for example where I was doing 6hr+ rides from 10 weeks out and been doing 4+ rides consistently for at least 6 months) then I found my endurance was starting to fall off a cliff.
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There’s no secret that I am chasing KQ, however, I certainly don’t do 120-200km rides every week, and would question the value of doin that many. I do ride 300km per week, getting miles in the legs is important. If I’m going to do a long ride, I will make it count, would need to be at IM intensity 72-76% IF and test my nutrition strategy. However, these rides can be psycologically pretty tough, and I don’t think I could do one every week.
Having just said that, I am planning a 130km ride tomorrow, and I did do a 100km ride mid week (actually 25km, zwift, 35km to work and 40km return @ 77% IF). Then in 2 week’s time I am in Lanzarote, and will do lots of miles on the bike, including the IM course recce
I missed this thread somehow, been busy clearly.
I have a question people are using terms like muscular endurance and aerobic conditioning. What are you meaning by this and what is the difference between the two? To me they’re the same thing. Long aerobic rides and runs improve the efficiency of mitochondria, increase their enzyme concentration. This is aerobic conditioning and gives muscles greater endurance.
In terms of @joex’s original question, as always, the answers is it depends. If you have years of training and a wide, solid aerobic base, you might be better served with a few 4 Hr rides with a decent amount of low end of sweet spot mixed into it and a few 2-3 hr harder rides. If not several 6 hr rides might be better, whilst managing fatigue.
I don’t see why there is a physiological limit to it TBH. If doing a long aerobic ride or run ruins most of the following week an Ironman isn’t going to be enjoyable from a long way from home. Or you’re riding or running too hard and need to reassess your pacing and goals.
Whether you have time or not due to work and or family is a different matter. Physiologically the benefits are there, whether that’s your most pressing adaptation depends on your current fitness and performance priorities.
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basically building the bodies ability to withstand long hours, so that the muscles break down and damage less. Another good way of doing this is to do increasing pace runs and rides, last 15minutes empty the tank type stuff or 2 hr runs getting faster every 30minutes. Or even big gear/hill work but over time rather than “reps” . Aerobic conditioning is just building the engine, the heart, improving the transportation of oxygen to the muscles. You could have the engine to ride all day whcih can be done with 4* 2hr rides rather than 2 * 4hr rides, in fact the former may be better, but the latter builds the muscles ability to handle that amount of work. As always “it depends” what you need to work on and a mixture of everything.
In an ironman its the breakdown of the muscles that generally limits performance rather than endurance or speed in most athletes. The guy that wins is the one that slows down least
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I hear what you’re saying but to me they’re indistuingishable. Improving vascular supply to the muscles is both increasing muscuar endurance and therefore building the engine. Physiologically speaking I don’t see how muscular endurance and aerobic conditioning are separate. I appreciate there are changes to heart musculature but as adults I woud say peripheral changes are where we as a group see the biggset adaptations. Increased muscle cappilary density is an aerobicconditioning change but to me it’s that this results in peripheral imrpovement in muscular metabolic efficiency, along with inproved mitochondrial efficiecy, that means this directly improves muscular endurance. Not sure if I have explained myself well here or that it matters, I just like E. Phys. chat.
In terms of how, I totally agee with what you’re saying re changes in gearing, power and pace to elicit increased adaptations.
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I think this is often under estimated in IM training. I know after my first Outlaw I was pretty sick of hearing my own thoughts.
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So it’s basically about building the strength of the muscle not the mechanism to transport oxygen to the muscle although when I talk strength I dont mean squatting 200kg + but strength as in it doesnt get damaged as quickly. I’ve probably over simplified it there