Me and THE coach

[shaper]

Will add my comment, read up on the 80/20 rule as it sounds like you are doing more high intensity than low intensity, whereas it should be 80% low/endurance intensity.

 

As others have mentioned, unless you are fat adapted or on a LCHF diet then you will also need to re-look at your nutrition on your long rides as well as pre-ride and post ride recovery.

 

As swiss has also mentione, cycling is not a high impact sport like running, whilst the muscles might be stiff and tight after a long/hard ride, there should not be any soreness unless saddle sore and that only gets easier with time in the saddle and chamois cream if needed.

[SwissVan]

Thanks for all the comments, i had a chat with John and the news is not really what i wanted to hear......

 

I will read every bodies comments once i am home , thanks again John , THANKS HUB LAND......

 

Over and out till later !!!

Lekker

Don’t leave us hanging now

We demand feedback

????

[King_Crispy]

Are you in Jhb?

I'll lend you a singlespeed and you can come and ride with us for a few sessions.

You'll be able to teach your regular cycling partner a few lessons after a couple of rides with us.

Ps, we can also teach you a few things about nutrition. Our best post-ride tip is Heineken

[Help.Me.]

Intervals.icu will be your friend in telling you your current form and fatigue.

Do yourself a favour and buy a proper carb drink like Cadence carbofuel or the likes as well as proper bars/gels/chews etc.

 

Thanks for the advice about the Cadence nutrition , just ordered some muti fro them.....i am following the intervals.icu thread but i am not on strava so one of the many reasons why i am not using it yet....

[Help.Me.]

Well your summary is saying your fatigue is high and your form is very low, so you are bound to feel poked with nothing much to give.

 

Recovery is your best friend. Sleep too. so often forgotten.

 

You should be training 3 weeks hard and 1 week easy. Make sure your easy week is EASY. your body needs to recover and adapt.

Eat well before you go ride too, you will feel poorly riding "fasted" if you are not used to it, and your partner has made you work.

Eat and drink regularly on route too.

Your long weekend rides (3hours+) are what really push up your fitness CTL (and fatigue), short midweek sessions (1hour) are really just for maintenance and keep your fitness level.

Missed sessions or unforeseen breaks make your fitness CTL dip back down.

Consistency is everything.

 

Edit: Do away with the PVM's. they are hard to chew whilst riding. Make your own savory or sweet rice cakes, boiled baby potatoes, bananas, fruitcake etc. Real food is best.

Drink can be anything from expensive carb drinks, all they way down to Apple juice diluted in water.

Thanks for your input, i think you really touched on some points i need to change.

[Help.Me.]

Sounds to me like you went too hard on your weekend rides. FTP is a great metric for stationary/ indoor bike training, but when outside, you also need to take your weight into account - hence people refer to W/kg values (FTP/ weight) - if your partner has a significantly higher W/kg value, they are going to make you hurt on even the slightest of inclines. Slow down on the hillclimbs & speed up on the flats and you will go much further on the bike. Pushing even moderately hard on the climbs will quickly take you into an energy deficit that you will struggle to recover from - especially if you aren't fully fit and eating properly - save the high intensity work for the short indoor sessions and (short) races.

Thanks for our input, yes we did or at least i did go harder than normal on my weekend ride with my partner. I wanted to see my progress and if i will be able to stick with him. After our session we discussed that i am going to give the pace when going uphill and on the flats i will sit behind him. He has a much higher W/kg ratio he is very skinny compared to me , i am more in the buffalo category.....

[Help.Me.]

The bold bit is your issue.

 

Assuming your coach has prescribed the right mix of high and low intensity rides, it is pretty important to try and stick to that. Doing a 3-4 hour ride at high intensity will really take it out of you. That's why with most training plans that I have seen, the high intensity rides are usually pretty short (like 1-2 hours max) and the long rides are meant to be done at low intensity to build your aerobic fitness. Doing the long rides at too high an intensity is actually counter-productive because then you can't put in quality training for a few days while you recover.

Thanks for the reply, i understand the fact about the low and high intensity rides. I stick to the programs as best as possible during the week. Weekends when i do my long rides my TSS scores is sometimes much higher than what the coach suggests. He never once told me i am doing it wrong, he was happy with the big ride i put in.....so more confusion!!!

[Help.Me.]

Clock more miles outside and I can guarantee you'll start to see a spike in your fitness levels and "tolerance" to your partners ferocious riding style. An IDT is a great tool, I mean if you have a look at my Strava stats you'll notice that I also clock more km's on the IDT than outdoors. 

 

The reason for this is that it's more convenient and I get results with less time spent. It's also safer than riding solo.

But what I've found is: Yes the IDT builds fitness quicker and you feel great but you have other things to contend with outside, things like wind, gradient, terrain and not even to mention getting the right cadence / rhythm on the bike. A coach can tweak the numbers and give you a training plan but if you fight the bike / struggle to get a rhythm on the bike you'll always work against yourself and have a hard time keeping up 

To be honest i prefer the IDT during the week , it is more convenient and i lost my weekly cycling partner(due to a farm attack) etc etc etc..... i must learn how to cycle solo more often, its not that easy.

[Help.Me.]

Something is wrong, cycling should never make you sore, let alone very sore.....unless you cramp, hit the ground or a parked car.

Start at square one

Bike set up, seat height - have you had these checked by an expert?

Listen to your body, don’t blindly follow your buddies

Hi Swissvan i had a proper bikesetup about 2 months ago. There was not much that they have changed on the previous setup. I think it was done properly, i had some stickers on my legs and it was filmed on a pc. I even took my spinning bike with.....maybe i am just "sleg" LOL

[Help.Me.]

To me, as a very unscientific person, you should have ridden consistently for a year before trying to chase numbers.

 

There is no substitute to 'the basics'.

 

I would pack it in, ride consistently for a year, get strong, enjoy the process and THEN get a couch to tweak your base for better performance if you are so inclined.

 

But, what do I know.... John will have some more scientific answers.

 

 

Hi Jewbacca very wise words indeed , from you and the conversation i had with John. As i pointed out i which it was just that easy to go and ride outside. I stay on a farm in the Easern Cape. Citrus area with a lot of casual workers roaming this area during picking season. The roades are even a bigger nightmare due to all the Trucks, tractors, busses etc on the roads. Getting out on my own is really difficult, so i try and be "more productive" on the IDT....hopefully my mojo will come back to work around the issues....thanks for you reply!!

[Help.Me.]

I was in the same boat as you. I been on TR for 2 years now and initially i had some good improvements on FTP, but then they seem to plateau at a point and i struggled to improve let alone hold them on FTP tests. so over the months and lots of research i started using a Performance Management chart - first an excel one then Stravistix and now i use Intervals.icu.

 

One thing was evident from the PMC was that i was over training as i was only focused on the fitness line. Then reading up about how to actually read and use a PMC it was clear that my form was way too low. An online coach blog that i read says if your form is lower than -30 you are wasting your time and need rest. If your form goes lower than -30 on a ride then you need to rest until it falls into the Optimal region of -10 to -30.

 

Onto TR - If you read their forum and follow the FB posts there were a lot of guys complaining that they couldn't finish sessions, especially in build and specialty phase and the failures were almost all in the last 2 intervals of the session. Here once again a lot of reading the forum it was clear these guys had not followed the training plan for what it was designed. Many had started on build phase, because they already cyclists and felt they had enough base training ( I was one of them) So it was back to the drawing board.

 

6 weeks back i started the traditional base which is made up of 3 X 4 Week blocks. The first block is like watching paint dry, reviewing my PMC my fitness was actually dropping with my form sitting in the neutral zone (This was mid level @ 4 sessions per week some being 2hrs long). Many cyclists would say mmmmmm thats not working and up the intensity. 

 

But base training is not about FTP and huge improvement in fitness, its about Aerobic Endurance (Your fitness foundation) which is measured by de-coupling. If you have bad Aerobic Endurance you will struggle to maintain harder efforts. A house built on a crappy foundation will eventually collapse

 

I first measured my decoupling a few times with a very fancy spreadsheet downloaded from an online coach which was measuring me at between 20 - 25% after a few different tests. This same coach indicates that he doesn't allow his athletes to go into build phase until they deliver a consistent de-couipling result of below 5%. So de-coupling result is affected by a number of things like hydration, room temp, fatigue etc etc, this is why you need to do a number of tests to see where your de-coupling is measuring.

 

Since i started using Intervals.icu which measures de-coupling on all sessions over 2 hrs i have noted my results at being between 2.5% - 8% and i'm now entering my 7th week of traditional base 2. My fitness has dropped by about 5% and my form is still sitting in the neutral zone, but i don't care because that's not what i'm training. In addition the sessions keep you in your fat burning zone so the benefit is i've lost 7kg on 6 weeks which in itself has improved my w/kg without improving FTP. I hate these sessions as they are boring and some are 2hrs30 on an IDT, but i try to remain focused and just slog them out. My wife thinks i have a skelm in my paincave.

 

I've also looked at online coaches, and i'm not convinced for the money they charge they can make any significant impact on my performance over my self research and using apps like TR. In fact i suspect that many of them use the same tools i do which are freely available on the net and then charge you.

 

My advice to you

 

Make sure your trainer is set up properly in settings for TR (A few guys not being able to complete sessions had their trainer settings incorrect)

 

Do a new FTP test twice in 1 week and take the average as your FTP. (I use the step test & 2 X 8 min test, both deliver the same result)

 

Select the traditional base 1,2 & 3 whichever volume suits you and add them to your calendar. Once they added to your calendar you can go in and use the drag and drop feature to change sessions around to suit your week or month.

 

Resign yourself to the fact you in for 12 weeks (well at least the 1st 6 weeks) for some very long and boring sessions on the IDT, and complete the base training.

 

From there the build phases will start delivering good fitness and FTP results.

This is huge.....thanks for your reply i will read it again and again till i understand everything. I think one of the many problems i have is not to understand the charts and data fully....its a total new world to me. Thanks for your input much apreciated

[davidtinker]

@HelpMe Unfortunately you are correct and Intervals.icu only syncs with Strava. I need to be very careful about that as apparently Strava take a dim view of apps that sync data from Strava and other sources.

 

I have been adding a lot of stuff to help guys like you looking for training help. You can now create group chats and share activities in chats. I want people to be able to use Intervals.icu to help each other out with training. There is some risk that cyclists on the keener end would rather not make their riding buddies faster! Maybe coaches will like it?

 

Soon the /athletes page will show the fitness and recent activities of all the athletes you follow all in one place.

[Help.Me.]

Here's my PMC since starting TR Traditional Base - there are a few out rides so they indicate my form going into the green, but after that everything is in the grey zone (Bottom line)

 

Fitness slowly declining (Blue line)

 

Fatigue also declining (Top Line)

 

All expected

 

Capture1.JPG

 

Here are my last De-coupling results - I cannot find the original but the lowest i got before starting base was 15.6 %

 

CaptureAE.JPG

 

CaptureAE1.JPG

 

CaptureAE2.JPG

 

CaptureAE3.JPG

Thanks for sharing your personal info with me and all on hubland...you can expect a call from me in the future....( i hope you will answer your phone!!! LOL)

[Help.Me.]

Will add my comment, read up on the 80/20 rule as it sounds like you are doing more high intensity than low intensity, whereas it should be 80% low/endurance intensity.

 

As others have mentioned, unless you are fat adapted or on a LCHF diet then you will also need to re-look at your nutrition on your long rides as well as pre-ride and post ride recovery.

 

As swiss has also mentione, cycling is not a high impact sport like running, whilst the muscles might be stiff and tight after a long/hard ride, there should not be any soreness unless saddle sore and that only gets easier with time in the saddle and chamois cream if needed.

Thanks Shaper... i will defnitely look into my nutrion. I am on "Banting lite" .... not fat adapted , trying to cut out carbs, sugar, and processed foods baby steps at this stage, but i will get there !!

[Red Bird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGMvtOan1ZM

 

About recovery diet...

[Help.Me.]

Are you in Jhb?

I'll lend you a singlespeed and you can come and ride with us for a few sessions.

You'll be able to teach your regular cycling partner a few lessons after a couple of rides with us.

Ps, we can also teach you a few things about nutrition. Our best post-ride tip is Heineken

Haha fortunatly not !!! I will settle for a Windhoek though. I think i will need a lot of your single speed sessions to teach my partner a few lessons.... he is 10 years older than me and as tough as nails. His son is a well known athlete, his daugther did very well in the comrades this year....so he is a beast on the bike ( say no more!!)