So indoor season is done and it’s nice outside and I’m putting in the hours and miles.
Annnnd… I’m in mid volume. Just finished a builder phase (got +9 ftp yeah) and the plan builder put me back to doing a SSBI clock before my next specialty block.
So here I am doing the workouts outside. They finish, then I just keep going. Plan is for around 350 or so tss per week but I’m up in the 750 range even during rest weeks. Example last week was a two hour workout but I rode 81 miles and racked up an additional 363 tss on Saturday.
I don’t know what the point of all this is lol. Anyone else feel like they have a bit more miles in them than the plan calls for?
Per previous posts on volume, it’s been recommended to choose a lower volume then add in rides as you want. I chose medium instead of high because the number of rides on the medium plan actually fits my schedule well (5x/week). It’s just when I do ride I have more time than the allocated 1-1:30 workout duration usually.
Definitely. Couple weeks ago finished SSBHV1 with lot of SS workouts outside. Adhered to plan but each workout got additional ~1h Z2 ride back home. During week 3 got 751TSS/15h instead of planned 639TSS/11.5h and went even crasier from there.
Now, during SSBHV2 anticipated this and heavily modified plan: kept harder Tue/Sat SS and easy Fri, substituted Wed/Thu/Sun with 4/2/5h Z2 (Longfellow/Gibbs/Mianzimu). Week 5 will be 842TSS/16.5h this way.
According to Intervals.icu this plan is nicely in optimal training zone:
EDIT: forgot to summarize the point: try to plan your additional rides to get some progression (duration, intensity and/or interval lengths). Otherwise, if you go all out in middle of block and are forced to cut back later weeks you hinder your fitness development.
That’s a lot of extra TSS. How much of an increase is that over the prior block and your training career? If you don’t have experience adding that much a 400 TSS increase is a lot for the body to handle. Extending workouts is a great way to get some extra miles in (I do this a lot), but more than doubling the planned TSS could be risky if done regularly.
My solution personally, because I also have more miles in me right now (both indoor and out), is I intentionally reserve outdoor riding for very easy rides with the kids (think Dans and Taku, maybe a Lazy Mountain if they are in the bike trailer) because this 1) keeps the effort in check big time, and 2) severely limits how carried away I can get with distance/time. That being said, I definitely get the riding endlessly especially with the weather getting so nice now. Just important to make sure we aren’t hindering our future performance later on when things return to normal by biting off too much while we have so much extra time.
Not all TSS is created equal. Frequently after finishing workouts (SS, threshold, VO2 max), adding Z2 cruising can be done without much deleterious effects if properly fueled. Trying to add this without continuing normal fueling can pile up over 4-6 weeks and really drain you. Maintaining a strict power ceiling during those extra periods is essential - definitely not the time to go rip around and get KOMs. If you spent those extra miles sprinting out of the saddle and pushing into threshold/VO2 max territory, you’re definitely going to feel it down the road, maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but in a month it will still be with you.
The coaches have brought this up numerous times, that adding Z2 cruising at the end of workouts is time well-spent, but it takes discipline to keep it from getting out of hand.
The tss from outside rides can be great, but sometimes the zones your working can be less then ideal. Be weary of the large outside tss that lacks structure, it might not really be making you faster.
yep you wouldn’t get 363 TSS in a 4 hour ride even if you did a 100 mile tt at 25mph - either your FTP is set to low or there is something wrong with the calculation!
Last Saturday, I had a TSS of 330 in a 4 hour ride. This was mainly due to several 1 minute uphill sprints (at 2xFTP). Ik had to recover 2 days from this ride.
It is possible but often such a TSS on a 4 hour ride is because the FTP is set to low…
High TSS can happen when you have a hilly route and have hard intervals up and no pedaling down. TSS algorithm uses NP which does not count 0’s. So you have a hilly route and not counting your coasting you get a high TSS.
Oh yeah! The past 2-3 months I’ve religiously kept my ‘Form/TSB’ between -10 and -30. Last week was my first full outside riding week, basically doubling my trainer time, and now I’m heading south of -50! It’s worth the fun.
I still don’t buy it TBH - 100 TSS is a flat out 1 hour tt so you would have to be almost at threshold for 4 hours to get 90+TSS an hour - a few uphill sprints wouldn’t cut it you would have to be at threshold the entire time almost - even in a 50 mile tt (which I’m not to bad at I’m down in the high SS range) 363 TSS is almost 4 back to back flat out 1 hour tt’s. Maybe feasible for someone like Marcin Bialoblocki who was an ex world tour pro who took up long distance tt in the UK and rode a 3:13 100mile tt last summer - that’s 31 miles/hour for a 100!!) - but not most of us mere mortals
It depends on what kind of rider you are. My one minute power approaches 700 Watts, while my FTP is 300 Watt.
Last saturday a 2 hour portion of a ride, my average power was 218 Watt (= endurance zone) but my NP was 286 (due to these uphill sprints) resulting in a TSS of 190. I am not capable of riding 2 hours @ 286 watts. Look up NP busters
Wasn’t me that gave the 4 hour benchmark in this thread :). My ride took about 5. I had to stop in the middle because I was helping someone and then later I had to stop when I got a flat tire. so IF came to .86. My speed was a lot less than 20mph on the way back. You can see the elevation profile it was downhill there and uphill back and on the way back I had a pretty bad headwind too.
As for the other comments about FTP being too low? This was the last ride on my builder block and my FTP was set by a ramp test earlier on the indoor trainer (226). The next week, I did an outside FTP test since I’m riding outside now and I did the 2x8 minute test and got (237). I’ve always felt my outdoor FTP was higher than indoor but the change there actually seems to correspond pretty close to how I feel when I’ve been doing the workouts. Hard to say though since I had to change testing methods. Will have to wait for more data as the summer progresses.
As for the other comments about TSS maybe being too high. The 700-800 range is actually about what I was doing at the end of the summer last year before I came inside and started doing TR indoors. When I started indoors my TSS went way down and mostly I’ve stuck to the plan on the trainer unless I added a bit of Zwift extra miles sometimes. The thing is, when I ride indoors, the TSS seems about right. When I ride outdoors it seems like I’m just having fun and have a lot more miles to go. I think this is the reason I posted. The discrepancy between indoor and outdoor TSS is telling me something on a subconscious level and I haven’t narrowed it down yet.
Your profile is marked private so I can’t see your ride. But I said that his FTP was most likely low because he said that the ride was an outdoor TR workout with an extra couple of hours of riding, so I assumed that the extra time was more aerobic and steady in nature. I don’t usually do several all out 1 minute efforts when I add extra time to my outdoor workouts haha. Obviously it is possible but my response was in the context of my assumptions from his post.
Fair enough as a TT rider I’m only interested in sustained power tss - I think it is a minefield anyway. I weigh 60.5kg and have a MAP ramp test FTP of 300W as well and can use this for TR workouts without to many issues. However, in the only TT I did this year in March I could only hold 272W for the 54mins of the race so my ramp test looks like it over estimates my FTP. That said if I scaled my FTP to 272W then SS would be down in the 240-250W zone and endurance well below 200W which really would be noodling along and not give any benefit (my HR never gets above 130bpm until I clear 240W against a max of 179bpm) so I think all these calculators are difficult to quantify.
Yep - although I don’t use it all the time I tend to use the MAF (Phil Maffetone) protocol for zone 2 of 180 - age +5 as I am an experienced athlete - so that is 180 - 51 +5 = <134bpm - although I usually try and stay in the 115 -130bpm for zone 2 rides of which I am doing a lot at present due to the lack of racing
The past 2-3 months I’ve religiously kept my ‘Form/TSB’ between -10 and -30. Last week was my first full outside riding week, basically doubling my trainer time, and now I’m heading south of -50! It’s worth the fun.
