Confused, not annoyed by your comments. First off, I’ve seen local riders do long slow distance (LSD) work (12-20 hours training/week) and it delivered big results. Not trying to argue against LSD or MAF. Due to family/work obligations I’m a time crunched cyclist (typically 5-8 hour/week). Back to your comment - I’ve never been able to do sweet spot work at that low of a HR, and yet I’ve been able to hold my ftp for an hour. When my limit was 15 minutes, I did a progression of longer and longer intervals until I was able to do an hour of power. When I was getting dropped after 1 minute over threshold (vo2max), I went out and did a progression of longer and longer vo2 intervals until I could hang for 5-7 minutes. Sweet spot work has delivered a lot of the benefits of LSD/MAF, so I’m a responder to that type of training.
You are correct. I have heard Phil say if you are not seeing improvement at your MAF pace then you need to look at your diet and life stresses. Going by memory I’ve also heard him say once you feel you are no longer seeing improvement you can then add intensity, but once you peak from intensity you go back to training at MAF.
Someone feel free to correct me. My memory is not one of my strengths
And you don’t physicallys-burn-out and get hurt assuming your aren’t the type that fatigues from long hours in the saddle as that can be another kind of mental-burnout
IBbarrea if I recall from other posts (correct if my memory is bad) you also have a pretty high max heart rate correct? If so that might play into what you describe. With the athletes I’ve worked with; the ones that have a high sustainable HR can do things like the 40k-TT training plan (one of the best on TR if you ask me) and can then go out an crush a 1 hour lap race. The leaning on the HR high end lets them endoure; and you can train it up like you are describing.
The long slow stuff gets a lot of it’s gain from combating cardiac drift. My data set for MAF was about 25 riders who gave it a go and gave me access to all there data in TP for WKO4 analysis. About 50/50 rec riders and racers. We did the long slow and only long slow and got really good results. We’d see the watts scatter charts drift up very steadily, but we’d see in weeks 4-9 a big rotation in the cardiac drift line to almost horizontal; resulting in that go all day feeling. Most riders were over 50 a few in the 32-45 range. Since that 2 year experiment most have continued to do base in MAF, and then they do their thing Some race and some just are out to ride for pleasure.
Of that group 4 are working forward with me and have gone to 2-3 weeks MAF 1 week intense. By keeping those isolated from each other we appear to be getting the MAF effect + the JoeFriel fast after 50 effect. MAF is slow by HR standards and Intense is soul crushing hard stuff. I’m still playing around with ideas on the type of threhold work to mix. (Think of this as Build Phase) Trying to get this to work well for the 50+ crowd. With this new stuff and try some polarization I make no bold claims about it. It’s a work in progress and I don’t have enough riders yet; and the ones I have are hyper competitive hyper private about their individual data. I am happy have other join in or share their own experience if they want to try it so we can see what we can learn.
As a side note I was also major time crunched for year; I own my own tech company and a 60 hour week is short and we have 5 kids. One benefit of MAF is I find I can do those workouts late at night 9p-11pm or 10pm - 1am and they are so slow they don’t crush me physically and I can fall right asleep when done. So that might be something for some people to try; That’s about the only time I watch TV and get solitude.
Side note 2 I was not one of the 4 at first. Due to work and a shoulder injury I spent 18 months off the bike and got ummmm supersized. I’m now happily the fifth rider this spring. After doing two 3-week MAF blocks and 1 pseudo intense block I moved my FTP from 145, to 163, to 193. Since I ride a recumbent due to neck issues where my historical max is about 225-250 (have to go look to be sure) in the laid down position. I was pretty please with the rapid ramp back up because I was a hot mess day 1 back on the bike.
Not sure if that helps
That’s been said by him I don’t know if he still stands by it; I don’t recall seeing it in writing but it was on the PBlueprint podcast interview. That’s was the basis for my thought to make it a basis for a polarized build phase for older riders.
no, very much an ‘average Joe’ late 50s slow-twitch guy with unimpressive HR/VO2max numbers. This is my 4th season road cycling.
To paraphrase Nate “there a lot of different ways to get fast.” Most sweet spot plans don’t progress beyond doing 20-minute intervals, if they did my guess is you would see more time-crunched cyclists with longer TTE. I think you underestimate the power of doing a block or two of training to progress TTE (or VO2 for that matter).
While sweet spot delivers a lot of aerobic fitness in my experience, if you have 12+ hours/week doing LSD is the real deal.
I think both TTE and VO2 max can be gotten to that way, but suspect only the second is really required or possibly the only way to get to the results. I’ve seen TTE acquired more successfully without the “beating up of the athlete” from the LSD. But it seems we are agreeing mostly. Multiple ways to get to the goal some not so obvious. That TTE stuff has a lot to do about ignoring or tuning out perceived exertion.
I’m planning on doing a MAF based plan starting 9/19. I have a Grand Fondo later that month, and will probably be continuing group rides until the weather shuts us down in northern Washington. I will post my results for any one to see and comment on.
Just be aware that some people starting MAF for the first time see an initial decrease in performance which could affect your Grand Fondo.
Cheers!
I’m still messing around with MAF rides, both indoor and outdoor, getting a feel for HR control, diet etc., but I’m probably going to “officially” start on June 1.
Funny, I had thoughts about documenting my hi-octane TR plan journey and how boring that would be for the audience…my MAF journey is going to be 10x more dull! 
I do have an extra layer of heart related health concerns which is leading me to pursue MAF in the first place, so it’ll be interesting to see how both health and performance are effected (as I’m not racing, any initial decline in performance doesn’t matter).
See you in the slow lane! 
We don’t follow because the plan is interesting… we follow because YOU are interesting!!! 
I will happily follow your MAF journey and hope to learn what I can from it (just like your VO2 and SS periods). As in some cases, it is more about the presenter and what they bring along with the content that makes for good reading 
I’m not worried about a performance drop. The Grand Fondo is the Coeur d’Fondo around Lake Coeur d’Alene in Northern Idaho. I did the long version last year 130 miles in just over 9 hrs. This year I’m doing 88 mile option. Last year I ended up with knee tendonopathy that kept me off the bike for 2 months. My plan is to finish in one piece and have fun
I’m with you on the MAF’ing this summer. I fractured the fermoral neck on my right hip (4 screws) on April 10 and recently got back on the trainer. Since I will be staying indoors on the trainer/rollers for a while I decided it might be best to limit myself to MAF level intensity while everything continues to heal. I will not document my progression / regression, but at some point I might pipe in with a comment. I followed a MAF-ish Concept2 erg plan last winter and was happy with the results, which is documented somewhere in the bowels of this forum.
Bring it, we love dull!!
If you’ve got the time/money, what would be really interesting is:
- before and after power at your estimated LT1 heart rate (or whatever HR you are using)
- before and after % calories from fat/carbs at LT1 and some safe but higher wattages (not sure how high you are allowed to go)
I’m becoming quite concerned about some of your life choices. 
I’ll def be tracking 
vs 
progression.
As far as fat/carb burning, I doubt I’ll get that involved (maybe?) but I will be restructuring my diet to HFLC for both health and “performance” reasons – I won’t be entering the high carb burning zone any time soon, so it’ll be a high % of fat cals (Z2).
As an aside, I rode a little hill (400m @3%) segment on this morning’s commute…I currently hold 3rd place (32s)…MAF ride got me into 493rd place (1:36m). 
I’m REALLY going to cherish those KOMs now!
I’d like to think of your MAF/LSD journey as the story of how a proud anaerobically gifted Canadian cyclist, sidelined by his doctor, found salvation climbing out of the bottom 10% of Strava leaderboards thru dogged determination and hammering out long hours in MAF HR zone.
“Rising Above the Ashes of Strava Leaderboards” coming soon to Lifetime TV
Sponsored by:
You need to stop hanging out with @mcneese.chad 
I’ve already told you how a local cat2 doing lsd base training went from 15mph to nearly 20mph over the course of a year. He’s now posting 90+ mile flat rides in a little over 5 hours. All those slow riding 15+ hour weeks have made his slow look like my fast It’s the real deal if you can put in the hours!
p.s. could write my own Lifetime TV show after this past year of fitness challenges… You are not alone, stay well my brother!
So I finished all of the intense workouts in SSBII LV, and am still stuck out of town working, so I decided to try a MAF style workout on the trainer. A couple of notes: I’m borrowing a Tacx Neo, and power matching with Assioma Pedals. Using a Samsung Galaxy 6 phone for control. I had downloaded the Tacx training app, and it is possible to control the trainer by setting your heart rate. I messed with it a bit, but due to the way the trainer responds, you have to ramp up very slowly to avoid pushing big watts because your heart hasn’t responded yet. I gave up and did the following workout:
I tried to keep HR between 105 and 115. (64 years old). I kept having to turn the power down later in the workout. A couple of pulse surges up towards 120 are blamed on watching the Indy 500. Stood up a couple of times and got off in the first hr to use the loo. Actually fairly tolerable, the biggest challenge going forward is going to be mental.
While I am not discounting MAF training, I totally disagree (different than being annoyed 
) w/the above statement. 180-age is too arbitrary to apply to all people, even with (±5). While I test higher, I held 296W for 1hr at end of last year and have no doubt I could do so now. So let’s use 296W as “FTP”. If we use TR sweetspot definition of 88%-95%, that is a range of ~260-281W.
I’m 47yrs old. 180-47=133bpm. Add 5bpm yielding 138. There is no way in hell I can ride at 260W at 138bpm. At a bare minimum, I will avg ~160 bpm for 20min at 260W. My HR during Pettit or even Taku after a day off will still get well into the 130s.