Same here with regards to gym work 
I only really started thinking about after watching the Nino Schurter documentary and realising that he does a lot of strength and fitness in the gym and running.
I just wonder that it might skew your analysis, if a big portion of training was done off the bike, and off strava. But to be honest I don’t really believe that to be the case for pure road riders.
“Skew” in what direction/context?
I imagine his buddies might have been faster than your buddies 
I’d assume more towards the aerobic side. For example, if someone does high-power intervals indoors, and then only does aerobic rides outdoors. The indoor work might not be captured. To be honest, I think the data you have doesn’t make that likely, since most pros seem to do some sort of intervals during their outdoor rides.
those approaches @sryke notes start to sound a bit like Lydiard, whose Base period (four months) would look about like this from start to finish:
Marathon Training (Base training)- four months for both middle and long distance runners
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 miles over hills and along roads or cross country at 1/2 effort | 15 miles at 1/4 effort over hills and roads | 12 miles fartlek (speed-play) | 18 miles, 1/4 effort | 10 miles, 3/4 effort on road | 20 miles 1/4 effort | 15 miles 1/4 effort |
Those “1/4” effort runs were not just slow jogging – for a runner with a 5:00/mile pace as their best for a 6 mile/10k, those runs were to be at a 5:20 pace.
Translated to cycling, that would be about 300mi/week, most of on the zone 2/3 borderline, with a sub-threshold day, and a day to occasionally hit some short efforts in zone 5/6 (no more than a minute) just to keep those pathways open.
Of course, then he went on to the threshold/hill phase, and then to a zone 5/6 speedwork build to peak the athlete.
And no rest days for Lydiard – if the athlete needed one, they had done too much/gone too hard.
If it helps I had a similar experience with SSBHV last year. Got bored with so much repetition so started swapping some of the rides with group rides. Problem being that those group rides included a good chunk of time spent above SS, so it was too much to handle. Was just about ok when rest of my life was under control and I could absolutely nail the sleep and nutrition. But one late night or work trip would tip me into over training.
Eventually realised that although my hours and TSS aligned with the HV plan, a better approach for me was to do the MV plan (which has more variety and a bit higher intensity) and then supplement with z2 riding (mostly outdoors with friends) to get my hours up to or actually often quite a bit higher than the HV plan. Has worked well, I’m enjoying my cycling a lot more from having more variety and more group riding. I rarely do indoor sessions more than 2 days in a row, and I rarely do SS more than twice a week. And fitness is good. This time last year I was starting to dread the indoor sessions as yet another 2 hour SS workout loomed on the horizon.
Re: Lydiard, I think it is quite a bit too simplistic to translate his 1/4, 2/4, etc like this. For a trained runner his race speeds/zones from 10k or even 5k to marathon are very very close. What might be athlete’s marathon pace when fresh, will be his half marathon pace when in the middle of training. 5:20 pace for a 30min 6 mile runner will be around his marathon pace. Doing 18 miles at marathon pace one day and 20 miles another is not possible. Translate to cycling that would be closer to doing 3+ hours at around 85-95% of FTP one day and 4+ hours another day.
You literally described how a recalibrate my training last night. I started base back in late october and similarly HV was working just fine but because I travel for work, sometimes 10d a month, the moving around of the calendar was becoming very complicated and one bad sleep cycle on a trip…blammo! Fatigued coming out of the first 2hr SS session. Just retooled plan builder using exactly what you talk about here. Planning on some long sessions intermingled here and there too and some gym work weekly now. HV just wasn’t really allowing that to happen.
Thanks.
Agreed. The description robert gave of the paces struck me as a fair bit too fast as well. But I would say Lydiard 1/4 is a quicker pace than polarized bread and butter mid z1 nonetheless. Hence the translation to cycling terms he gave (z2/z3 boundary) is quite spot on. Most importantly though, robert’s overall point of there perhaps being an affinity with sryke’s data drops and Lydiard methods is IMHO an interesting observation.
You realize there’s more in common with those coaches approaches and what Seiler promotes than differences? While ultra endurance athletes have different race paces than ones doing 10-45 minute events like the rowers and xc skiers who are truly polarized in their training there’s still a few basics which all of those coaches follow:
Most of their training is easy aerobic work (which your data also agrees with)
Extending time at intensity more important than pace/power of intensity
2a. Do not empty the tank on your hard sessions
Rinse, repeat (consistency, consistency, consistency is key)
There is no dogma, only trends.
@professore Filliol, Lorang and Tveiten are all up on the top of their game in OLY distance triathlon and Long distance, with Lorang also being the main decision maker for a very successful cycling team. All three coach world Champs, as Filliol coaches the WTS point champ, Tveiten coaches the WTS, world champ (single race) and 70.3 world champ, while Lorang coached both Ironman world champs in this season.
Sryke… why don’t you post up Blum, Iden and Stornes cycling TID? Considering they’re at a training camp this should be some good stuff (but if you look at their power curve for most rides, by the time you get to 5 min, they’re already only at about 70% of FTP. Those guys are more transparent than most too, they’ve got everything up there for all to see. IF for most of Blum’s rides are around .6 to .65
Also not included in that mileage is warm up/cool down, as it was often discussed to be adding in several miles each day of that bring the overall mileage over 100.
I’m not sure the 1/4 description you’re using is quite right, it was just supposed to be steady, if your pace fell off in the 2nd half, you went too fast. You were supposed to finish feeling like you did some work but not overly tired.
I’m working off of Snell’s and Livingstone’s remarks that “1/4” effort was close to AeT – just below or just over.
yeah, hovering around AeT, the paces you posted were closer to AnT. That 30 minute 10k runner would be closer to 6-6:30 for their steady run. With running paces too it’s hard to really draw it up since there isnt’ a linear relationship between O2 demand and pace. Similar to cycling pace, but not quite as drastic as the paces start to get above 20 mph. O2 and Watts are a much better correlation and running power meters are still quite new.
Also I’m a relatively lightly trained athlete compared to the elites and my AeT is right at 75% of MLSS. I guess it depends though if we consider AeT, the last lactate point that is similar to baseline, or the point that is 1 mmol above baseline as I’ve seen both used. I’m at 2mmol at 80% of MLSS power.
Arild Tveiten has his guys training at <= 1 mmol, so his easy days are REALLY easy. For me, that would be 160-180 watts and a HR around 100-105. Think pettit, lots and lots of pettit, but without the block at 70% of FTP, all around 60-65%
Lydiard’s pacing guides were what his Olympic-level runners were doing – and their AeT/MLSS must have been ridiculously high to pull those paces off, day in and day out.
One point that Seiler raises is that once volume starts to get high (and for cyclists I’d say that starts at 15hr/week) athletes have to back off to right around AeT for most of their training, or else they start to fry themselves or get hurt.
Google translate will help:
will be interesting to follow the three training camps on Strava
Ramon Sinkeldam 
Average of more than six hours a day - for seven days!
G-FDJ is actually an interesting team because you can relate their Strava nicely to F Grappe’s book. For example he is a big fan of progressions (from the sample pro plans in the book):
and you see this in various forms with his riders, Sinkeldam last week below. You don’t see progressions so often in other teams. By the way, I really love his “END critique”
or more subtle with S Reichenbach. What is also evident here - mentioned in the book or in the article about Pinot in an earlier post in this thread - Grappe is a friend of “rhythm changes”. “Playing with the mountain”. Well, the French, there is always something artistique.
However, I don’t know if one can see these patterns in these static images, I can zoom in in my version.
Looks like it was cut from Daniels running book. You would do a couple of weeks focusing on one aspect and the last block before the race was joining those pieces together. For example, in half marathon preparation, one of the last sessions would look like: 45 min easy, 30 min marathon pace, 15 min half marathon pace without interruption.
