This is a timely thread for me, as I too have a vaguely similar conundrum. Not quite getting popped after 2 or 3 hours but more like after 10 or 15 mins…
Done a few gravel races this year and each time they go off mental from the gun, I’m probably needing 5-10 mins close to VO2 and at least above threshold. But then I lose the group, legs feel shocking and I’m not even able to ride at much above zone 2 for the remaining 3 or 4 hours of “racing”. Some of those people I have raced road with and know I can compete with them with much more “staccato”/random efforts (still high intensity) and also on big days in the Alps with multiple sustained sweet spot efforts.
But make me do a single VO2 effort straight up and i’m a broken man.
I’ve probably been at 10-12 hours a week generally this season. Will even more volume help my need to do VO2 then recover with sustained sweet spot, or is this a sort of hard start ability I could train with the more targeted sessions (always seemed to me as though sessions with multiple levels of intensity sort of went away from keeping training sessions to a single focus)???
Here is an old article discussing something similar. Dean Downing on coaching Ben Tulett on route to becaming junior world cyclo-cross champion
“But as we developed his training I felt I needed to know more about the specific demands of cyclo-cross. I’ve never raced in cyclo-cross, so I asked Ben to race with a heart rate monitor, he has a power meter on his road bike but not his ‘cross bikes. Then when I had data from a few races I asked him how the races felt in relation to a World Cup ‘cross race. We talked a lot about how he felt in races, and if he went too hard and blew.
“From the heart rate spikes and other information I saw that going flat-out from a standing start for half a lap, which is about five minutes, is crucial. Flat-out sprint power, and going really hard for one minute are crucial elements in cyclo-cross too."
“With that information I put some turbo sessions together that simulate a cyclo-cross race. Two or three sessions that were all about ‘cross racing, Ben Tulett specials we called them. Ben Swift helped by giving me some sessions he does. They are basically about building capacity and explosive power. These are the two we found were most effective.”
it seems only fair that I leave the details of the workouts at the other side of a click to the original content
That’s exactly the kind of session I probably need to be looking at. I just almost doubt these race specific sessions when they mix different power zones - seems it’s as much to train tolerance (whether the mind or physically) to sustained race situations than to achieve any improvement in a single energy system or power zone.
My guess is that vo2 effort probably includes a huge anaerobic component if you are essentially dead afterwards. A pure vo2 effort should be fairly repeatable, so my guess is you are attempting to do more than you are truly capable of. What’s your w/kg for 1’ and 5’?
Yep, that’s how most gravel races start. Even if they are 100+ mile races. I have a diesel physiology, so the start of races are where I’m most likely to get dropped from the lead group. That said, I put in the work to give myself a fighting chance. Lots of v02max intervals and I’ll work them into the middle of long rides. I also find over/unders are effective because there is no rest, you basically have to learn how to recover at threshold. There are certainly physical adaptations, but it’s also the mental side. It’s not uncommon for me to have 30+ minutes of time over v02max in the first ~90 minutes of a gravel race. And NP for the first hour can be at or near FTP. It can be very uncomfortable and there is a high risk of blowing up if you don’t have the fitness. My personal experience is that volume is required to build the required durability, but maybe others can get there different ways. For someone with a more anaerobic physiology, the race start may be easier and then they might struggle as the race transitions to a steadier race of attrition.
Most races settle down within an hour or so and then the surges become much less sharp as people get tired and groups get sorted. But you still want to burn the matches early to be in the fastest group possible in most cases. It’s an expensive/risky “ticket”, but it’s usually the fastest way around a gravel course. It’s pretty rare that a smoother paced group will catch from behind (in my experience) since most of the strongest riders are in the lead group.
More volume is not going to help near as much as specific targeted in these zones. I don’t know where this rule came from, but I have no concerns with a session with a couple different focuses. Certainly hard starts seem very applicable here. Said a different way - if you were only doing to do 2 hard workouts a week, and you implemented a rule that those hard sessions could only focus on 1 intensity level, well, you better choose your workouts carefully!
If you have access to their strava files, you need to look at what it takes for them to stay in the front group. Consider their weight and power curve. If you can suss out their FTP and determine what zones they were in and how long they held various power targets like 1 min, 5 min, 20 min, 1 hour and 4 hour power then you can compare your own numbers at a relative w/kg and you can at least identify the gap you need to close.
So my 5min power is around 5w/kg if I was to do a session 5 x 5mins with perhaps same time of easy recovery in between. From past sessions, i probably achieve more than 5w/kg for 2 or 3 of the 5 intervals and it tails off down to about 5w/kg.
1min power in the region of 7.4w for a number of 1min efforts but again that would be with decent recovery in between. 1 min on/1 min off for say a set of 10 would be more around the 5.7w/kg mark.
Could be wrong, just always got the impression it was almost frowned upon…but maybe I’m thinking more of unstructured sessions rather than those with specific purpose
Yep, that’s confirming everything I’ve found . Always feels like you just have to make the front group at any cost and then, well, too bad if you don’t have anything left in the budget
The problem with splitting your focus in a session is that whatever you do first is going to water down whatever you do after. And watered down work isn’t going to give you adaptations. The exception for me might be starting with VO2 and finishing with long endurance. But if you do a hard VO2 workout, then you shouldn’t be able to do a hard threshold workout right after that. I don’t think the example of hard starts is relevant because that’s not two different zones. The “hard” part is not the focus of the work. It’s meant to make the rest of the interval more focused. And the reality is you cannot work on all zones at the same time. If you subscribe to two hard workouts a week, there will be weeks where you don’t do sweetspot or you don’t do threshold or you don’t do VO2.
I would take exception to this bolded statement. It is a very black and white statement in a gray world. I certainly don’t advocate mixed sessions all the time, but they have their place.
Right, so maybe you should put together a workout to simulate this. For XC racing, to simulate starts I often do a workout that is 1 min all out directly into 10 minutes of threshold. I usually do 3-4 repeats. I would look at your race files and put together a workout that best emulates what you are trying to do.
That may be true, but training allows you to target those specific areas individually and get more of a benefit because of the specificity. When you are training to play basketball and you want to improve your shooting, you practice taking a lot of shots. You don’t just play more games of basketball. Yes, playing games of basketball will help, but it will take longer and you probably won’t get as good. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t ever do this. But this might be something for the specialty phase or some small period of time in your plan, but not the basis for the plan itself.
May as well give it a try anytime soon, even if only to know what you are letting yourself in for
Swapping out whatever “hard” workout you have planned sometime for one of these (that will surely also be hard) for one session isn’t going to alter the longer term trajectory of your training plan.
In my experience volume has been the ONLY thing that prevented me from getting dropped early in gravel races. I focused solely on raising my CTL from mid 70s to 120s and I was literally a different racer now hanging with the lead group. This is with doing no specific V02 build/blocks. All my gravel races are efforts at z2 or anaerobic with very little in between.
