I see your low elevation numbers and I raise (lower) you even fewer ft!
The first chaingang of the year. Only 3 of us turned up, and we waited ages for the 3rd man too! Once people see it on Strava there should be more joining in the coming weeks.
Once we got to the start point we pacelined - about a minute each on the front. It’s the first time in a while for me going over threshold lots of times, so I was fairly conservative. Even though my NP for the loop was only 90% it definitely felt much harder than that. The thing I was most pleased about was when we were rolling back afterwards I was challenged to a sign sprint and managed to hit (just) over 1000w which is good for me, especially in a fatigued state.
I was almost flattened by a delivery van about 300m from my house, who decided to turn right (UK) across my lane as I was heading the other way around 25mph. He aborted halfway over the line, at which point I’d swerved to go round the back of him, and then back in front once he’d slammed the brakes on. Surprised I stayed upright, and glad I was in the drops!
Out for a quickie at lunch today. Yesterday’s lack of productivity was soul-crushing so today, between MS Teams meetings, I left the house under a sunny sky. It was warm in the sun, up to 23ºC, and cool, maybe 12, in the shade, so bib shorts and long sleeve top had me feeling slightly naked. I will admit that part of the motivation to get out today was an email from Strava last night (also, the TR workout for yesterday was a Ramp Test, which I didn’t do because my rollers are still MIA as I wait for the mfg replacement to arrive). It appears they’ve finally enabled local legends here. There were a few LL segments, but nothing near me and all seemingly pointless (at least based on where I ride). Alas, Strava told me I lost my LL status on a segment.
It does appear that I am due for the Ramp Test as today’s ride was IF 1.0 with NP of my FTP. I’m confident the issue of outdoor vs indoor power is a factor, but…
I dropped a chunk of time off one segment – quarter-mile gravel climb of 13% – which moved me up to Top 3. But… wait, I was 3rd before I thought. I looked and this year there was only one other person faster on this segment and he took the KOM. Hmm… the name is familiar… then I realized he is my landlady’s soon and until about 2yrs ago, our downstairs neighbor. I look at his two rides in Strava (a couple of days ago and September), both with a collection of KOMs, and, yes, I flagged it with Strava. There’s no way he wasn’t on an ebike. So now, I’m in second (with 5s to drop for first). And, with regard to LL status, I have 9 rides in the last 90 days, so I may have that locked up for a while.
Volunteer was in my diary today; the temperature has dropped 5-6degC, it was a bit overcast and the 3mph winds have become 16-19mph. I decided to still go out though as its remainded dry (except for the hose and road cleaner/sweeper). A loop over Morbourne hill (if you can call it a hill) fits nicely timewise.
I could probably compete, at least match, if I went to the east of Peterborough (UK) and the flat fens but I tend to avoid that area unless I’m in a group. Just quickly plotted a 30 miles route there and it a massive 111ft of climbing
No bridges on that ride, leaving my neighborhood it is a “slight climb” north for 2 miles and then east to a wind protected neighborhood with a 2.6 mile Crit Loop Repeat Strava segment that I did 3 times. And each loop has 17 feet of climbing over 0.9 mile Returned home via a different road.
Full disclose on elevation corrections:
TrainingPeaks 33 feet climbing
Strava 128 feet climbing
RideWithGPS 333 feet climbing
Garmin 150 feet climbing
Eyeballing the TP corrected elevation chart for ‘4 major climbs’ we have:
+33 +17 +17 +17 = 84 feet
minimum is 84 feet climbing, and I believe TP’s elevation chart however the updated 33 feet of climbing is clearly wrong
Strava and Garmin are believable at 128 and 150 feet
TrainerRoad’s 419 feet climbing makes me
moral of the story - TrainingPeaks elevation correction for the win against @rkoswald! (at least until he does the same)
TR workout Washington+4 outdoors at lunch today. The weather was sunny with the temp in upper teens in the sun and several degrees cooler in the shade (so while bib shorts, I wore arm warmers).
The workout was 5x7’ threshold. After about a 30’ “warm-up,” I started the first of the five intervals on a hill. The hill happened to be the start of a ±30’ segment (the main hill below) and because Strava has, at some point in the last week, enabled Local Legend here, today I took the LL for this segment.
Because I got out later than I wanted, I had to drop down to the road and do the last two intervals on pavement headed home so I could get the car and pickup the son for his ortho appointment.
The workout was a good time though there was the moment on the road where I’m going 22mph and two cars decide to pass a large farm tractor hauling a large trailer. The second car clearly went to follow the first and should not have. She came way too close to me for my or her comfort based on her expression, which I could clearly see as there was no more than 3m separating her car from my bike. I figure the tractor was probably going 50kph (as they tend to do there, I drive that road generally twice a day) with the speed limit at 80. Either way, the collision would have meant that if I lived she’d be buying me a new frame.
Long(er) endurance ride today on the heels of a hard VO2 session yesterday.
It’s really interesting to do these rides and see when you experience decoupling. In the last 30 minutes of this ride, my wattage was around 60% of FTP but my heart rate was up near the higher end of tempo.
This tells me I still have a lot of work to do in terms of building my aerobic base, and it also tells me that all the tempo and sweet spot work I did over the winter is only so good at building aerobic endurance. At some point long Z2 (Z1 Seiler) rides have to start finding their way into a training plan. This is obvious for a lot of you.
Long(er) endurance ride today on the heels of a hard VO2 session yesterday. Goal was to go steady and keep heart rate around VT1 (~145 BPM). These are the hardest sessions to stay disciplined on, and you can see I caved and did a 10-minute effort after 90-minutes.
It’s really interesting to do these rides and see when you experience decoupling. 2.5% for the first 90 minutes and then 10 minutes at 310w make me go (7% decoupling from there on till the end).
This tells me I still have a lot of work to do in terms of building my aerobic base, and it also tells me that all the tempo and sweet spot work I did over the winter is only so good at building aerobic endurance. At some point long Z2 (Z1 Seiler) rides have to start finding their way into a training plan. This is obvious for a lot of you.
Over a minute faster on my club TT tonight for just 1w more. The biggest difference is I held my aero position more confidently tonight, except for the photo, which was fortunately taken after about a mile and my knee warmers were still in place
It was interesting to see Xert updates to estimated FTP as I loaded older and older workouts via Strava sync. After it was done I filed a support request and they helped setup the model. Essentially Scott changed to “No decay - training load matched” on Account Settings > Profile, and did that starting from a breakthrough workout in August 2020. That was around the time I started a long period of foundation/base training, which continued up until recent days.
Click here to view my email request:
On February 9th I did 2x10 at estimated threshold of 260W. Based on prior workouts (power:HR) that was a fair estimate of my current FTP. Xert gave it a Near breakthrough and FTP estimate of 231. Fair enough, I haven’t proven my rough estimate of 255-265 FTP with a max 20+ minute effort. Ball is in my court to prove it. Below are other FTP estimates after the Feb 9 2021 effort:
231W Xert
236W WKO5
242W Garmin 530
Looks fine, Garmin uses Firstbeat sub-max estimation and a bit higher. Again ball is in my court to go out and prove it is higher. I don’t care about minor differences, just expecting to see Xert/WKO/Garmin line up within 10W or so. All 3 are aligned on Feb 9th as far as I’m concerned.
After my ride yesterday on March 24 2021:
217 Xert
237 WKO5
246 Garmin 530
Based on that my guess is that Xert’s decay setting is impacting FTP estimates, as its dropped FTP from 231 to 217 in 6 weeks. I’ve been doing 6+ months of foundation/base training, and without enough long max efforts it appears to be tripping up Xert’s FTP estimates when using the optimal decay setting.
As a reality check I went looking back to a 20-min field test from one year ago. On that field test Garmin gave 243, WKO5 242, Xert gave 236 (workout) or 237 (table view) estimate of FTP. Same same, happy to see them align.
Ok hope that long explanation helps, wanted to be clear I’m NOT expecting high precision between the estimates, just hoping to see more consistency after the March 24th workout.
So yes, I would like some guidance on adjusting the decay setting.
The sunshine is supposed to end today and temperatures are supposed to drop 5deg C also. So I decided to forgo my rest day and drop an easy outdoors workout into today’s plan. My default is Carter.
I usually loop by Morbourne Hill and knock the corner off but given it was such a beautiful day I went all the way to the Washingley cross roads and forgo the dual carriageway on the way back for a easy but twisty ride through the industrial estate/ residential areas either side of it.
Oh and it was notable for hitting my 15deg threshold for showing my knees
The weather was awesome with the temp around 22ºC so I dashed out for a “late lunch.” I went with the gravel bike to work on my “local legend” status for a bunch of segments. Some I am the LL (and 5s away from the KOM), another I’m now tied, and another I’m one ride away from the LL laurals. Whatever motivates…
A cloudless day but chilly, between 4º-9ºC. I wore shorts with arm warmers and wished I wore not-summer-weight socks and maybe a vest. Headed out, I knew my just shy of 70mi route wasn’t going to fit the schedule as I needed to be home at noon. Halfway-ish through I missed a turn, paused for a while figure out how to adapt the route (it had been at least 3yrs since I had ridden the area I was in, and then it was only once or twice). Anyway, twice I got lost and had to refigure my route, including doubling back (see the “tail” on the map). The original plan was to get farther south and ride the north side of Lake Luzern / Lucerne and home (on the map, I would have gone SE when I turned west at the bottom and coming up the lakeside toward Küssnacht). In the end, I was home, the bike put away, and in the kitchen making my recovery drink while asking my wife to make grilled cheese sandwiches (x2) with Buldak sauce at 12:04.
Because the GoPro died halfway, I only have a few pics. When I needed to stop to reroute (or twice to answer texts from my son… repeating things I told him last night), it was never at a especially scenic spot worthy of a pic from the phone.
This was my last ride in Sedona. A quick solo afternoon loop after a kids ride in the morning.
Hog Heaven is the only trail of the Sedona “H’s” I rode. Hiline got cut short when my friend crashed, and he was going to be my riding buddy for Hangover. I do a decent amount of rides solo, but I wasn’t too keen on riding Hangover solo. So that will have to wait until next time.
(7% decoupling from there on till the end).
