I would say, intuitively, no. Simply based on the fact that I’m doing only low intensity work which allows for a higher degree of fat burning. The “shorter” 3-4 hour rides I usually do fasted/conventionally unfueled; the longer 5-6 hour rides I do start eating low GI carbs at hour 4. That said, I have no idea just how much I’m storing from the previous day’s food (≦100g CHO) but I’d most likely burn through that (muscle) reserve within the first hour.
At this point I’m not too concerned about it, all the endurance pace is providing lots of other healthy benefits. And every day that I’m not dead is a top place on the podium for me.
In a classic n=1 situation, in my first winter in Colorado, I did a lot of ~90min climbs up a ski hill in the snow, at 40-60rpm cadence. The summer after, I was the fastest I’ve ever been.
In the 2 years since, I haven’t been as fast. I’ve traded low cadence climbs for longer, lower intensity rides on more mellow grades. There’s other things going on for sure - like getting older - but I’ve struggled more in both years with endurance on long sustained climbs vs the year where I did a lot of low cadence riding in the winter.
This year i plan on reverting to low cadence climbs in the snow. It’s hard to manage body temperature - sweating you ball$$ off on the way up, freezing your a$$ of on the way down - but i want to get some more evidence on if this kind of training works for me.
It’s also a lot of “fun” riding at 6am and 0F in the winter when most normal people want to huddle up under their warm blankets. Makes me feel like a badass
Omelette in the morning
Protein (I actually use real food) after about 45 min
moderate amounts of carbs after 90-120min. Then continue with feeding moderate amounts of carbs every 30min.
Eating some carbs during the ride does not appear to blunt the desired adaptions.
However, what is more important to me: I train for two 8-12h races. These are characterised by starting sort of fast, hence I run out of glycogen soon. However, I will eat carbs. Hence, specificity, this mirrors sort of the conditions I experience in the race.
I guess no one knows what a “best path” is. And FTP is not really a metric that gets studied a lot. It just has been shown that not a lot of sessions are required to maintain high end. There is a nice review paper on “detraining”, perhaps I can dig it out again.
Yes, there are actually quite a few review papers out there. However, what made me think was the following statement in a Science article:
Within their repertoire of training nutrition strategies, athletes can now include practices that augment adaptive processes in skeletal muscle; these include commencing training with low exogenous CHO availability (fasting overnight and/or withholding CHO during a session) or the more potent train-low strategy of deliberately commencing selected training sessions with lowered muscle glycogen stores (e.g., using a first session to deplete glycogen and then training for a second time after withholding CHO to prevent glycogen restoration) (29, 30) .
Then I started reading up the original research on fasted training, not just the summaries in the review papers. And I was surprised. Not the first time (cough, cough polarised training cough, cough). As said before, I don’t see a huge benefit with that. And for athletes with a higher training volume I consider it even detrimental from a health perspective.
One of the thingsI love about this forum is its what the internet “should be”. No trolls, attack’s etc
Just people helping each other. It’s very liberating, and a real sense of community.
I have really enjoyed your posts to date
I am sure there will be lots of people inspired to try the train low approach. Can you give a protocol on how you deplete the day before - do you try and do the Day 1 ride in afternoon/evening, and then only protein?
And Day 2 is early AM and just omelet and then 4 hrs?
There is no protocol. Size and use of glycogen stores depend massively on training status. An elite will have to do much more work than a newbie. One of the reasons why, for example, those Danish studies on highly trained athletes showed no real benefits of “train low”:
The general lack of superimposing effects of CHO periodization in “real-life” training studies with highly
trained individuals could be explained by high post exercise muscle glycogen levels, and the small acute net degradation of glycogen in LCHO in the present study suggests that vigorous “train-low” protocols are needed to repeatedly reduce muscle glycogen to very low levels (≤250 mmol kg dw1). We have previously demonstrated that 4 h of prolonged CHO-restricted cycling exercise at 75% of HRmax depletes muscle glycogen in highly trained triathletes (from 699 24 mmol kg dw1 to 225 28 mmol kg dw1), while Psilander and coworkers used a sophisticated protocol consisting of both HIIT and continuous work to deplete muscle glycogen level in a group of athletes (to 170 mmol kg dw1) (Psilander et al. 2013; Gejl et al. 2014). However, demanding protocols as described above are difficult to complete multiple times per week in the schedule of elite endurance athletes if other training stimuli should not be compromised, and the implementation must be carefully planned as suggested by Impey and colleagues (Impey et al. 2018).
My takeaway is a pragmatic one: any regular vo2max or threshold session, as well as any >4hrs endurance ride at AeT with tempo (do it low cadence which is known to increase glycogen use) should bring down my stores. However, I can’t know for sure, this is the caveat of this. Still simulate my A-races-post-6-hours-phase so I’m not too concerned
Here is a protocol with “moderately” trained cycliststs. They did not measure glycogen but could oberseve desired effects:
However, AAA-race is the one in July. Age group podium, top 10 overall goal. This has been my main event for the last couple of years. And I intend to participate until I’m 50.
Very interesting to read through everyones thoughts and plans.
My plan is to find my race-weight. I lost 36kg during 2017 and haven’t really focused enough to continue the transformation and find my ideal weight. Now at about 68,5kg I’m heading into 64kg as a target weight and continuing to transform my body in regards to all those subcutaneous fat depos i have around my body. I’ve always been even in regards to fat distribution but having been somewhat overweight all my life it’s hard to know where I should be.
So basically my plan is as follows.
SSBMV I/II then rinse and repeat one more time before going into build and speciality. I haven’t really figured out my target event but I plan on doing SSB until the end of the year. My guess is that my A-event would be somewhere in the middle of the year, usually middle/end of July.
I’m also adding in outdoor rides and will probably be doing the Saturday HIT-ride outside if it’s not snowing. I have a hard time letting TSS fall and seeing fitness-numbers decline gradually.
Why those in particular? Just because it falls on a weekend? Or you want as much outdoor riding as possible? Other? Looks like those are all O/U workouts, will be interesting to see what your RPE is outdoor vs indoor.
Do you think that’s because the elites/pros have maxed out their physiological adaptations?
Yes. I’m fully aware of the limitations and fuzziness of HRV but it does give reasonable enough snapshots of what’s going on to formulate a general trend.
I’ve started using a Polar Ignite to monitor my ANS system. After a booze free period of 8 weeks which saw a phenomenal improvement in all aspects of the ANS which Polar monitors, now that I’m on holiday and drinking again I’m aghast at the detrimental effect alcohol has on the ANS.
- but I’ve struggled more in both years with endurance on long sustained climbs vs the year where I did a lot of low cadence riding in the winter.
