Tag: cycling

A Legit Zwift Win?

The good news: a legit Zwift victory in a time trial across all classes through a personal record of 254 watts for 54 minutes.

The bad news: My weight was underreported (I didn’t mean to cheat!). My weight post ride was 144.4 pounds, 1.6 kg / 3.5 lbs higher than reported on Zwift. My time differential was 1 minute 26 seconds so I feel like I would have won no matter what.

The big takeaway was that my power wasn’t quite my goal of 4.0 w/kg for the 54 minutes, but the still strong yet not-quite good enough 3.88 w/kg.

I’ll keep pushing.

Achieving 4W/KG: My Cycling Journey Complete?

From: Intervals.icu

I started cycling in the summer of 2016 after purchasing a used 2010 Kestrel Talon for $750. I started training at the end of that year with TrainerRoad, and ever since it’s been a long path towards a single metric of performance: 4W/KG. I hit 3W/KG within a couple of months and hoped I could 4W/KG within a couple of years.

Those years became 8, at least according to estimates from Intervals.icu with eFTP and TrainerRoad with AIFTP.

To understand the full context, FTP stands for Functional Threshold Power for cyclists. It’s a measure of your power over a sustained period of time. It’s supposed to be the max power you can make for one complete hour, but if you can imagine, it’s quite mentally and physically challenging to go 100% for that long, so many people like to use 95% of one’s maximum 20 minute power.

From: TrainerRoad

Sometimes, even 20 minutes can be too long, or perhaps you do really good power for 30 minutes, but didn’t try to maximize the 20. How do you calculate FTP then? In recent years, there have been a number of methods to try to calculate it based on your best power for X amount of time. And from these methods, I have been told that I have hit 4W/KG.

I don’t quite believe it myself. A few days ago, I hit 251W (avg) for 47 minutes. It wasn’t the best day for me, but I think if I were well rested, I could hit 255W. Could I have extended that further, to say 50, 55, or 60 minutes? Perhaps.

If I could do my projected power close to one hour, I’ll definitely be able to achieve my goal 1 hour mark at Mt Diablo. The only thing to do now is to keep training and see if I can push my high power for longer. I need something close to one hour at 260W to believe I truly hit 4W/HR. As a mid-40’s cyclist, I know my time to maintain such fitness becomes harder and harder.

Experiments with Polarized Training

After I got injured this past July, I decided to change things with my training. I had gotten a bit bored with my outdoor riding and I found my indoor sessions a bit stressful as well. I’ve long tried to do 3 sessions totaling 4-5 hours a week and work really hard in those sessions to maximize the limited time, but over the long term I would always find myself getting frustrated and couldn’t enjoy them.

Now, I’ve decided to try my own formula of polarized training.

“Polarized training is a training approach that focuses on scaling down moderate-intensity running to emphasize easy and hard efforts. This approach emerged from research on elite endurance athletes and has been widely adopted by coaches and athletes.”

Basically this means training at the extremes, either really easy or really hard, generally following an 80% (easy) / 20% (hard) structure. There are more total hours involved, but since most of the work is easy, your body doesn’t feel overwhelmed in recovery. This is how pro cyclists train. I was always hesitant to try this because I don’t have 15+ hours to train each week, and I don’t like the type of hard workouts you’re supposed to do, VO2 Max and Threshold intervals. I don’t mind working, I just hate the mental focus required in intervals. For example, it can be easier for me to try threshold-level [power in huge chunks (30+ minutes) than a series of intervals. What I’ve decided to do this time is replace those typical hard efforts with Zwift racing, in which I’ll go as hard as I can to win races and improve my race results.

Depending on the Zwift race, this will likely look like 30 minutes to one hour of .95+ IF (95% normalized power of my theoretical 1 hour power) riding. I’ll do races on Monday and Fridays, and do my Zone 2 riding in between. What’s really nice is that Zwift now has Zwift Racing Score to help riders race against people of the same level. It’s no longer just 4 classes – I was in Class B since 2017 and raced over 200 times without getting close to a victory. Since my restart of indoor riding last in August, I’ve won three times. I don’t necessarily need to win to feel good, but knowing I could win occasionally makes things more fun. As I keep going up in score, perhaps I’ll return to the old normal of always being in the middle of the pack, but for now things feel better.

The goal of polarized training is to help you put in as much work possible to develop your fitness sustainably. If you do an intense workout that knocks you out physically or mentally for the following 3 days, you can’t make consistent progress.

Here’s the breakdown:

  • 5 sessions per week – 8 hours in Zone 2, 1-1.5 hours of Zwift racing / time trial efforts.
  • Zone 2 level rides: 65% to 70% of max heart rate. Try to increase power while staying in Zone 2 over time.
  • 5000 calories burned per week, 1000 per day.
  • 400 TSS per week.
  • 5 week cycle: 4 weeks of polarized training, followed by 1 rest week of 3 days of riding – 1 Zwift race and 2 one hour Zone 2 rides, followed by 4 days of rest.

In this structure, the races give me something fun to look forward to at the beginning and end of each week. With the low stress Zone 2 riding, I can switch between watching tv, checking work messages, and listening to music so I don’t get too bored. I simply ride around the Zwift world but don’t follow a specific workout. Instead, I monitor my heart rate, calories, and normalized power for the ride, and keep those within the guidelines I set for myself.

After the 4 weeks of training, I’ll take a rest week and do a FTP test after the time off to benchmark my performance.

My Goals

I would like to grow stronger than ever, hitting 4 w/kg in FPT. I’ve been trying to hit those goal for the last 7 years after getting to 3.5 w/kg in just a year. My FPT now is likely in the 250-260 watt range. As a percentage, I’m only looking for a 5-8% jump in power. But it’s really hard. Once I achieve this, I will firmly be in the top 10% of training cyclists.

As part of training 9-10 hours a week, I hope to sustain more power for longer once event season comes along. This year, I was able to hold .7 IF for 6-7 hours by being more steady in those rides, less volatility in power. I’d love to boost that to .75. IF, an increase of 10-15 watts for the duration of the ride.

My Progress and Impression

So far I have finished two five week cycles. Here’s how I’ve been feeling:

  • I take weekends off and come in Mondays feeling strong.
  • Even at the lighter Zone 2 intensity I find myself feeling tired throughout the day, sometimes in the legs, but generally feel OK the next day for another Zone 2 ride.
  • Lower cadence (80 rpm) allows me to push a lot more power at the same heart rate than higher (95 rpm) cadence. But I definitely feel more muscle stress during and after the ride. I’d like to fluctuate between both so I can practice for different types of terrain in the real world.

Disappointment at the Mt Diablo Valley Challenge – Failure to Break 1 Hour

I didn’t do it. My 2024 time from last weekend was 1 minute faster than my time from 2023. Excuses first, it came down to not sleeping enough. I slept with my toddler son to help him sleep but when he woke up before 12AM, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got between 1 and 3 hours of sleep and was awake at least from 2AM for an 8:25AM race start.

I was pretty dejected during the ride as I started to fade knowing that this was the second straight year that I should have beat 1 hour for the race. In 2023, I had two straight low-sleep nights leading into the Challenge; I had done a 100 mile Gran Fondo the day prior at my highest ever 5 hr+ power.

As I now write this over 24 hours after the race, I am feeling OK about things. I am not sure I want to do the event again, but I do want to prove myself on the climb and I could do that any time I feel ready, for free.

  • The starting temperature over the weekend was about 10F higher than last year’s, close to 70F. Northern California is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures hitting 100F during the afternoons where I live. I didn’t feel overheated during the climb but…
  • My strategy to not have water bottles didn’t go well. I had practiced high intensity rides without water for over an hour in warmer-than-race-day temperatures at home, and did just fine. However, within 10 minutes of the ride, my throat was feeling super dry. It might have been particles in the air or related to the heat wave – someone said we had forest fire conditions of heat and dry air. Next time, I’ll just bring a water bottle.
  • I hit my max heart rate thresholds quite quickly – I was basically there immediately starting the ride instead of 20-30 minutes into it as I had hoped. I assume my lack of sleep was the big factor there.
  • I took beet root in the days leading to the ride to help with time to exertion but I don’t know what impact it had. Beet root is quite expensive in juice form, but I found gummies that are relatively affordable – just $20 for a month’s supply at Costco.
  • I lost 5 pounds or so during the final month and I may have lost some power in the process. I didn’t record my full ride correctly so I am unable to compare the last two year’s rides correctly but overall it’s clear I did less power than the previous year but went faster due to less weight on the bike and body.

Moving Forward

  • Whether I compete next year or not, I want to focus on losing weight while maintaining current power levels. This means getting down to 140 pounds from my current 146. My power goal would be 255 watts at 4w/kg. I lost a pound a week in the month before the event, and will try to get to 140 by Christmas. My process is sustainable, it is about having self-discipline and tracking myself so I stay on track.
  • This type of power/weight ratio would get me up Alpe Du Zwift in 50 minutes. This would give me unwavering confidence that I could beat the 1 hr mark for Mt. Diablo.
  • I’ve been having issues with my left foot on my bike setup. I plan to have a bike fit and/or custom insoles fitted to see if that can help with the pressure and pain around the foot.
  • I don’t have wishes for the bike. I am now using Dura Ace 9150/9170 parts for the derailleurs and brakes and my original Ultegra 8170 shifters on DI2 11 speed electronic shifting. I have a low weight ZTTO 11-34 cassette and I use Dura Ace 50/34 chainrings with Shimano 105 160mm crankarms. I am on a Fizik Adaptive 3D printed R1 saddle which is about 190G.

This is the Way -> Mt Diablo Under One Hour

It’s time. Another Mt. Diablo Hill Climb Challenge comes in 4 weeks. A year ago I was optimistic I could finish the hill climb under 1 hour and earn myself a prized shirt. Instead, I made an error by riding 100 miles at my highest all-time intensity for that duration and couldn’t sustain enough power the next morning for the hill climb.

I had a good experience overall but wondered what could have been. In the year since, I’ve trained fairly steadily despite welcoming a new daughter into the world. I didn’t quite make the progress that I wanted, however, and I came into last weekend thinking I would take a FPT test to see where I stood and whether I could really match up with my fitness from last year.

I rode Zwift’s The Grade, and ended up with an estimated FTP of 261 watts per Intervals.icu after doing 280 watts for 13+ minutes. Last year, I did 270 watts for 27+ minutes for an estimated FTP of 263, so it feels like I’m on par with last year’s fitness.

Based on this ride profile from BestBikeSplit, the challenge is whether I can actually sustain my FTP for one hour. This rider plan is asking me for 258w average power to finish in 58 minutes, basically the same as my eFTP.

What I need to train for over the coming weeks:

  1. Do I have the longevity/focus to sustain power for an hour?
  2. Can I generate higher power at a lower cadence (65-80 RPM) for that time period?
  3. Can I lose a few pounds without losing power to improve my odds at reaching my goal?

On the first question, I have been in polarized training, with 8+ hrs of zone 2 indoor riding each week, for the past 6 weeks. I bookend those sessions with two high intensity Zwift racing sessions of 30-45 minutes. This ends up looking like 400 TSS and 5000 calories burned each week. Since school season has started for my kids, I’ll add a 30 minute commuter ride each morning in which I bike them to school with a trailer. I won’t measure this physical impact, it will just be a bonus. What I need now is to practice one extended climb at high intensity each week, Alpe Du Zwift. In the past, this climb would take me between 53-56 minutes depending on my fitness, a perfect simulation for race day.

On the second question, I have noticed that it’s difficult for me to go 260+ watts seated now. I used to do extended climbs from 70-75 cadence easily, but that’s gone. I can’t deliver that power at above 80 cadence either. When I did my FTP test, I had numerous bursts of climbing out of the saddle. Typically, I can’t stay out of the saddle for very long without feeling overly exerted, and yet this time I just wanted to stay out of the saddle. This seems to signal that my fitness is pretty good but that I also need to practice lower cadence riding. Over the last year, I have focused most of my time on aerobic higher cadence (90+) workouts. Over the coming weeks, I want to spend at least a few hours at lower cadence (70-75) each week, not including my climb practices.

On the final question, nutrition has always been tricky for me. Do I take in nutrition during the ride? Or just pre-ride? How much protein do I take? Should I listen to my body and eat when hungry? Over the past years, clear patterns have emerged. If I train, I gain weight. I don’t get leaner, however. My percentage of body fat stays the same or increases. Gaining weight means I eat too much, period. Over the next month, I’m going to execute the following:

  • Nothing outside of water after dinner (this usually ends by 6PM).
  • Be a little hungry each night.
  • Have a good carb loaded breakfast of sugary cereal and a banana each morning when I have a workout planned. Couple that with a 30G protein shake.
  • Use Gatorade Zero tablets instead of optimized sports drinks with high sugar. This along with my long bouts of Zone 2 will emphasize fat burning.
  • Stay low-carb (or couple high carbs with high fiber) for my other meals and focus on eating normal portions. Eat 1 pound of broccoli at least 5 times per week. Don’t overly focus on getting “enough” protein.
  • If I start to feel too hungry at night, make the breakfast sizes larger so they go directly into fueling the workout.
  • Don’t weigh myself until race day.
  • On race day morning, and the dinner before race day, I’ll load myself up with good carbs – fruits, high fiber pastas.
  • Focus on the process – eating leaner, good workouts, more endurance during extended climbing.

Wish me luck!