Regaining Fitness Quickly, Base Training Options, Trivia and More - Ask a Cycling Coach 389

Also, @Jonathan I think in Pro Tour cycling they are doing the ice stocking thing a lot, don’t know how you do those types of things without a team/support crew though lol.

Fun Pod. Thanks team.

Also, I’m going to do a baseline 1min Max Effort this week. Might see if I can find a spot to do one outside (MTB) and then do one inside to see.

Calv1nJ · November 14, 2022, 5:26pm

I am really interested in seeing what people’s 1 min power records are! I set mine this summer during a crit omnium. 723 (9.21 w/kg) watt average for 1 min, normalized was 709 and it had peak power of 1,405 (17.9 w/kg). All happened during a last lap solo attack and I managed to get 1st place as a result. Have since trimmed down to 73 kg (5.5 kg lost) and have only gotten stronger because of TR.

willfromny · November 14, 2022, 6:59pm

Checking my Person Records tab, it looks like my 1min best is a mere 471w at 70kg or 6.7wkg. Just a mere mortal. Oh and I should note that this is from 10/4/2022. I’ve only gotten stronger with TR.

WindWarrior · November 14, 2022, 7:51pm

Did they discuss this on the podcast? I don’t see it in the topics covered list. My top 3:

Power curve drops fast, peak 1-sec power of 1250W, 5-sec of 1150W, 30-sec of 720, and down to 530 at 1-minute.

Some of the local crit racers in 20s and 30s have 800-900W power at 1-minute! They also have FTPs of 320-360, and thats actual 40-50 minute sustained efforts on Tue or Wed worlds.

rkoswald · November 14, 2022, 8:14pm

I haven’t listened to the podcast yet but I hope there are good tidbits of advice for restarting training after illness. I was on business travel last week and I guess the heater in the hotel room hadn’t been used or cleaned since last fall because the amount of dust that burned off when I turned it on was ridiculous. My sore throat turned into a sinus infection turned into three nights of fever and chills. I slept 13.5 hours and 9.5 hours this weekend - I haven’t done that since … maybe ever. My RHR yesterday was 75 bpm, up from normal 48-52 bpm. It’s still elevated at 60-65 bpm. Ugh!

Thankfully this happened during off season. I was in the middle of Traditional Base II and might just go back to TB I. I’ll get back to strength training as I can. Any other advice?

mcneese.chad · November 14, 2022, 8:18pm

It wasn’t a planned topic, and just came up as an idea / challenge from Jon & Nate during discussion of the “Regain Fitness” topic. It’s around 30 minutes in or so per the audio DL I got.

willfromny · November 14, 2022, 8:22pm

I loved the “peak podcast content” as Jonathan was calculating the wkg lol.

WindWarrior · November 14, 2022, 8:45pm

Thanks, I heard Coach Chad talk about aerobic capacity. My highest aerobic capacity was in 2016-2017, and 2020+ when I averaged around 7-8 hours/week with a lot of endurance work and some HIIT.

Sprint PRs:

All from the seasons I was doing “a lot” (7-8 hours/week) of consistent endurance riding.

Anaerobic PRs:

All from the seasons I was doing “a lot” (7-8 hours/week) of consistent endurance riding.

VO2max PRs:

All from the seasons I was doing “a lot” (7-8 hours/week) of consistent endurance riding.

All of that I think reinforces Coach Chad’s high-level comments before the “long slow distance or you can do sweet spot training” comment. I’m doing a lot of endurance plus some hard intervals, not long slow distance. But my ftp is a high % of vo2max so sweet spot training doesn’t help move the that needle, and I’m better off focusing on vo2max.

Back to the 1-min effort, here is what I did last week:

I paced the first set of intervals based on my 2022 power curve. Repeatable. So I used that to pace the all-out 1-minute effort to kick off the second set.

All of those HURT, a lot. Took a LONG time to recover from the second set, I was outside and it was a 2 hour workout with some sweet spot later in the ride

The other 1-min 538W average power PR from a group ride in 2016, similar time scale:

That one topped out at 1055 for 3-seconds before dropping into high 380s at the end. To Coach Chad’s point about peaking and holding on for dear life

Convinced I could go out now and maybe hit 550+ on a fresh 1-min attempt.

re: W/kg well its not going to be impressive as I weigh 90-93kg. However I did those efforts on pancake flat ground, never tried a 1-min max effort on a hill.

All you podcast hosts are a lot younger, except Coach Chad, so beat the newly minted sexagenarian (sixty something) on a raw power basis because you likely already beat me on a W/kg basis.

WindWarrior · November 14, 2022, 10:08pm

this is when knowing your anaerobic capacity helps. Assume mine is 20-22kJ, and FTP is 270W. Doing the simple math a 600W steady power effort for 1-min is 19.8kJ ((600-270)*60 seconds). Well its not going to look like a steady effort, it will peak at a high wattage and fall. So I could approximate with a triangle and come up with a better estimate.

mailman · November 14, 2022, 10:34pm

How does one learn/know this? Is it on Intervals ICU?

WindWarrior · November 14, 2022, 11:05pm

I first used it with Xert in 2017, then WKO. Dunno about Intervals, all I know is W’ / anaerobic capacity is empty when I pull up Intervals, and I haven’t tried to figure it out because I rarely use Intervals. WKO is pretty accurate if I have enough short/med/long max efforts.

The basic idea is pretty simple - area under the power curve and above your ftp/cp. Go checkout the HighNorth Critical Power Explained article, as it includes a calculator.

WindWarrior · November 15, 2022, 9:43pm

Looked for you and realized while it is empty on each individual workout (and I don’t care), it is on the Power page:

Under OPTIONS you can change the power model used to estimate FTP. Different models will estimate different FTP and therefore W’ / anaerobic capacity (as its the area between FTP and Modeled Curve). In addition, if you don’t have enough full gas efforts across the power curve, that will also impact the FTP and W’ estimation.

Pbase · November 15, 2022, 10:46pm

Yeah, they were talking about how Nate doesn’t really ride any more and Nate challenged Chad to a 1 min max contest, and that evolved into “we should put it out there on the forum and get other people involved too”.

WindWarrior · November 15, 2022, 10:47pm

And now I want to hit 550W and still get crushed the local 25 year old King of KOM. Need to take back at least a couple that he stole from me.

Pbase · November 15, 2022, 10:50pm

They kind of veered off topic to talk about Nate doing strength training for a long time and talked more about how muscular athletes who haven’t ridden in a year will have different physiology and strengths/weaknesses than they did when they were cyclists. Then very briefly came back to the question to close with “SweetSpot is great for training after a long pause” and “make sure you fully recover, don’t rush coming back, you’ll just sabotage your training”.

Pbase · November 15, 2022, 10:51pm

I forget the exact number, but Jon had a 1 min max at something like 10 wt/kg.

WindWarrior · November 15, 2022, 11:00pm

I think it was 600+ and Ivy was mid 400s. Living in flatland we tend to think more about raw watts. Our local young king of kom is something like 800+ for 1-min. I can long sprint on his wheel for about 20 seconds and get to 30+mph and then he drops me and hits 38mph At 90-95kg a good way to underestimate mine is move the decimal point. So 1-min 538W first approximation is 5.4W/kg but doing the math its 5.7-5.8W/kg.

Pbase · November 15, 2022, 11:15pm

Jon talked a good bit about this. About how for the first 20 seconds you feel like a strong man, the next 20 you negotiate, and the last 20 you try not to die. (Paraphrasing with my own numbers)