Do You Road Bike?

[Killroy1999]

A friend of mine has Canyon gravel bike and wanted to go for a ride up Montebello. (this seems to be a trend - buy Gravel bike, but never ride gravel)

She had never ridden her bike on real gravel, so I thought this would be a good introduction to ride the gravel over Montebello to Page Mill.

I even put 28C on my 2007 Madone, which I thought was amazing since I normally ride old school 25C, just like my bike.

I even pre-rode that gravel road to make sure it was on the tame side.

We did the ride and on the way up Montebello, we talked about good tips for gravel. The ride was a success!

A couple of days later, she repeated the ride solo and had a huge crash. I picked her up and drove her to the hospital. I have never seen skin damage so bad. Mostly on her elbow and knee. Her knee had a hole in it that looked like you could fit an apple in with the skin peeling back. Lots of stitches and recovery. Yikes.

 

[rcb78]

There are a few tricky spots up there if you're not used to riding skinny tires in loose conditions, particularly if you're coming down the fire road towards Page Mill hot.

 

[Daredevil]

did the Hammer Rally a few weeks ago. placed ok (7th in age group and 28th overall) considering i haven't been training, and was confused about the timed segment situation. This was my first road race.

either case. beautiful ride. 85m/10,000ft in Sierra National Forest just south of Yosemite. Basically between 5500 and 9300 feet above sea level. Half gravel, half road, and i've never ridden gravel before. I fit some 28c gravel tires on my Allez, unfortunately the Gravel Kings specific tires in that size require tubes, so lets just say..... between the bike and the tire, it was stiff gravel ride. :lol

The Rock Cobbler looks fun as shit! Wish I had a gravel bike for that one.

 

[Daredevil]

I've been doing a lot of research on polarized training and will be using that for the winter and spring training. My plan is to do 80% of my training at "conversation" pace and the rest at "kill yourself" pace. We'll see how it goes.

Last spring, I tried to do all my training at FTP. I could sustain 2 days a week. But I quickly burned out when I added a 3rd day. I got stronger, but the training didn't feel THAT productive. I suspect I didn't have enough recovery time for consistent hard efforts.

I had somewhat of a tough time with polarized training for a few reasons. I did an 10 week block, averaging 10-14 hours as week.
1)very boring for 80%-90% of the time. like.... why am I even out riding.... everything is so SLOW..... I even get tired of the music im lsitening to... I was able to find more benefit both mentally and physically doing peak zone 2 hinting at tempo. This allowed me to focus a little bit, but anything slower than that was BORING AS HELL.

2) WIth that much zone 2 riding, As rested as I was for the hard days, those days felt harder than ever. It was ALWAYS a shock to the legs, and sitting in the middle of zone 4 and above *hurt* a lot more than I wanted it to. I'm not sure if it was mental, like i was used to easy riding, or something else.

After the 10 weeks I switched it up to a vo2 max training block, more stress but less time in the saddle. This burned me out after 4-5 weeks and I didn't feel any stronger. I ended up taking about 3 weeks off the bike.

I'm at the end of an 8 week block of sweet spot training and its been paying off in dividends. Lots of PRs, well rested, and getting up hills faster than my friends who got me into the sport (they aren't happy about this)

A typical week for me is 3 (1ish hour) sweet spot rides, 2 (1-1.5hour) endurance (middle-top zone2 rides) and one all out ride (usually the long ride of the week, 4-6 hours), and optional recovery ride one day week for usually under 2 hours (once a month on average)

The endurance rides feel like a break. the sweet spot rides keep my legs feeling "tuned up" but don't actually cause stress to my system. Then I go real deep on the hard days.

This winter I'm gonna change a smidge and do 3 endurance rides (with one day adding in weight lifting), 1 sweet spot ride, 1 lifting day (separately w/ no riding), then a longer day with a mix of tempo and threshold. we'll see how it goes but I think i'll have to finagle that routine to get it to work.

I'd like to get a coach so i can be told how/when/where to change things to become faster, sooner, but at this point im still seeing good progress.

I mix up mtb and road.

 

[Mike95060]

^


I thought this was interesting.

[youtube]-BtK77NXRik[/youtube]

 

[Killroy1999]

There are a few tricky spots up there if you're not used to riding skinny tires in loose conditions, particularly if you're coming down the fire road towards Page Mill hot.

Yep, that is the direction she was going. I like Page Mill Down better than up

There are some spots to watch out for on 28cs, but I love that ride. I got a good Strava time on the downhill when I did it solo.

She happened to be on proper 40c tires for light gravel that came with her Canyon Grail. I'm dieing to try 40c tires on my Hardtail mountain bike to string together some gravel riding that I have never done before in the Santa Cruz mountains.

 

[Daredevil]

^


I thought this was interesting.

[youtube]-BtK77NXRik[/youtube]

Dylan Johnson is a great channel to follow

 

[rcb78]

Yep, that is the direction she was going. I like Page Mill Down better than up

... I'm dieing to try 40c tires on my Hardtail mountain bike to string together some gravel riding that I have never done before in the Santa Cruz mountains.

I usually prefer using Alpine dirt if I'm doing that loop, in either direction.
Tons of good roads in the SC Mtns that feel they were made for gravel bikes. Planning to do a Shulties loop again as soon as i can slip away for a few hours on a weekend

 

[Mike95060]

Say what you will about GCN, this was helpful to me.

[youtube]qWSMTbg0P3U[/youtube]

 

[stangmx13]

I had somewhat of a tough time with polarized training for a few reasons. I did an 10 week block, averaging 10-14 hours as week.
1)very boring for 80%-90% of the time. like.... why am I even out riding.... everything is so SLOW..... I even get tired of the music im lsitening to... I was able to find more benefit both mentally and physically doing peak zone 2 hinting at tempo. This allowed me to focus a little bit, but anything slower than that was BORING AS HELL.

...

A typical week for me is 3 (1ish hour) sweet spot rides, 2 (1-1.5hour) endurance (middle-top zone2 rides) and one all out ride (usually the long ride of the week, 4-6 hours), and optional recovery ride one day week for usually under 2 hours (once a month on average)

...

You are riding 6 days a week? Nice

I'm not going to get anywhere close to 10-14hrs/week. I'm sitting around 4hrs right now and am hoping to get to 6-8hrs shortly. So I don't think the boredom is going to hit me as bad. Right now, it's actually a mental challenge to not push

What does the power distribution look like for your "sweet spot" & "all out rides"? What percentage of time are you getting over Z2 for each.

 

[stangmx13]

I'll toss out a YT vid. I find the concepts in this one very interesting, especially the graph at 8:12

[YouTube]oLsBXW3mTDI[/YouTube]

 

[Daredevil]

You are riding 6 days a week? Nice

I'm not going to get anywhere close to 10-14hrs/week. I'm sitting around 4hrs right now and am hoping to get to 6-8hrs shortly. So I don't think the boredom is going to hit me as bad. Right now, it's actually a mental challenge to not push

What does the power distribution look like for your "sweet spot" & "all out rides"? What percentage of time are you getting over Z2 for each.

Minimum 5 days a week, yea.

I don't want to come across rude or mean, but you'll never get faster riding 4 hours a week. Maaaaybe a little, but nothing significant. I'd imagine you would see better gains riding 4x 1 hour rides a week rather than twice for two hours or once for 4. (If ur goal is to get faster at 1 hour rides).
However, if u can get ton7-8 hours you will see very significant gains after 3-5 months. Even more so at 10 hours a week. It's all about goals tho and how fast u wanna get. The hardest thing I've had to learn about endurance sports is the amount of time it takes to get the fitness. It's just time in the saddle and less about skill set. I'm not saying it doesn't take skill, but as a collegiate gymnast and fast twitch athlete, I've relied on talent more than hardwork. Now I'm learning to be fast takes hardwork and more than I want to do of it. :Lol:

Ya the mental.aspect of not pushing is very hard on z2 days is very difficult.

Sweet spot rides never have my heart rate above 150. Power can fluctuate during intervals all the way up to ftp but never sits there long. Typically power is 75-95% of ftp. The closer to ftp the less time spend so heart rate doesn't go over. 1/3-1/2 the time power is below 50% for recovery.

Zone two is anywhere between 50%-70% for the entire duration. I keep heart rate around 130-133 most of the time with the top of zone 2 at 141bpm.

All out rides can wildly vary in how much time is spent in thresh hold and tempo.
It can range:
30%-50% z2 .
30-40% tempo
20%- 30% threshold
5-%aneroobic. (hard for me to get anerobic).

MTB all out rides I spend very little time in z2 compared to road rides where I can catch a draft or something and recover in a pace line so the hr comes down.

I think the key here is outside of hard rides, I don't hit tempo or threshold #s and thus have the legs to push it.
.

 

[stangmx13]

Minimum 5 days a week, yea.

I don't want to come across rude or mean, but you'll never get faster riding 4 hours a week. Maaaaybe a little, but nothing significant. I'd imagine you would see better gains riding 4x 1 hour rides a week rather than twice for two hours or once for 4. (If ur goal is to get faster at 1 hour rides).
However, if u can get ton7-8 hours you will see very significant gains after 3-5 months. Even more so at 10 hours a week. It's all about goals tho and how fast u wanna get. The hardest thing I've had to learn about endurance sports is the amount of time it takes to get the fitness. It's just time in the saddle and less about skill set. I'm not saying it doesn't take skill, but as a collegiate gymnast and fast twitch athlete, I've relied on talent more than hardwork. Now I'm learning to be fast takes hardwork and more than I want to do of it. :Lol:

Ya the mental.aspect of not pushing is very hard on z2 days is very difficult.

Sweet spot rides never have my heart rate above 150. Power can fluctuate during intervals all the way up to ftp but never sits there long. Typically power is 75-95% of ftp. The closer to ftp the less time spend so heart rate doesn't go over. 1/3-1/2 the time power is below 50% for recovery.

Zone two is anywhere between 50%-70% for the entire duration. I keep heart rate around 130-133 most of the time with the top of zone 2 at 141bpm.

All out rides can wildly vary in how much time is spent in thresh hold and tempo.
It can range:
30%-50% z2 .
30-40% tempo
20%- 30% threshold
5-%aneroobic. (hard for me to get anerobic).

MTB all out rides I spend very little time in z2 compared to road rides where I can catch a draft or something and recover in a pace line so the hr comes down.

I think the key here is outside of hard rides, I don't hit tempo or threshold #s and thus have the legs to push it.
.

Ya, my 4hrs is just maintaining rn. Im enjoying weekend rides with friends but am still struggling to find the motivation for solo weekday rides. I did gain plenty of fitness early this year with 4hrs/wk, and as you predicted it was over 2-3 rides, not just one. It was also easier to leave the house because I was working less.

Is that what sweet spot training is? It sounds like you are still doing polarized training. Your sweet spot rides seem like "zone 2" rides because your HR is so low. And then you have a large percentage of your all-out ride in that low-effort zone too. All that may be close to 80/20%, just organized slightly differently.

I've been finding evidence lately that the "Zone2" for polarized training is NOT actually comparable to Z2 for power (and of course not Z2 for HR). Both this vid and the GCN one above show real lab tests. They imply that "Zone2" can start at ~150bpm, with the power numbers that go with that. I wonder if that bpm number will be similar, higher or lower for "less trained" athletes. Hmm

[YouTube]xuDmChO21A8[/YouTube]

 

[Daredevil]

U make a good pointand very well could be right, but the difference being in my sweet spot rides I hit power #s up to ftp but not long enough to raise hr above 150(ish).

Z2 rides my power #s stay well below ftp but it's more about maintaining for long periods.

All out rides have time spent in z2 but I spend *lots of time at and above ftp. Where as other rides in the week I don't spend any significant time at or above ftp.

One thing to note, I think because I'm fast twitch athlete, v02 max training that consists of short bursts of power followed by recovery , i.e. 30s on/30sec off 1-min on/1min off come quite easy and my average heart rate for those is technically middle of zone 2.

Not sure why or how to change that, one more reason to get a coach.

 

[stangmx13]

'Time of effort' is one thing that I haven't seen covered much when discussing Zone2 training. The point of staying in Zone2 is to not trigger a stress response - to not burn a match. But knowing exactly how that response is triggered seems difficult. All these lab tests use long efforts so any response can be easily measured. But what about shorter efforts? If I do 500W for 5sec, did I trigger the stress response? Probably. What about 300W for 10sec? Maybe not. If my exertions are really high but short enough to not spike my HR, was there a stress response? This is probably so variable per person that it's hard to have any indicator. Maybe HR would work, but probably not. Hmmmmm...

 

[Daredevil]

I believe it does, and like u said quite variable between people .

Coaches look at both power and hr to determine if stress has been implemented.

I believe that if u do 500w for 10 seconds and ur Sprint is 800watt, then that will have more effect on stress than if ur 20sec power is 1200. Simple ratio's.

Ya, hr takes too long to catch up to effort to determine if stress has occurred in this scenario.

I do know that the fast guys ride slow on slow days and don't get wrapped up and play bike or think they feel ok to put in an effort over a small hill. They stick to the discipline.


I would think the other end of the discussion is why are u doing 300watt efforts if it *isn't* gonna aid ur progress. Do u need to stress to get faster? I'd imagine you do. Hence pushing it. How do u get faster without going past points of comfort. U can't right?


I don't think I'm getting my point idea across but I'm trying to say if u do 300watt effort, and it's not triggering stress, is it benefittng u to do so?

 

[stangmx13]

I would think the other end of the discussion is why are u doing 300watt efforts if it *isn't* gonna aid ur progress. Do u need to stress to get faster? I'd imagine you do. Hence pushing it. How do u get faster without going past points of comfort. U can't right?

I don't think I'm getting my point idea across but I'm trying to say if u do 300watt effort, and it's not triggering stress, is it benefittng u to do so?

Sorry, I didn't mean literally zero stress. There seems to be a distinct difference in stress between 200W for 10min and 1000W for 20sec. I meant the point of Zone2 is to not trigger the latter - I should have been more specific.

It seems that anything above power Z1 (0-50% FTP) will provide some stress that can produce some improvement. The top end of power Z2 seems to be the start of "Zone2", which may be very useful in training.

Here's another great source, so far the only first-person source.
[YouTube]pat3MPoK53dU[/YouTube]

 

[stangmx13]

I rode with Taylor Warren yesterday, a pro cyclist & coach that works for SourceEndurance. We chatted about coaching/training and the upcoming race season quite a bit. He got 19th in BWR SD this year and is training for a top 10 in 2023. After our whole convo, I am really tempted to pay him for coaching. The prices kinda seems like a steal, considering the $/hr commitment from the coach. HMMMM.
https://source-e.net

 

[Mike95060]

I finally have my bike set up for cobbler. The gearing feels sustainable but I’m nervous about my ability to finish a 90 mile gravel ride Thanks for the tire recommendation Robert. They felt really good up and down Nisene yesterday. I’m really impressed with how well they stayed hooked up on loose out of saddle climbs and they were confidence inspiring downhill

 

[stangmx13]

I finally have my bike set up for cobbler. The gearing feels sustainable but I’m nervous about my ability to finish a 90 mile gravel ride Thanks for the tire recommendation Robert. They felt really good up and down Nisene yesterday. I’m really impressed with how well they stayed hooked up on loose out of saddle climbs and they were confidence inspiring downhill

I don't even rem which tires you got... Conti Terra Speed 40C?

I got a set of Challenge Gateway 40C for my bday and will be mounting them up for this weekend. They have a little more rubber in the center, so hopefully they last longer than the Contis. Supposedly they roll just as fast too. They'll probably be my Cobbler tire unless I really hate them.

My 11-40 cassette is on the way now too.