More than a year I think it’s day 508 today and I’ve done 275 hours so far in 2026, I have improved in base fitness I think but I am struggling to unlock the higher power efforts I could do last year at the moment.
I do eat while riding though probably not enough, I haven’t bonked this year yet on a ride. I could probably improve my carb intake amount but I do eat during every ride.
maybe this can give you a better clue. Do you also ride your easy rides at the same heart rate as last year?
In order to understand how hard you are riding, can you share a plot of an activity where you are riding around TP for at least 10 min? This is best done at an indoor trainer or up a steady longer hill. The chart should have power and HR. Also, what is your max cycling HR?
I’m not sure about the heart rate to be honest I think it’s broadly similar.
I haven’t done a 10 minute effort like this at all in the last year, this year so far I’ve just followed magic buckets which if I break it down into the colours it displays for wattage ranges consists of mostly blue with a bit of green and short bursts of yellow and orange.
I think my max HR is about 192
Right. But any stable harder effort for a longer duration should work to be able to get an impression of your percentage of HR vs percentage of TP.
Sorry I dunno how I managed to miss read what you said there 
I don’t have an indoor trainer I’ll have to try and think of somewhere I can have an uninterrupted 10 minutes outside somehow
You dont need to do anything new. I was just curious to see where your HR ended up on endurance rides.
Edit: best I can do if share a 5 hour ride I did recently
I tried on Monday to do a 10 minute effort, I had done a number of really easy days so my status was very fresh. I was really struggling after a couple minutes as my legs were burning managed to get to about 5 minutes then a plug popped out of my rear tyre so had to stop but I wouldn’t have made 10 minutes anyway.
View the activity on Xert.
Select Share, Public in upper right and post the url.
Thanks.
I see most of your ride were at 100-150 W or so. Your heart rate at 140 bpm, while the highest was 176 bpm. Not sure what your actual max HR is, but this can be hard enough if 176 bpm is near your max HR. And then you had a few sprints spread through the ride.
Have you tried finding a long hill and going all out? Ideally at least 10 minutes long at max speed, but a shorter might also work.
It looks like all your sprints are too short and too much spread out to trigger a breakthrough.
It could also be that you have the power to ride faster, but the narrow and winding roads might make it hard to safely ride any faster.
Generally if I do a long ride at around zone 2/zone 3 power my heart rate will start off hovering between 120-140 then as the ride goes on it gradually raises to over 150, my max on this breakthrough attempt the other day was 192
I tried to hold around 200 watts for 10 minutes on monday and my legs were not having it at all even though I was “very fresh”, I got a flat after a few minutes and had to stop during the effort but wouldn’t have got to 10 minutes anyway. Its my legs preventing me going harder I need to find out why they are chronically fatigued even after a string of easy days.
The road around here aren’t great to be honest i struggle to hold zone 2 for long periods even because of the potholes and general nature of the area.
Hi Lozi,
I think there’s a lot of good info from others in this thread but wanted to chime in on a few things.
First off your progression chart shows your threshold power growing from under 150 to around 200 over the course of this year at a steady rate. That definitely shows improvement in your fitness. The more fit you get, the harder you will have to work to raise threshold power. Also since you are on the declining side of the age+fitness curve, gaining and maximizing your fitness is more difficult than other people who may be younger.
You can’t compare your heart rate metrics to anyone else’s heart rate metrics with any real meaning. Heart rate is entirely personal to your individual physiology. Maybe if someone shared your same resting heart rate and same maximum heart rate, had the same body size, mass, age, and fitness level you could possibly look at similarities, but from my understanding everyone’s body is sufficiently different that in general cross-body heart rate comparisons are essentially meaningless. I’m sure Armando or another sports physiologist could provide more info.
Also, regarding FTP / TP comparisons - they are also tough to compare to others when only looking at a single metric. Comparing different people, W/kg is a better metric to use, and your estimate @ 190W / 67kg = 2.8W/kg which is nothing to shake a stick at. Could a 25-year-old who spends 3 days a week doing squats at the gym but doesn’t ride a bike beat that? Maybe, but again comparisons don’t matter unless they’re apples-to-apples. So much of cycling and training is about self-improvement. It can be fun to compare to others, but just looking at some fitness numbers strips out so many variables that tell the real story - like you having biked every day contiguously for 1.5 years - seriously impressive!
I looked at the ride data you posted, and aside from the breakthrough attempt and a couple intervals, most of the riding shown is ~50% threshold power, with very few MPA drawdowns which puts it in the low intensity / cardio category. That should be around your lower threshold power, AKA your long-slow-distance power that you can sustain all day. I don’t know if these are representative of typical training rides, but I think if you want to be increasing your threshold power more, you need to be doing more like 80% TP with some intervals at or above TP. If TP increase is your goal, then maybe you should try one of the goal-oriented programs: e.g.
Maybe a more defined workout plan with some shorter iterations and metric-based goals will help you mentally feel like you are progressing more.
I’m a similar age, weight, and fitness as you, and also prefer a more structured schedule of training. I understand the importance of maintaining the schedule for fear of skipping a day leading to a cascade of falling off the cliff. I do however wonder if you are getting enough rest and recovery or have overtrained, and are getting enough fuel during longer rides as was mentioned before. You don’t have to skip a day riding, but make sure your “rest” day really is an easy ride and don’t push it. Like heart rate zone 1 / lower zone 2. When I toggle the altitude on in your ride data, it kind of looks like you’re bonking partway up climbs. You have a nice spike of TP+ power at the start, and then drop down to ~50% TP for the remainder on a lot of hills. That looks like you’re at your limit and not fresh. Make sure you’re getting enough calories on your multi-hour rides and enough recovery time between big rides or workouts. The power drop-off mid-climb could be for any number of reasons, including something not directly related to training, but maybe something above will help you find an area to improve.
Overall you’ve been steadily growing your fitness, which is more than a lot of people can say including myself this year.
Hopefully someone else will correct me if I’ve said anything less than factual above.
Riding your bike and training gives your body the opportunity to get fitter and stronger. Resting enables your body to adapt and get fitter and faster. You need to to put one or two rest days into your week to enable you to recover and adapt to the training stimulus you are giving it.
Thanks for the thoughtful detailed reply.
I get what you are saying but there is an arbitrary level I would be fairly happy with it isn’t in comparison to anyone it’s just what seems quite a good level to me.
I see what you are saying about my training, to be honest I’ve just blindly followed whatever is in front of me so I think magic buckets all the time might not be a good strategy for someone like me who tries to just follow whatever it says exactly. With XMB It basically tells me to do zone 2 power with short not particularly high wattage intervals all the time so that’s exactly what I’ve been doing and only that! It’s clear I need to do longer stronger efforts which I do struggle with probably because I haven’t been doing any for a long time.
my rest day rides are typically extremely easy, the past few weeks I’ve been in a rut not doing anything in particular or a large volume due to my bike needing some work and losing the spark for it when my plan ended. I also have had this weird issue with quite a bit of pain around my ribs on the LHS which has gone on for a couple weeks so I’m not comfortable pushing at the moment.
The hill thing you mention is probably mental on my part rather than losing strength I’m probably just giving up.
Nutrition is definitely something I need to explore as I don’t have a strategy currently at all on or off the bike, before, during or after rides I just eat when I feel like it no rhyme or reason the same goes for fluids. I haven’t mentioned this at all I guess because I forget it’s probably an issue but I don’t have a large bowel, it was removed completely in 2011 so that certainly will have an effect on nutrition absorption and hydration etc.
I also don’t do any stretching whatsoever mainly because years ago I always felt I got injured when I did, this probably has an effect on my insane leg fatigue etc
Thanks a lot of your input I really appreciate it I need to get the bike fixed and work out a new strategy with the program and nutrition etc so I can dive back in and have a better go at it!
