Little background, I haven’t been anywhere near good fitness in 8+ years, took most of that time off the bike until the last 2 years where I’ve been riding but never close to my former competitive self. I finally have the time and motivation to put in the work, just finished an 80+ hour 4 week stretch after being off the bike for most of the previous month due to vacation and surgery. I decided to set an event date for a gravel event I signed up for, though I’m primarily a road racer (punchy climber, technical crit racer).
Got a nice jump from todays 102 mile 8600 foot climbing ride in my numbers, prediction went way up for event on 1/28. The TP number is an number I’ve had before, just not sure I can attain it again by 1/28. Anyone else able to make a jump like that in ~ 5 weeks? I’ve just been doing LTP rides, planning to start incorporating 1-3 days of workouts starting next week. I’ve been on Xert for a couple of weeks trying to learn everything, feel like I’m ready to start doing the workouts.
The predictions you see assume you’ll sustain the chosen improvement rate until the Target Event Date. Moderate rates are generally sustainable but Extreme rates will require some additional recovery time allocation. You can either switch improvement rates as you progress to slow things down temporarily or just be conscious that you’ll need to “come up for air” i.e. return to blue status every so often to ensure you don’t dig yourself too deep a hole.
Accounting for this additional recovery will increase the likelihood of reaching the prediction.
You’re in Peak phase already while most of us are just starting Base.
Do you live Down Under or do you ride in any type of weather in order to put in 20 hrs/week?
I would guess the vast majority of us will hit our max hours per week well shy of 20 hours.
Extreme-2 is well, extreme. Useful for a block of intense training for some, but not many can hang there for very long. YMMV
I’m in Northern California in the foothills near Yosemite. It’s chilly in the morning but tolerable. I can’t stand riding a trainer so unless it’s an extended stormy period I don’t touch it, haven’t done zwift in a year.
Honestly I had no problem doing 20+ hours a week this last month. On the days I’ve been tired I rode a low endurance/recovery pace and was fine in 1-2 days. Finished off the 80 hour month with 102 mile/8600 climbing in 6:40 yesterday at 200 watt average (fell to 193 in town the last 10-15 minutes)
I’ve always done well with hours relative to my current fitness. I’ll have to see how I hold up moving forward now that I’m going to start incorporating 1-3 days of Interval workouts.
Thanks. I’m keeping an eye on status to make sure I’m not over doing it. The event I set is early season like I said, I don’t really care how I do just wanted to have a target to get my fitness up. If I only get half way to the prediction by then I’ll be happy, was just wondering how accurate the system is in predicting. Also, I’m assuming If I picked another target date after this first one sometime in the near future the system will give me another prediction based on my fitness at that time. However, The system can’t know what my physiological maximum is, I’m assuming anyways. Thoughts?
I’ve never actually tried to train up my numbers to a maximum attainable. I’ve never been able to focus on training for more than a 2-3 month period of time. Once I was fit enough and competitive in the races I would just race until I achieved the season goals then hang it up for the next year.
I’d actually like to see what I’m capable of this time around.
