Doing an easy ride on Rouvy, when I had to have a short break when my grandson, aged 2, came in. Restarted and realised that a rider called Steve_1955 was going to catch me on the final hill.
Wouldnât have been bothered normally but I guessed from his name that he was 2 years older than me and I wasnât having that !
Put the hammer down to get away and WOW a gold BT. Pleased as punch.
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Iâm just coming off 3.5 months of Keto diet, back to eating carbs. During the last 3 months Iâve been upping volume and intensity (thanks to ZRL races).
Result: three times in 8 days I had minor breakthroughs, on the indoor trainer, then smashed a climb on an outdoor ride hitting a gold breakthrough.
So in ten days:
- TP: +25w or 10%
- PP: +80w or 8.5%
- HIE: +5kj or 28%
Gotta be happy with those increases, itâs been a long time coming.
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Freshened up a stale signature. The new decay is much improved, but there seemed to be a TP/HIE mismatch, or maybe more accurate to say my TP decayed a bit too quickly.
I love using Ronnestad-ish efforts for breakthroughs, but Iâm also suspicious of the TP they spit out. Having said that, as soon as I get a chance to do longer efforts, they usually end up not as inflated as I thought.
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How did you get on with Keto? I did maybe 4 months last year - I found initially a c.15W drop in threshold, and definitely a lack of snap at the top end, but after a month or so my threshold was back around where Iâd expect it to be, though still with a reduced top-end.
Lost 15kg, never bonked on long rides with zero food, and managed my first sub-60min Alpe du Zwift thoughâŠ
Reckon Iâll do another few months Jan/Feb in prep for the Majorca 312 in April.
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Had a few weeks off the bike in which my signature reasonably dropped a bit. First ride back I had a silver BT thrashing up long hill, TP from 250 to 260 and PP up a bit, very slight drop on HIE.
Had a similar situation a couple of days later, silver BT on a climb, TP up another 10W for the ride to 270-odd and slight increase in PP.
My questions are:
- for that to be a Gold BT, how would the BT- period of the ride have to have differed?
- HIE seems to be the part of my signature that âsuffersâ the most through periods of inactivity or Z2 turboing. Is that just a thing, is it age-related (45) or is it more likely that itâs just a function of the training effect of my recent rides? Normally my HIE presents above TP on the fitness signature graph, whereas it is now below.
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I started Keto in August, probably had 3-4 months under 20g carbs per day, Iâm still very low carb but not counting, prob 30-90g per day. In regards to training it was hard at first, probably looked like this:
-
First month it was zone 2 only, anything above that wasnât sustainable. I learnt early on the need for electrolytes but still for the first 4 weeks I really just did zone 2
-
Second month I started to find zone 3/tempo doable, also started to find that I could ride tempo for long periods, probably longer than pre-keto. I was getting to the point where I could do some threshold and above but really only 30 second intervals or shorter⊠I think point I was ready to go back to carbs.
-
Third month it started to fall into place, suddently threshold and above was doable, I was getting my usual results in zwift races, so high intensity, etc. The weirdest thing was that I wasnât getting hungry, Iâd do a 100km outdoor ride and not be hungry, no drop in energy and sometimes forget to eat for a few hours after the rideâŠthis âfat adaptationâ seemed to be happening.
You can see from my breakthrough above that Iâm now getting breakthroughs on shorter 8-10 minute efforts and without any carbs, which beforehand I did not think was possible. It has been very interesting. The ânot getting hungryâ on long hard rides is odd, when everyone around me is taking gels, eating bars and handing out for the cafe stop.
Weight-wise I lost 10% body weight in 4-6 weeks, and another 5% after that, I actually dropped to 58kg⊠Iâm not staying at 60kg without any effort and eating lots of calories. This is 2-3kg below my normal âracing weightâ probably due to the drop in water retention via no-carbs⊠so without effort Iâm staying at racing weight.
Note that I have introduced carbs for race days and hard workouts, but in the meal before, ie 4-6 hours before which seems to work.
Itâs been interesting, Iâm not say Keto is great, but the lower carb thing is working for me now. Mainly becuase it keeps me away from processed carbs too many grains and forces me to eat a lot more veggies. Basoically in meals, I now replace my carb portion with more veggies, which must be healty?
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I only had a short window, so after recommending the Fitnesss Test for Breakthrough workout last week I thought I had better do it myself.
Very happy with the results. Smartens up my signature from 3 weeks ago.
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PP up 65 watts is quite impressive.
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This felt good after 4 days of rest. Hard to believe, but Xert has been spot on for the past three years. Iâll try a longer 20-30 min effort in the next few weeks.
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I got the breakthrough below today after completing a workout, bumping my TP with 15 W. My new signature ended at:
- TP: 329 W
- HIE: 10.3 kJ
- PP: 673 W
I suspect my TP is too high, and that my HIE is too low (I believe 10 kJ is outside the normal range).
The part of the workout where the breakout occurred consisted of 5 min at 361 W in ERG mode, which I was able to complete (actually at 362 W average). It was not easy, but I stopped because the interval was over.
What is the best way to challenge my HIE? I assume this can be best verified with multiple shorter intervals at e.g. 30-300 sec MMP with even shorter recoveries in between.
I prefer doing workouts and tests in ERG mode, but feel free to convince me otherwise 
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I think you also need to update PP / do a sprint⊠the new algorithm seems to more strictly link HIE with PP so being âonlyâ 600w may be an issue. I obviously donât know you but suspect you can do more.
(Seems a recurring theme in the forum since the update)
In the meantime you can try PP at 3 times threshold and hit extract for the same breakthrough�
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ZRL TTT with some weapons! Iâve been following AI planner with some stretch goals and had an easy day before this one. My legs felt great in the warm up so I knew it would be decent. Since 1st Jan Iâve gained around 25w and already within 10w of my XERT all time high TP. #trainingworks 
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Got this one today after deciding to give the Ramp Test (Zwift) a go just to see after a few weeks of trying XFAI.
Best FTP result I think Iâve ever gotten at 242W according to Zwift.
Also curious what this means as it seems a big change.
Itâs about a 47% HIE jump (16.4 to 24.1) and a drop in TP from 214 to 206. Also gave a 15% drop in LTP (146 down from 172). Previously was doing zone 2 very comfortably pushing 170-200 range.
I am guessing this is saying that I actually produce significant lactate from a lower power, am better at clearing it than thought (bigger L1 to L2 estimate effectively). Then MPA drop/fatigue is starting slightly earlier but more fatigue resistance (HIE) than realised. Does this sound right? Or does it seem a bit off?
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Is this your first BT in a while (since ~Nov)? It looks more like a signature âcorrectionâ if you will, rather than a Breakthrough. What is/was your Peak Power? Given your new HIE is 24 kJ, Iâm guessing youâre over the 1000/1100 W rangeâŠ
A higher HIE means that your MPA will drop more slowly at a fixed intensity above Threshold, compared to before (which also means that you have a larger capacity to ride above threshold). This also means that youâll see your LTP drop a bit, since you have a greater anaerobic contribution at all intensities.
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Not really a breakthrough, but I wanted to test my TP to see if I could actually hold it. Averaged 265 for about 30 min up the Epic to Radio Tower. Felt good and happy with the effort.
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Thanks, I suppose that fits with other tests and my own experience suggesting an âattackerâ profile of relatively high sprint and repeatable efforts, with a relatively low steady state/ max aerobic.
Definitely had been awhile. Thought there was a breakthrough in December too. But no longer annotated.
Peak power was and still is around 1108 watts.
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ZRL can always help
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