Another Tuesday, another time trial, another Breakthrough.
30 minute effort (yes, there was a warmup) that drained me. I was picturing championship finish lines, had nothing more. Short bit of recovery down the road, a couple threshold âsprintsâ, and then I come to the climb to get back home. MPA was still down, felt somewhat decent, so I went for it. All out, for a second time. Iâve not really done that before; usually do my TT effort and then maybe a couple short 10 second bursts going into cooldown.
I am a bit disappointed that I only got +3w (to 178w) though, with the several minutes spent with flatlinde MPA over three efforts.
Now this one is a bit strange. There is currently a contest which involves a weekly strava segment. So I went all in and Xert seems quite impressed by my effort. It was the longest (7:30) segment so far and I havenât done any long efforts recentlyâŠ
A group ride from Sunday which transformed in a competition between the stronger guys and ended with 1km sprint segment (where i got the BT) to empty the tanks
Understandable, but remember that MPA decays exponentially, so variances of a single Watt in threshold power can make a huge difference when youâre holding threshold power(ish) for 20+ minutes.
Are you referring to the big boost in Peak Power. Xert uses the logic that âif youâre able to sprint for XYZ watts after doing a hard effort for __ min, then your fresh peak power has to be much higher than it is currentlyâ. Hope that makes sense! Great effort @fantasticfuhr
Is so much easier to have a BT in a real life climb than in a trainer - Dhhhaaaa
Today the cosmos aligned and I had a massive BT.
I think the cause for this jump is that I now have a power meter on my bike (to oppose to a turbo trainer) and I was able to proper test my peak power.
I have compered before hand both power sources and they match perfectly. I have also tried to have a long BT and felt the same degree of difficulty to achieve one, so I believe the âbeing outsideâ factor doesnât impact much here.
This was a really short ride, with one hill where I went for it. I was surprised to see a 28 watt increase in my threshold power! Not sure whatâs going on hereâŠ
Iâm getting into what I could call âMaintenance BTâ mode at this point, with the +2w TP every week, just about matches up with the decrease from Optimal Decay setting. But⊠this one is another example of what you mention about PP going up even though I never came close to it.
Did a self-paced Seiler 4x8 session after I was warmed up but couldnât get EBC to find all my sensors. Also couldnât remember what the %TP was for the 4x8 session, so I started the first one at what I though I could hold for all four. Then brought that up a few watts for each following interval. Final one I was close and just went for it until I cracked, at about 8m30s for that interval. And then after a short recovery, went for an all-out max power sprint. Got a PP increase and a gnarly calf cramp for my efforts.
This would have been one. I was doing the Mountain 8 Route on Zwift and I was so close to having the Epic KOM polka dot jersey for like 2 min ( a guy was coming behind at like 5W/KG) butâŠthe radio climb is included in the badge which is before the end of the KOM. I was heart broken and stopped to scream for a brief pause. I wasnt trying for a breakthrough, but it was good to see and I felt I had more in the tank.
This is from the last weekendâs multi-stage race (1 ITT and then 2 group races over two days).
The first one is at the finish of the 2nd stage and the second one (actually a fakethrough, but still) is from the 3rd stage. The one from the 3rd stage was after a hard uphill section when the peloton split into pieces where I was scrambling to reach the lead group, which I eventually managed to do. Iâm fairly sure the last spike close to the end wouldâve been a breakthrough, but it was an uphill finish on a narrow road and I got closed off by slower riders and didnât get a chance to go full-power.
Another Tuesday Time Trial, another BT. Iâm seeing a pattern here.
Same course. Itâs âbasicallyâ flat, but the small little ups and downs make pacing smooth surprisingly tricky. Segment Hunter had my starting target at 185w for a 29min effort. Worked a bit above that and the target had dropped to 182w by the turnaround. Worked on holding closer to 190w on the way back. Heard the BT chime go off with about 3 minutes left, so I went for it from there, pushing best I could over 200w until I broke. Fun stuff.
Worked on âcooling downâ with LTP level effort. It felt so easy after the TT, but it was so hard to maintain too. Interesting quandary.
Excellent work on these TT"s! Fun to see you continue to progress!
LTP never really feel âeasyâ. I call it uncomfortably easy - itâs something that I can hold for a while, but certainly never for hours on end. It usually takes a bit of focus to consciously stay at that effort level.
The day I got the OK from the consultant after my accident I did my first Zwift TT race. Got a BT which I was pleased with . Hit the highest HR for 2 years, which is more to do with loss of fitness than effort. I am glad it was only a 13K TT though as I was hanging on at the end.
Fitness has undoubtedly dropped, my HR is much higher for the same effort and I have no PP to speak of. However I do expect lots of small , bronze breakthroughs in the next few weeks as I gradually get stronger.
I guess what I meant is, does it make sense that you had a 17w pop, despite your drop-off in fitness? One way that occurs to me that you could have a large increase like that is if you hadnât attempted a breakthrough for a very long time, so despite the dropoff in fitness, you still had more fitness than what you had at the last breakthrough attempt.
Congrats on the breakthrough - Excellent work! Was this on a group ride or solo?
Time for the good/bad news: I can already tell you have more to give! A difficulty score over 200 is extremely difficulty to get to with an accurate signature, so this would suggest that your threshold is still likely underestimated by a few watts at least. Keep up the good work, rest up, and see if you can get a few more watts on TP next time
No need to do 20 minute efforts to estimate Threshold anymore!
