Posted In: Be Gentle With Failure
Daily rolling with a pair of tune up fitness’s PLUS size balls has help me.
No more calf pain and tendons are the better for it too.
Isometric calf lifts progressing to 50% of body weight have helped as well.
I’ve had great success with La Sportiva’s Akasha: 6mm drop, neutral, high volume (I’ve a very wide foot).
– Garret
I don’t see any core in my Big Vert’s ME.
The ME warmup is a 20 min running warm up and then it’s straight into the ME.
The functional runner in the Big Vert has a couple of core exercises but it is replaced by hill sprints for those who have good hip stability.
– Garret.
You don’t need a big lap or loop for an AeT test.
Any flatish segment that you can repeat will do perfectly – just make sure you get a complete hour at your test AeT HR.
A short segment is great because you don’t have the problem of not having completed a full lap once the hour is up.
I don’t have any long route that flat enough for AeT tests so I just run repeats of a 2km segment that has a 20 m elevation loss/gain. It’s never to much more to complete my final lap once I hit the hour mark.
Perhaps your park has a playing pitch you could run laps around ?
The polar H9’s a great choice, I’ve found mine to be flawless.
– Garret
If your target event is on trails you’re best served by running long on trails.
I was wondering why you’re concerned that running trails would lead to overtraining ?
I’d be inclined to suggest agressively monitoring recovery levels, listening to your body and watching for the usual warning signs. Adjust your training plan as needed.
On a personal note, I’ve found that I do better with more recovery. I use a 3 week cycle of 2 build weeks and 1 recovery week. As a result I’ve had no significant injuries. It’s a marked contrast from the all to frequent overuse injuries I used to suffer when using the typical 4 week cycle (3 build, 1 recovery).
It makes hardly any difference to the overall duration of a 20 week plan.
I adjust my Uphill Athlete plans in training peaks accordingly.
– Garret.
Yes you’re correct you don’t have a a singlespeed 🙂
Singlespeed is a single chainring on the front and a single sprocket on the rear. So only 1 gear.
A few things to consider:
Are you using your running HRs and zones ? Your biking HR zones will be different to your running HR zones. Typcially, HR zones are significantly lower when on a bike.
Average HR isn’t a great metric when biking unless you’re riding flat roads with no wind. Both wind resistance and even small hills will introduce significant variation in power output and HR.
Power is the best way to measure intensity when cycling.
If you are planning on using cycling in the long term them a power meter (single crank or pedal type) is probably the best investment you can make. You can use the power meter when cycling outside and also indoors (with a turbo or smart trainer and a training app like trainer road, zwift and so on).
– Garret
Training Peaks and its metrics (like TSS and so on) are based on AnT (anerobic threshold). This is what it’s asking for.
So you’ll need to do an AnT test to find this and set it in Training Peaks.
You’ll also need your AnT if you’re using UA’s guidelines to determine if you should keep working on aerobic base or start to add in high intensity (the 10% test).
You can sill use training peaks without setting your AnT but the TSS scores and so on will not be accurate.
In Traning Peaks in a browser you can define your own zones. I have done this for running. I set up 5 running HR zones according to the UA method and use the UA numbering scheme too (0-4) . I’ve deleted the running pace zones and only use HR. Using pace based thresholds when running hills leads to misleading TSS scores.
– Garret
Hi Joe
In UA’s Big Vert Plan there’s two strength sesssions per week in the base.
One ME and one hill sprints (for specific strength). They are seperated by a number of days with zone 0 and zone 1 (recovery) runs.
I can vouch for Reed’s comment on the amount of recovery needed. Although, as I understand it, this depends on whether one is slow or fast twitch dominant.
– Garret.
Looking at my Big Vert plan …
The Pre-Activity is indeed the same but the Description field changes. There’s different %s of the target event’s vertical and distance.
– Garret
The plans stay in your library and you can keep using them without having to repurchase.
Hi Mark
Last year my real A event and the Big Vert plan were a step up from what I’d previously completed.
As I was unable to travel last year I created my own virtual B events and a single solo A event that replicated my real A event’s distance and vertical.
I found it help me test out and get a better understanding of the kind of tapering, event nutrition, and post event recovery that does and doesn’t work for me.
It was also a way to see if / how I could cope with the intensity (Z3, Z4) and volume of the specific weeks in the Big Vert. Turned out I couldn’t deal with some of it and now I know where I need to dial it back so don’t end up carrying an injury into a real A event.
If I had just kept working on my base I doubt I’d have learnt those lessons.
– Garret.
Some power and AeT data from the bike trainer:
FTP from a hard 45 minute mass start zwift race: 260 Watts
AeT from a 1 hour Pw:Hr drift test in erg mode: 205 Watts
Putting my power at AeT at the lower end of Coggan’s zone 3.
Looks like a bit more work on cycling aerobic base is required 🙂
HR at FTP is 10 bpm lower than my running AnT
HR at AeT is 15 bpm lower than my running AeT
Training peaks hrTSS and TSS are pretty close to each other at easy and hard efforts.
I’ve used it for mountain running without needing any gym equipment.
If your weather allows outdoor running and you’ve access to a hill for sprints it can all be done outdoors.
For the plan’s gym based ME I used a small backpack and bags of water for weight and a homemade box for step-ups.
Hi Reed
I’ve been comparing Training Peaks hrTSS and TSS for power based cycling on a turbo trainer.
The data I have so far is for a number of AnT intensity efforts of about 45 minutes duration.
My Training peaks hrTSS is within 2% of power TSS with the values being in the 75-80 range. HR drift also is less than 2%.
I don’t have lactate data but I have a good confidence in my threshold power and AnT HR estimates.
At the moment I suspect that because TSS’s definition is based on power whereas hrTSS is an approximation this may be a source of differences between hrTSS and power TSSat lower effort levels.
I’ll share results from AeT and lower intensity efforts when I get data for those.
– Garret
Hi Reed
I think Scott Semple’s saying that at an intensity between AeT and AnT one sees HR drift >= 5% but at AnT intensity on doesn’t see significant (> 5%) drift.
In a recent turbo trainer ride at AnT (based on estimated FTP) for 50 mins my HR drift was 3.5% which I think is what Scott S. is getting at. If I didn’t know better I could interpret that as having been at an intensity below AeT 🙂
– Garret
Hi Reed !
I was thinking …. if 180bpm is AnT then the test has been distorted because once you got to 180 there was no further increase possible.
I’ve seen Scott Semple comment, from time to time, on AeT test questions where he observers that if a test is at or close to AnT HR there’s low drift because AnT HR is a ceiling.
I wonder if in this case hrTSS is actually a better reflection of the actual stress.
The power based TSS for the hour following your warm up is around 45 and doesn’t vary much between the first and second 30 mins.
But by HR measurement you were close to 180bpm (AnT) for the final 30 mins which by definition should be a TSS of around 50 for those 30 mins.
If true then a significant difference between hrTSS and power TSS could be a really handy insight / indicator.
I’m experimenting with power based work on the turbo trainer and I am looking to see where my power at Hr AeT lies relative to FTP and the traditional % of FTP zones that are in the literature.
– Garret.
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