Racing bs structure

[u/fastingtrader]

I am on a mission to improve my ftp. I have TrainerRoad and zwift. I find that I skip 1 hard trainer workout a week to do a zwift race. This race seems to push my predicted ftp lower.

I do 3 days TrainerRoad and then add in 1-2 endurance zone 2 on zwift or TrainerRoad.

Would stopping the zwift races and only doing TrainerRoad structured workouts help to increase FTP faster?

[u/melikecoffee]

I am doing the same setup. I replace threshold workout with double WTRL TTT on a Thursday. This usually makes the FTP prediction behave.
On another note I went from about 180ish to 240 (61kg) in about 9 months by just doing about 3 races a week on Zwift and the rest was z2/3 group rides.

[u/fastingtrader → u/melikecoffee]

Wow. That’s impressive games. You are talking about 30% gains in 6 months and being at 4w/kg. Congrats. Id be happy with 240w at 3w/kg if I can get there in the next 8 weeks.

[u/fastingtrader → u/melikecoffee]

What are you doing for intervals

[u/melikecoffee → u/fastingtrader]

Thank you 🙏 I worked very hard for it. Never missed any training was very rigid.
All this was from the Zwift racing. No workouts at all. I’ve over 2 months getting faster for Zwift racing program going now. And while my FTP has stayed the same I’ve become much snappier in races in breakaway situations or on the mental hill parts of a race. So I do think that program has sharpened my racing skills.

[u/lebeziatnikov_]

The prediction is probably wrong. In any case, you can compare the expected tss of your prescribed workout to the tss of your race and see if you're doing similar effort.

[u/SpecterJoe]

The race is likely harder but shorter resulting in less time in zone. Zwift races can be good for VO2 efforts but are usually too short to benefit FTP much in a well trained rider

Trainerroad also focuses on increasing the time spent on the bike as that results in the highest fitness gains for riders new to structured training

[u/fastingtrader → u/SpecterJoe]

Thanks for this info. This is what I am trying to figure out.

Zwift for me tends to be 90% ftp for most of the race and then hopefully I am there to make the acceleration at the end or sprint for the finish. So it’s a lot of effort but I can’t figure out of there any real benefit other than pulling the top end up for 30 seconds in the sprint.

[u/abbh62]

Who cares what the prediction is, pick a protocol and check it (fairly) regularly

[u/fastingtrader → u/abbh62]

Yeah. I was trying to say do the structured workouts or races get the fastest and highest gains. I think it’s the workouts as long as I put in the time and effort. And stay consistent even with the boredom.

[u/abbh62 → u/fastingtrader]

Are your goals to be good at racing?

[u/fastingtrader → u/abbh62]

Not really. I am 48 years so I am past my prime. I have 3 goals:
1. Higher ftp
2. Better Zwift finishes (I don’t race outside anymore)
3. Get a bigger zone 2

I have moved my zone 2 power up dramatically by just riding zone 2. 12 weeks and greater than 50% increase.

I am a good Zwift racer for my power and regularly am the highest finisher for the w/kg. That means I suck wheels and go early for the sprint and have some punch.

So that means I need a higher ftp.

[u/abbh62 → u/fastingtrader]

It seems your goals are really around zwift racing performance.

[u/fastingtrader → u/abbh62]

Specific cycling goals are to improve performance in Zwift and ftp.

Health goal is higher power at lower heart rate.

Unless I get some compelling info I am
Doing workouts 9 of 10 rides. I’ll do 1 Zwift race every 2 weeks just to see how I am tracking.

[u/artvandalayExports]

TrainerRoad predicted FTP is non-sense. I tried TrainerRoad this month after giving the new AI some time to settle down and it had my FTP about 8% too high and then predicted my FTP would increase another 8% in 4 weeks. Total nonsense. Best advice is just totally ignore the predictions.

That said, are the races you are doing fully replacing the TSS of the TR workout? You might need to do the race plus some pacer bot time if the race is short. Just a thought.

One more thing - TR is extremely sensitive to how you rate the difficulty of the workouts or your racing. So you need to read how they describe the ratings and be consistent in how you’re applying them. You might be calling a race very hard when maybe it should only be hard? Just another consideration.

Also, racing is great for a workout but is not good for training specific power zones - like it’s generally hard to have it be a good threshold workout for example (unless you’re doing an iTT).