After a very successful “Couch to Cat C” project, Boone is now well into the next training block: one we originally dubbed “C to Shining C”, but have since renamed simply “C to B”, as our new goal is to see him hit 3.2 w/kg in his ramp FTP test.
Here’s how week 4 unfolded…
The Plan
As a reminder: the basic plan we’ve settled on for the 6 weeks contains a mix of four different types of rides. (Many thanks to Alan Dempsey of HPP Coaching for giving us solid advice that sets Boone up for success).
- Races: Boone will race the C’s every week or two to check his progress, work on race craft, and of course get in a good workout.
- VO2 Workouts: this will be the cornerstone workout of each week. Nobody likes VO2 work, but we both agree Boone is getting a lot of benefit from these.
- Pace Partner Intervals: we’ll use the Pace Partners (Diesel or Cadence) to anchor a fun, interactive interval workout. Warm up with the pace partner, then sprint off the front for 15s. Or drop off the back, and put in a measured 2-minute effort to get back on. Lots of options here.
- FTP Ramp Tests: we’ll do at least two ramp tests to measure FTP progress.
- Recovery Rides: some days, Boone will just need an easier effort in the saddle. Since he’s still a beginning cyclist, even easy efforts are far from wasted.
Ride 12: Longest Yet
Today’s goal was simple: to set new distance and duration PRs. Boone’s previous longest ride lasted 1:17, and he hadn’t yet broken the 30-mile barrier. Time for that to change!
We jumped in with the C. Cadence peloton – Boone on his Wahoo KICKR Bike and me on my trusty Roubaix + KICKR v5. And he killed it!
In his first ride with C. Cadence, sometime in early February, Boone lasted about 25 minutes before he blew up. This time, 6-7 weeks later, he rode for 85 minutes, averaging 223W. And when he was done, he wasn’t destroyed like that first time. Instead, he proclaimed that he felt great. Ah, that Type II fun feeling!
Boone even scored the “Bigger than Jensie” badge – which is quite doable in the C. Cadence group, if you ride long enough. Everyone there is quite generous with Ride Ons!
The only bummer on this ride was Boone breaking the bolt of the quick release adjuster for his KICKR Bike’s handlebar height. We both agree this is the most obvious design flaw of the bike – because that quick release needs to be so friggin’ tight in order for the handlebars to be stable… it’s just a matter of time before the quick release gets broken, if you’re adjusting things very often.
Wahoo, of course, is shipping us a new one. Their customer support has always been top-notch.
Ride 13: Another Long Ride with C. Cadence
This was a fast day for Boone (not a day to ride fast, but a day to not eat much of anything.) As such, we wanted to keep the watts low, since the glycogen stores were already a depleted and a race-level effort or VO2 workout would have been a non-starter.
So we jumped in with C. Cadence again, for an “easy” 27+ miles and 70 minutes. He did some high-cadence spinups during this ride, working on getting those muscles to fire efficiently. He also worked on out of the saddle efforts, just getting that motion dialed in (and giving his butt a rest).
The long rides aren’t particularly exciting, but Boone is building endurance which will serve him well in long races. And he likes the calorie burn too, as he continues to work on dropping extra pounds.
Ride 14: V02
It was time for Boone’s weekly sufferfest: the VO2 session. This would be his first VO2 session since updating his FTP from 278 to 294… which meant the VO2 intervals jumped from 320W to 340W!
Could he handle it? Only one way to find out. But I tweaked the timings a bit, just to give him a chance – 3 minutes at VO2, then 3:30 recovery.
I didn’t join him for this workout – conveniently, I had led Sprintapalooza that morning, and had a long ride planned the next day. I didn’t want to fatigue myself going into that. Also, I didn’t want to do a VO2 workout.
He completed the first interval – but I could tell from what I was seeing and hearing that it took just about all he had. There was no way he had four more 340W intervals in him!
So I adjusted the FTP bias down to 95%, putting the interval at 320W. This was still 110% of his FTP, within the window of what’s considered a VO2 effort. He completed the next two at 320W, then I dropped the bias to 90% (305W) for the last interval and a half.
We debriefed afterward, and couldn’t decide if the first interval just burned him up, if he was under-fueled, or if he was just having an off day. I think it was a combination of the first two. He’s getting to the point where his hard efforts are tough enough that he won’t be able to complete them if his glycogen stores aren’t topped up, so he’s going to have to consider that moving forward.
Ride 15: Biking with Bowie
For the week’s final session, we wanted to get Boone into Bowie Brevet’s pain train, to see how long he could hang in. Jumping from C. Cadence to Bowie Brevet is a solid step up in terms of effort – here’s the difference between the two bots:
- C. Cadence: 65kg rider holding 2.5w/kg (163W)
- Bowie Brevet: 82kg rider holding 3.2w/kg (262W)
Of course, sitting in the pack requires different effort than what’s above. The C. Cadence pack chugs along around 40kph, while Bowie’s clan is closer to 43kph.
For me, riding with C. Cadence requires averaging about ~190W, while Bowie Brevet is more like ~225W. For Boone, it meant going from around 225W to 285W. That’s a big jump! (He didn’t help things by poking his nose into the wind a fair amount.)
I told Boone that riding with Bowie is about like riding a C race – maybe just a notch lower, and without the hard start. Which is actually pretty cool, if you think about it. In Bowie Brevet, C riders have an always-on C race they can jump into whenever they’d like.
We had a technical glitch on this ride – the KICKR Bike mysteriously changed its groupset settings, and since Boone wasn’t familiar with Di2, he got dropped in Titans Grove trying to find his gears. So we both stopped and I opened up the Wahoo app, set it back to Etap, and we used Zwift’s fancy new Return to Home functionality to exit the ride and rejoin Bowie.
In the end, Boone rode for Bowie for 25 minutes. Not bad for his first try. Then we did some free-riding around Watopia, finishing with me leading Boone out on Watopia’s reverse sprint so he could grab his first-ever green jersey. Victory! He hit 800+ watts after over an hour of riding, which is no small thing.
See the 2nd part of this ride on Strava >
Week 4 Takeaways
This week was all about lengthening the rides, and Boone did really well. He’s able to sit in and maintain solid tempo pace for a good length of time now, which means he’s building that aerobic endurance and mental toughness.
This week’s VO2 session was a real sufferfest, so we’ll tweak things for next week. I think we’ll make sure Boone comes into it adequately fueled, then we’ll leave the intervals at 320W, and give him equal VO2+ recovery time (perhaps 3 minutes each). This should be tough but doable, and if he’s able to complete it, we can look at bumping that VO2 wattage up to perhaps 325 next time.
Questions or Comments?
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