The counter attack, part II (Skillz and Drillz – February 1)

Today’s lesson was a continuation of last week’s introduction to counter attacking. We focused only on one of the two types of counter attacks, the “catch and counter,” and the ensuing effort needed to successfully get away. Being that I am traveling for work, I again ran into some technical issues, but we worked through it. Unfortunately, I was not able to type everything in the Zwift messenger, but it got sent over Discord to those on the app. To see a replay of what we did click here (be advised, though, that some of the music may have some adult language.)

Like I said earlier, I am on travel and attempted to run SDR from my phone while running laps around the park near where I was staying. It worked great for about 20 minutes, and then my battery was consumed. Had to run back to the room to plug in and finish off the class on Discord. In this case, it was ok, as the ride was not one that I designed for the group to stay together. In fact, the focus of the class lent itself to many more splits in the group, which I know was frustrating to some folks. But, not every SDR is the same, and some classes have a greater emphasis on the individual effort.

The Warmup

As usual, we left the starting pen at a 1.5 W/kg pace for our warm-up and practice maintaining position in the group. Today’s crew did a fantastic job staying together with only a few people going off the front. Maybe it was fear of the impending doom of the workout, but more probably folks were just following instructions. After our warm-up period ended, we began the class in earnest. To begin our counter attack work, I again implemented a 3.0 W/kg threshold cap. This cap would only be in place for the first few iterations, but it was necessary for the initial instructional portion of the class.

Part 1

Last week we discussed how to recognize the time to launch a counter attack, and we practiced the initial launch of the counter. This week, we focused on the actual effort needed to launch a counter attack. Too often, riders launch an attack or counter attack only having thought of the initial move. Thinking of the initial move is great, but it is only a very small portion of the actual effort. The best way to think about the effort is to visualize the start of every IRL crit and most Zwift races, crazy hard for a few minutes, followed by really hard, and settling into hard. Understanding how much effort one needs to put out and for how long is key to preventing a premature implosion. Here is how we attacked it.

Keeping the group together, we ramped up our effort from a 2.5 to a 3.0 W/kg over a one minute time period. This simulated the chase closing in on the break and us moving up the field to launch. Once we “caught our breakaway” we lifted the pace to a 3.2 W/kg effort for a minute. This simulated the 105-110% of FTP effort that you will likely need to do to get away from the field. After the one minute, we settled back into our 3.0 FTP effort for one minute to simulate consolidation of our gap and then further dropped to our 95% effort for a minute to simulate our sustained effort. We repeated a few times before I removed the artificial FTP cap to begin the real meat of the class.

Part 2

Before I go into the next portion of what we did, let me explain the logic behind the effort breakdown. A counter attack, like any attack, can be broken down into three phases: the escape, the consolidation, and sustainment.

Escape

The escape phase is simply the phase where a rider attempts to go off the front of a group. More often than not, this phase starts with an explosive surge to create an initial gap followed by an effort of at least 105-110% of FTP. The more determined the group is to not let an escape go, the harder a rider must go to create a sizeable gap. However, around 110% of FTP for a few minutes is usually sufficient to reduce the chasers to a small group or discourage any full-on chase at all. Just remember, the escape phase is only the first phase of the move. Staying too long at the super-threshold level exacts a toll on the body, possibly not leaving enough strength for consolidation or sustainment.

Consolidation

The consolidation phase immediately follows the escape phase. During consolidation, a rider can expect to be riding at or just above FTP for an extended period of time. The purpose of this phase is to continue to expand the gap, albeit likely at a slower rate than during the escape phase, and make it clear to the chasers that the attacker is not going to give back the hard-won gap without a significant fight. I view the consolidation phase as the key phase in any move. Sure a strong attack can get a rider clear rather quickly, but if that rider begins to fade immediately, the chasers will have the confidence to pull the attacker back in rather short order. However, if the gap continues to grow during the consolidation phase, you may be able to break the will of the chasers, especially if the pace has been pretty hot for a while. Seeing that a chasing effort is having no effect often leads the group to throw in the towel and slow the pace just enough to seal their fate, reducing their aspirations to sprinting for the lesser placings.

Sustainment

Once the gap has been consolidated, the move transitions to the sustainment phase. During the sustainment phase, the riders off the front need to maintain a hard enough pace that any progress made by the chasers is slow and requiring significant effort. Losing one or two seconds per mile is not usually significant enough to inspire a chase group to go deep into the pain bank for a monster withdrawal. However, if the attackers begin giving up 20 seconds per mile or more, then the chase group will smell the weakness and unleash a fury that will lead to a catch and likely a drop of the attacking group. Therefore, riders must be cognizant of how hard they can hold and keep that motivation going, or the previous hard work will have been for naught.

To demonstrate these efforts, I laid out the following profile: 2 minutes at 90% of FTP, building to 100% inside the last minute, 3 minutes at 105-110% of FTP for the escape phase, 2 minutes of 100% FTP for the consolidation phase, and 2 minutes at 95% of FTP for the sustainment phase. Obviously, the timing on each phase does not necessarily reflect every race, but it is a pretty typical profile of the beginning of most Zwift races. We executed two of these iterations with 3 minutes of easy spin in between to try to get the legs to clear out some of the lactic acid and let the heart rate return to normal. Most of what could be heard on Discord during these two efforts was grunting and heavy breathing, so everyone seemed to understand the sensations that accompany this type of counter attack.

The Cooldown

After the second iteration, we cooled down with some easy spinning and talked through the execution of this type of counter attack. Obviously, the duration one will spend in each phase is dependent on the reaction from the group and how many people you are willing to take with you. Progress through the phases is not completely linear. You may have to step back into the escape phase if the group that made the jump with you is too big or the gap to the main chase group is too small. The consolidation phase may take ten minutes if the chasers are determined to not let you go, or it could take 30 seconds if the escape phase was so devastating that nobody wants to chase (or possibly you had teammates blocking the chase). Do not maintain a rigid plan for your counter attack. You will just have to see how it unfolds.

Looking Ahead

During the next Castelli SkillZ and DrillZ Ride, we will finish off our series on counter attacking and focus on launching the counter during the “lull” in the pace of the peloton. Like this week, it will definitely have more of a workout feel than purely a class feel. On 15 February, we will return to the more traditional class and focus on working in a pace line, and we will return to a live stream on Facebook. As always, thanks to Castelli Cycling for providing one lucky SDR rider some free swag and the impressive virtual kits for the class. I hope that everyone is having a productive winter of training on Zwift, and until next class, Ride On!

Watts up with Power? ride summary for February 8th

Justin Wagner of TeamODZ leads the “Watts up with Power?” ride each Wednesday at 6:30AM PST.

The “Watts up with Power?” ride is likely the slowest group ride you’ll find on Zwift, because it focuses on learning the basics of power based training while riding together on Zwift.  Each ride is streamed live to Zwift LIVE on Facebook and focuses on teaching specific principles of power based training. Each teaching is made available for all to review afterwards.

The content taught in “Watts up with Power?” is based on the book “Training and Racing with a Power Meter” by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan, PhD.

Here is the summary for Wednesday February 8th.

In power-based training, the holy grail is to be able to plan your training perfectly so you can peak at the right time for the race that is most important to you. Doing this is quite achievable, yet requires some fundamental knowledge of concepts such as Normalized Power (NP), Intensity Factor (IF), and Training Stress Score (TSS) to be able to achieve that training goal. In this week’s lesson we dive into the definition of each of these concepts so that you can fully understand them and how they apply to your training.

Normalized Power takes into account the variability of your power output during a ride, in order to quantify the physiological “cost” that comes from highly variable power output, as compared to steady power output that would result in the same average power. Intensity Factor builds upon Normalized Power, and expresses Normalized Power as a ratio of your FTP. Training Stress Score takes duration and intensity into account in order to quantify the total training load put onto the body, and is used as the foundation for long term training planning.

This week’s lesson was based on Chapter 7 of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter” by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan, PhD, titled “Interpreting the Data.”

All aboard the WBR Banter Bus

I never trust stairs…
They’re always up to something.

Hands up all those who want to come back day after day to a cold impersonal environment where you feel little or no connection to those around you (and, no, I’m not talking about work.)

Training is the sometimes painfully slow process of making incremental gains: there is no single group ride or training session that contains that magic bullet or the mythical key to success. Training needs to be regular, consistent and varied. Over time riders will see the benefits but it takes time and that means that motivation needs to maintained.

Group rides / training sessions are an excellent way of improving one’s ability as a cyclist: there is something about the camaraderie and mutual suffering that eases the loneliness of an indoor training session. We may all be based in our individual pain caves and spread far and wide across the globe but we share that togetherness of training and racing: kindred souls brought together in a virtual world.

The key, however, is coming back time and time again.

Team WBR have a huge number of regulars on our rides: we believe that the spirit of camaraderie that we foster is one of the reasons for that. All ride leaders will do their best to encourage new riders to the group but camaraderie is a factor which was put into the driving seat of the ‘Banter Bus’ which departs every Monday under the leadership of Chris ‘Speilberg’ Radley.

There will be of a shorter duration than normal but there will also be a lot of #badjokes… frankly, the bigger the groan factor the better!

Q: Why did the banker have to quit his job?
A: He lost interest 🙂

Why do we do this?

Quite simply to break down barriers… the training environment is incredibly important: not everyone will tell jokes but hopefully everyone is cringing together and gradually we foster a sense of togetherness (shared suffering of these awful jokes) which will stand the group in good stead for the days / weeks / months ahead…

What’s furry and minty?
A polo bear 🙂

Watts up with Power? ride summary for February 1st

Justin Wagner of TeamODZ leads the “Watts up with Power?” ride each Wednesday at 6:30AM PST.

The “Watts up with Power?” ride is likely the slowest group ride you’ll find on Zwift, because it focuses on learning the basics of power based training while riding together on Zwift.  Each ride is streamed live to Zwift LIVE on Facebook and focuses on teaching specific principles of power based training. Each teaching is made available for all to review afterwards.

The content taught in “Watts up with Power?” is based on the book “Training and Racing with a Power Meter” by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan, PhD.

Here is the summary for Wednesday February 1st.

As these lessons progress you will be finding yourself asking questions like, “So what should I do with all of this information?”  Rest assured that information overload is NOT the goal!  There is a fundamental reason we teach these concepts: so you can quantify your training in order to better understand yourself and your performance.

This week’s lesson drills down on a few different data analysis techniques.  Specifically Power and Cadence distribution charts are covered, discussing what specific differences should be visible in these charts between a trainer based workout and an outdoor 205 mile long race.  In addition, we discuss how the power distribution chart is a good feedback mechanism to determine how well your performance on a specific workout matched up to the prescribed efforts.

The Critical Power (CP) chart is covered in detail, paying particular attention to how the critical power chart is used to develop a pacing strategy for time trial races.

Next in the lesson, we take a deep dive into using Strava segments as a way to compare hill repeats in a particular workout, or on workouts on different days, and we see how wind can be a HUGE factor in performances, even on hills.

Several other data analysis techniques are covered in the book, so be sure to grab a copy of the book and give chapter 6 a read, there is plenty of more good detail that just can’t be covered in a 15 minute lesson.

This week’s lesson was based on Chapter 6 of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter” by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan, PhD, titled “Interpreting the Data”