Nice 20 min PR tonight after coming down from a stomach bug all weekend. Emma is my favorite instructor by far. Love her music and classes overall.
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Was it the hip hop class from last night? If so, great playlist, as it was a late class change inspired by the halftime show. Also, completely agree that she was on a different level of annoyance; seemed like she’d much rather chat about LA/dance than lead the class
I thought some my be interesting in Nils van der Poel’s training manifesto. He just won double gold in the 5k and 10k long-track speed skating including smashing the WR in the 10k. I knew there was a good bit of overlap between the two speed skating and cycling but not the extent this training plan implies. Clara Hughes won 2 bronze medal in road cycling in Atlanta '96 then 4 medals in speed skating from '02-'10 amongst other crossover athletes. I figured it was merely a similarity in attributes that allowed athletes to transition but NvdP spends 31 of 33 training hours in his aerobic base building season cycling (2 hours XC roller skiing). It seems that there is a very direct carry-over. He basically doesn’t skate for 6 months a year it seems and he does no strength training. The time spent in the saddle is awe-inspiring.
There’s not hint what his FTP numbers might look like but I’d hazard a guess of low-to-mid 500 watt average (600+ kjs). 85 kg with somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 watts/kg. He spends most of his 6-7 hour training sessions at roughly 50% of his FTP.
This isn’t super relevant to anyones training plans, no non-endurance professional has the time to dedicate to such a plan and 6 hours at 50% FTP on an exercise bike sounds like a special kind of hell. And NvdP’s training regimen is a bit of an anomaly anyways.
But I thought it would be interesting to share what sort of numbers a truly elite athlete cruises at. A good reminder that minutes in the saddle add up and intensity is not the be-all, end-all.
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Did my 1000th ride this morning. Did a live ride with Leanne before work and she ended up giving me 2 shoutouts, 1 at the start and 1 at the end. She must have forgotten the first one?
Was a tough ride.
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Congrats! I’ve definitely heard instructors do that before. I just hit 800 so I’m coming for ya. Gonna be a minute before I get there!
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This is really interesting… if I’m following then 50% of one’s FTP is basically top of Zone 1/bottom of Zone 2 using the Peloton PZ scale. I know someone like Peter Attia has a bit different approach to Zone 2 training but it’s gotta be in the ballpark. That would take some serious mental fortitude to spend hours at a time at that level of effort.
Examples like this are just so amazing. It just illustrates how world class athletes are not simply on a different planet from the rest of us, but a completely different galaxy. Thanks for sharing.
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Yeah top of z1 is 55% of ftp. I sometimes do z1 as recovery and its boring as shit. Its a little better outside but still pretty boring
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The boredom is what stood out to me. And 4x30’ @408 watts.
I presume 2 sets of 3x8 30’ laps is unreal but I’ve never skated an oval.
I did a 75 min PZE only in z2 to spare my legs and it was so, so boring
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I had signed up for this beta programme but never did any testing. This just appeared on my Instagram. Anybody tried this?
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FYI, just realized Emma did TWO 20 min rides on 11/11/21 - looks like I already did the Rock Ride back in December, so I’ll be doing the Hip Hop ride today.
Here’s the article: Fitness Meets Gaming: Welcome to Peloton Lanebreak | The Output
I am looking forward to giving it a shot. Definitely a way for them to reduce needing instructor led content.
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I just read through the email/demo on the website, and this was my exact initial thought.
I might try it, but I can’t imagine it’ll be my preferred method.
This is more of a personal thing than anything else, but does anyone else find they have a hard time being patient enough with progress?
I guess I should preface this by saying that I really haven’t had too too many periods in my life where I worked out as consistently as I should. Definitely towards the end of college and right after, but that’s about it. So an element is certainly lack of familiarity.
But for example, I PR’ed for a 30min ride at the beginning of the month, and I haven’t been able to get too close to surpassing that yet. A large element is just that the PR class was a hard one with a lot of climbs, so even if I am doing classes above the recommended resistance, unless I add in a climb on my own, it’s still the same amount.
But I have found it pretty frustrating. Certainly not like I want to quit or anything, but I am trying to do better and improve, of course. I was hoping I’d be pretty consistently in the 300s on 30min rides after that PR, but I am just not there yet on a consistent basis.
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Only reason I got a Peloton was to recreate the spin classes I used to go to at Equinox. Dynamic leaderboard visualizations in the room, racing against other teams/people and getting huge video playback of the races and stats.
I’ll take this over an instructor 10 times out of 10 if it’s anything like that.
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Have you done an FTP ride?
FTP & Power Zones:
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I have not yet. Perhaps that is the next logical step. No real reason honestly, I have been meaning to look into them but haven’t done it for whatever reason.
I think I did something with Matt that had to do with that literally one of the first days I had the bike, but that was mostly me going in totally ignorant and figuring things out.
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Yes absolutely do this. I did this week’s ride last night, which was my first non-power zone ride in five weeks. My approach was to get a good sweat but not go nuts. My 20 minute non-FTP PR is 201 and last night my output was 195 and let me tell you, I had plentyyyyyyy left in the tank. Eventually you’ll hit a wall and doing a PZ program is a wonderful way to break through that.
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