I am currently on the second week of SSB3 and have questions on the weekend/outdoor rides. There is a TSS value shown in training peaks which does not always match what is in the notes, e.g. second week Saturday shows 243 on the calendar and 115 in the notes for 4 hours. Are we targeting TSS, duration, or time in SS? Also should mention, my previous weekend of sweet-spotting had me at about 50TSS/hr, so I think I would be pretty hard-pressed to get 243 in 4 hours.
Thanks,
David Collins
Sorry about the confusion on that. You should complete the duration and get as close to the planned TSS as you can, not what is in the notes, that is an error. So with a hard sweet spot ride you should try to do 55 - 65 TSS / hour. I know it can be a challenge but that should be the goal. The longer the ride the lower that TSS per hour number will most likely come out as you will have more zone 2 time. Do long segments where you hold sweet spot, can be climbing a hill bottom to top, or just on the flats, depending on where you live. Mix in these efforts that are 8 - 20 minutes in duration. Really should just continue to try to increase the total amount of time in sweet spot. 45 minutes, 60 minutes, 75 minutes and 90 minutes.
Thanks for the clarification. The terrain here in Kansas is undulating and the longest climbs are probably 5 minutes at best, so 20 minute sweet-spot intervals outside are tough to accomplish. If I can find a flat stretch of gravel, I found that I was able to keep my power high enough.
I have read that article and am doing my best to keep track of time in sweet-spot during the ride. My Garmin has fields for time in zone, which are the traditional zones. I can’t seem to add a custom zone for 84-97% of FTP without messing up the other zones. Any ideas there? I may have found a custom data-field that would work, but am wondering what others are doing.
I know you and you probably have as well added sweet spot zone in TrainingPeaks so you can see the amount of time in sweet spot after the ride. You are talking more about during the ride.
In your Garmin you can go to:
Select Menu > My Stats > Training Zones > Power Zones> Based On > watts
Select Menu > My Stats > Training Zones > Power Zones> Configuration > 9 Coggan iLevels
In either of these you can manually adjust the percentages of FTP. Just click on the zone and enter the percentage you want to use.
So you can either use 7 training zones or Coggan iLevels 9 zones. You can manually adjust the percentages of these zones. If you use 7 training zones just use zone 4 as sweet spot (84% - 97%) and then zone 5 as threshold, zone 6 as Vo2 max and Zone 7 as anaerobic power.
With the 9 then you can basically do the same but you would have FRC and Pmax
Yeah, I will just use Zone 4 as Sweet Spot. Thanks for the recommendation.
David
