 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Quick background - I'm 54, overweight currently (just over 15 stone compared with my best last year of just under 14st), a slow but keen cyclist.
Been biking forever but took up Zwifting this time last year as I planned to do the c2c in August '23 with my 16yo son which we did and enjoyed. I've had a great time on Zwift, soon hooked up with a load of folk on the social side and started doing the WRTL team time trials on a Thursday night and started basing my Zwifting week around it rather than doing the training plans etc that I'd been doing previously.
Looking at my Strava 'fitness' stats for the year I peaked in May / June this year. I've had an odd leg / back issue that hit me at the same time as my fitness started to fall away that I'm booked in for an MRI for in a couple of weeks - doesn't feel like it's affecting my cycling but just walking around is painful for me. My FTP started to fall away then too - from a peak of around 200 to a current zFTP of 174. (I do know that even 200 is fairly pitiful but I've never been quick). I've had a couple of weeks away in October but I'm keen to get back into it all again over the winter. I've got an MTB event planned in May so I'd like to get there in the best condition I can be in.
I don't really understand about training zones but Strava gives me the impression that I'm spending a lot of time in Zone 2 generally, with the TTTs a mix of Zone 3 & 4. Can you educate me? I feel like I need to add a bit of structure, I'm keeping a better eye on my calorie intake to try and drop a bit of pork, I really enjoy Zwift but think that it could be helping me get fitter instead of just having fun riding around.
Any advice welcome!
Zones will be heart rate based, so a range of BPM for each zone. You will be working in a lower zone for more endurance based events or rides and higher for steeper more sprint based.
Not sure if I've misunderstood your post, apologies if so...
Zwift zFTP isn't the same as traditional FTP and from my experience, the former is usually lower than the latter.
A common way of getting an FTP estimate is to take 95% of your best 20mins. It's dynamic, just like your heart fitness (where many look at Lactate Threshold Heart Rate estimate, top of zone 4), so for accuracy you ought to get new estimates for both every approx 6-8 weeks.
https://intervals.icu/ is a donate-ware site that will bombard you with various stats including your power and heart zones, while connected to sites like Strava. Great site.
Zone 4 is threshold, in theory what you should be able to hold for approx 40-60mins.
For optimal fitness improvements, many find two zone 4+ race days (or workouts focussed on longer z4+ intervals) per week is the limit, more risks overtraining.
A vast majority of your week when training should be zones 1 and 2, something close to 80% by time.
OK, I have the beginnings of a plan, thank you.
I'm going to do some reading up on hr zones.
I've uploaded the last years data from Strava to intervals ICU - the fitness tab shows the same sort of info as Strava, my 'fitness' score hit a high of 43 in June, currently languishing at a lowly 16. The June high also coincided with the last time my 'form' was in green. So if I'm reading it all right I need to create stress by keeping the purple line above the blue line which it hasn't been since the summer. So work harder!
Plenty of base fitness through the winter (something like 80% Z2 and 20% high effort stuff), then ramp up the higher effort stuff as your target event gets closer.
I'm really bad at understanding training requirements, so used Xert as a training tool when trying to get fit for the Dirty Reiver earlier this year.
It worked well & I saw a decent gain in fitness. The raw numbers (say, FTP for example) didn't really go up massively as I was training for endurance, but on the day I had no issue with the distance or climbing. Prior to it, my main concern was the amount of climbing, but it was fine.
I am not entirely sure how much of the fitness gain can be attributed to the specific advice taken from Xert, or just the amount of extra training I was doing. I started the plan with ~3 hours/week & ended up with somewhere around 10 which I imagine would have a big effect on its own.
I'll have a look at Xert, thanks for the recommendation.
some of the above seem to be mixing HR Zones with Power Zones. For clarification, Zone 2, in Zwift terms, normally refers to a power zone, based on your current functional threshold. So when I do a Z2 ride on Zwift and Wattbike, my target power output is 120w. My HR will usually stay in HR Z2 also (below 135bpm) though sometimes creeps into HR Z3 if I am tired, or have been overdoing things