Today I did attempted a workout on my Grand Fondo Training.
I say attempted as I had issue in going from 120w at 85rpm to 30second sprint to 400w 105rpm. These were repeats and I just couldnt hit the numbers.
As soon as I need to pick up cadence and watts the resistance increased far to much for me to get my cadence up to 105rpm and no matter how hard I tried to pick up my cadence the resistance was just to high and I was getting slip on my on wheel trainer.
I tried to drop gears which worked at first until I ran out gears on each repeat to drop down to. Ruined my training ride and left rather frustrated.
Any help and advice would be great. should I maybe choose a flat coarse and not ride in ERG mode but just set an incline?
Best advice I can give for similar workouts is to anticipate by increasing cadence dramatically just before you hit next phase of workout. The bigger the gap, the earlier and harder I push before I hit the next phase of the workout. I have the sort of gaps you do on HIIT workouts and towards the end of the workout, its bloody difficult.
So the tip is that you hit each ramp up as if it was a sprint for the finish line, rather than a gradual build up, and you should be ok.
Dont worry about changing routes or turning ERG off. Its something you get used to pretty quickly. And, when you forget, you get reminded with the death spiral which is motivation to pay attention.
Do report back on how that works for you! I am in week 2 of the FTP Builder and had the same problem with a workout last week where I had to go from higher wattage to very low. It was certainly a problem to go from higher cadence and high watts to lower watts and lower cadence without having the bottom just drop out and the wheel freespin. Luckily for me at this point in my training plan, the instructions (that I didn’t see) actually said to use a lower cadence for the higher wattage, which made slowing much easier. I am very interested to see how you solve this as I hope to get strong enough to do some of those harder workouts. FWIW I have been selecting a flat course while I am learning how the training sessions work - just so that it’s one less factor to worry about.
Increasing cadence and wattage: In the last few seconds before the high wattage/ high cadence interval, raise the cadence above the target for the next interval if possible, i. e. as fast as possible if the target is 110+ rpm. That way you want be stuck grinding and fail to get on top of the gear.
Lowering cadence and wattage: Two things work for me. Either to stop pedaling entirely for 1-2 seconds and then resume pedaling at the target cadence. The trainer ha dropped the wattage enough then and will stabilize in a few seconds. The other way is to gradually lower the cadence over 5-10 seconds.
A “problem” with all metods is that you might miss the golden star for the repetition since the wattage might take to long to adjust itself on ERG mode.
But I use to think that the most important thing about the workouts is that I can smash the workout as intended, not that I recieve all fictive golden stars. The physical improvements are real, the stars are not.
Ok so success. I used the strategy of building up my cadence with 5 seconds to go and managed the session just fine even dropped it to 3 seconds after a few sprints. When dropping back down I stopped pedaling for second or two and gently pulled the brake to get down from 110rpm to 85rpm. Even got all my stars on my high power and cadence but wasn’t able to get the stars on my lower power and cadence but it’s just stars the workout was completed successfully so I’m happy with that. Thanks for advice guys I was really frustrated this morning. Sure it will get even easier with more practice and get more of my stars. Only bit I can add to anyone with the same issue is focus on your cadence not your power and concentrate. Get caught napping and you’ll be dead in the water for that sprint and need to hurt your legs to get back up to the correct cadence or just forfeit the sprint all together.