I feel like screaming at someone. I’ve just completed the London Half PRL and I am absolutely shattered, legs are almost jelly and I needed a life raft to escape the pool of sweat from my Wattbike as I was too broken to swim.
The result on Zwift companion, dropping down even further into “Fresh” than I was previously.
I’m not fresh, I’m knackered to be fair. I’ve been creeping around in “Fresh” for weeks now despite FTP increases, a TSS of >100 and racing score increases. This all began when I started following Zwift AI recommendations which thankfully have now been removed and never to return but I am now entrenched in “Fresh”.
I’m a 60 year old bloke with a hernia (which I got trying to be productive on Zwift ) I don’t want to enter the TdF anytime soon, I want to maintain a level of fitness with minor increases in fitness and for 5 months I was happily cruising in the productive zone, the last month has seen a downward spiral in my graphs but not my reality.
Why? I know I’m working hard.
I have an option for a call with the Zwift product team, hopefully one of them will see this before I book the slot I have a few gripes (sorry)
Thought it was worth throwing this in. Highest power output ever for an hour is no mean feat for me, and I’ve been cycling on strava for about 15 years. Still not enough to move the needle on companion.
Get a second opinion on your training productivity by importing your data (at least a few months worth but preferably all of it) to intervals.icu and see if it agrees with Zwift. I would also check Zwift again tomorrow and see if the calculation remains the same in case there is some kind of delay.
Personally I use intervals.icu to gauge my training load all the time and I just scroll past the thing in Companion to reach the stuff I care about (what am I signed up to ride next, when is that race I signed up for next week, who is riding now, etc). I uploaded more than 20 years of cycling data and I think it does a pretty good job. Training load numbers are heavily influenced by whatever the app thinks your FTP is, so if FTP is inflated for some reason, that will make it underestimate your load. intervals.icu would also give you a second opinion on your estimated FTP.
If the Zwift product team wants to talk to you, I would take that opportunity and I would bring a list and some graphs and screenshots.
Pretty sure you need to set “max heart rate” in Zwift at the top of your zone 4, as in your estimated Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (98% of your highest 20min average in the last ~42 days, as long as you don’t believe figure was affected by poor data like misfunctioning chest strap).
Not your known highest heart rate.
For example, mine should currently be 162bpm (I forgot to lower it from when I was fitter closer to Xmas), not the 185bpm I shockingly saw last Saturday for first time in a few years.
Eeeeek I’m not really sure what you mean, my Max HR is set at 160, no known issues with wattbike HR device and seems pretty accurate when compared to my Garmin fenix. What should I be working out?
All my data seems about right. Aged 60, I’m 6’1, 81kgs, FTP 285.
I’ve really left Zwift to do the calculations that it does, I only ever update my weight if any significant change. I have lost almost 20kgs in the last 5 months which has meant regular updates but that has been steady for last few weeks.
The Freshness indicator is related to your last 42 days average and whether or not you are overall increasing or decreasing in TS. If you’ve got a super high TS (such as 100), it’s hard to stay in productive Zone because that will continuously push you to do more than that, otherwise you will go into fresh. What was the TS for that 2hr ride? Was it above your current average? If so it shouldn’t have dropped - there’s possibly a bug there if it dropped when your ride was above that average.
That of course assumes your FTP is set correctly in the game. If Zwift thinks you did the whole ride at Z2 when really it was Z4 then the training score wouldn’t be accurate.
That makes sense actually, my TS has been over 100 for a couple of months, I think it peaked at around 110 a couple of weeks ago. Now it is 104, to be fair I only came back to Zwift on a regular basis around 6 months ago although I’ve been on the platform for 7 years or so. Maybe I’ve just peaked!
Right, at some point you either need more hours than you have available, or more intensity than you are able (or willing) to do to in those hours to stay in productive. That said, 100 TS is a pretty high average. At some point you get to the point where you are maintaining a certain TS outside of certain peak times of the year, and that is ok, you can’t keep increasing load forever given normal time constraints start to become a real thing.
That last graph explains it all. Since your TS has flatlined you are no longer “productive”. You are “productive” when TS is increasing. Another thing is you cannot be productive indefinitely. At some point you run out of hours and intensity. You need to let your TS come down so you can keep increasing. This is called periodization.
Also worth remembering that not all TSS is created equal. You could do a workout like 6 × 3 minutes at 120% of FTP every Monday three weeks out of four for twelve weeks and that might have a significant impact on your actual fitness - as in your actual performance.
That’s about the same TSS as 2hrs at 60% of FTP, which would be a nice coffee ride.
Chasing CTL to make the number going up isn’t (in isolation) an effective way to go about training. Sure, volume is king … but there’s nuance.
This is mostly right. Volume is still key, but not if you ride around fatigued all the time, then you never get better because your body cannot recover and you don’t get faster.
The easier week (you still ride, but less) is still productive, despite what some people would say.
I’ve had a huge amount of volume this year - no workouts just lots of riding big elevation and it has paid off well, regular hills I ride up outside I’m doing much faster. But I don’t go flat out all the time - when you are older you have to listen to your body.
Mentally sometimes you need a break from the same thing over and over - I’ll go and ride a real bike outside, or I’ll take my football boots, tees and a few footballs and go down to the local field and kick them for an hour. I don’t play rugby league at all, but enjoy seeing how many I get over the posts.
I think the topic author is right to seek a second opinion from another training app and if not doing so already look at reputable books on training from the known experts if you don’t have that knowledge already.
You’re looking at it wrong…it says “93” in the top right corner. Mine is about 85 in the morning, but after a good workout towards the end of the day, it can be around 50 or so. In the morning, 85 again.
I never pay attention to it. It means nothing to me. It almost always reads 50 - 53. I did PRL full and Everested and maybe it hit 56 as an all-time high.
Just make sure you back off and have some easier days (or an easier week) to let the recovery happen and get the benefits of the hard work you have done. If you keep trying to go at a high level every day then you’ll just be fatigued all the time.
On a traditional training app you can look at the CTL and let it go down slightly - then you might build again on another week later.
) I don’t want to enter the TdF anytime soon, I want to maintain a level of fitness with minor increases in fitness and for 5 months I was happily cruising in the productive zone, the last month has seen a downward spiral in my graphs but not my reality.
I have a few gripes (sorry)
