Long NoVid workouts

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts!

I am not training for any specific event, but in spring and summer I regularly enjoy longer outdoor rides, so the extra tempo work seems useful for me to do… so I will just do as I’m told :smile:

Bit of a ‘golden spade’ award digging this one out, I know.

But for those who’ve done these long NoVid workouts: How do you keep yourselves from getting insanely bored?

I’ve got a number of these coming up in my new plan and was wondering how you do it?

I’m tempted to put the trainer in the living room and watch a movie with the family or something…

These workouts are ideal for binge watching Netflix series :slight_smile:

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With endurance work, some of the benefit of that comes from the lower carb availability especially with longer rides such as what you see the Pros doing (6-7 hours Z1/2). However this isn’t practical for most people and not the best use of time to train as the event demands are usually very different too. A quick fire way to reach this low CHO availability can be low carb or fasted rides, or alternatively doing efforts at the start of the ride to deplete CHO stores and then do endurance work at low intensity to finish it off

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:+1:
There’s a good suggestion - I’ve got some ‘House of Cards’ episodes to catch up on.

That’s interesting and not something I’d have thought about at all. Whenever faced with long indoor training rides I have always made a point to replenish carbs in the 40-60 gm/ hour range.

Can you explain why or.how low carb availability is a benefit? Or point me to an article to read on my own?

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I do these all the time. Last year I did 5,200 miles all on my indoor trainer.

I will often dual-record on Zwift. I will let SYSTM in erg mode on my phone control my trainer and run Zwift on my PC with the control turned off. So I can still see the scenery change and complete routes, etc, but do it using the power profile being run from SYSTM. And then also listen to my favorite workout music on my headphones.

Alternately, I’ll watch bike races or cycling videos on GCN+ on the TV while SYSTM runs on my phone.

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Or you could ride on a platform such as Rouvy.

You ARE a heretic. :wink:

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Zwift is not heretical?

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No difference, but my name doesn’t make as good of a joke. :grin:

A question for you since I’ve never used Rouvy… Can you do the same thing by allowing SYSTM to control your trainer while you ride Rouvy without control so you can still pick your Rouvy route and watch the scenery go by while SYSTM continues to control your erg mode power?

Rouvy has two parts, workouts and real world ride simulations (of varying quality). You can also import your rides from outside (with or without video) and ride them within Rouvy.

Once I started using Sufferfest, I stopped using Rouvy workouts. They have a nice feature in that you can design a workout in Training Peaks, and ride it in Rouvy.

The real world simulations are effectively done in Level mode, your effort completely controls the ride, including changing the incline if your trainer supports that. I have not tried your scenario, I think it could work if set up properly, but it is not the normal use case. Depending on the exact circumstances, you could simulate your Mount Sufferlandria within Rouvy. I will be able to do that when I need to.

They now seem to want to branch into training plans, just as SYSTM is starting to branch into outside ride simulations.

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We have a pretty good local Triathlon club, and our club president mentioned a few months into the pandemic that our local triathlon event course is in Rouvy. It’s down by the lake and used in a number of other triathlon and race events. I don’t know if the scenery is in, but at least the course profile is. I’ve considered trying it, but I already pay for SYSTM and Zwift, so I’m not looking to add a third monthly subscription. But the concept seems pretty cool. Especially if you want to get familiar with a course. I’ve seen a number of our athletes using it to practice for their upcoming tri races around the world.

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Here’s one on the benefits of Fasted training but I would never suggest fasted or low CHO as a habitual training method for most. And done chronically can impair glycolytic enzyme quantity and function thus impairing high and maximal performance capacity for when CHO is required. Here’s another good one I think you’ll find interesting.
But essentially, you can get your body into a similar state to being fasted if you do high intensity before the low intensity. It’s similar to a train low, sleep low (low carb that is) training strategy that was published by the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS)

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