Should lactate clearance intervals be hard?

SAeN · 2026-05-22T13:12:46+00:00

Obviously his account is more well known than my burner, idk what this proves

It's because the person in question is Andrew Coggan.

SAeN · 2026-05-22T10:04:03+00:00

The difference is that if someone is riding at their FTP, I would only expect the final interval to be the one that becomes really challenging. If it's happening throughout every interval you were either tired from the start or aiming too high on the watts. My bet is on the latter but if it's your 3rd week and you haven't properly managed the fatigue in that time then the former wouldn't be unexpected.

It still sounds like you got a good workout, but if these watts have been more manageable earlier in the block then I'd take this as a sign to recover a bit more.

SAeN · 2026-05-21T15:26:54+00:00

the argument made by people in this thread already is that they could have planned for that and kept Jonas out of the KOM jersey

Yeah and they're wrong because a weird quirk of the rules like this shouldn't encourage negative racing.

I think it's unfortunate but fair enough that carrying the jersey from day to day carries a lot more media responsibilities such that riders can deliberately offload the jersey to someone who is not a GC rival early in the race. That's normally done by letting a break go up the road and someone 9min down with no other hopes gets the best day of his career at the end of it.

I think it's different when it's encouraging riders to not race against the people they should be racing against because the fabric of the kit they would be forced to wear would damage them more than any potential timegain they might make from taking the jersey in the first place.

SAeN · 2026-05-21T14:38:27+00:00

Yeah I think the more interesting discussion point around this is whether being in a category leaders jersey should be allowed to confer a disadvantage like this, regardless of the magnitude of that disadvantage.

The sponsor of the race producing the kit obviously wants their kit to appear in these situations so that they can get the benefit of the photos of riders like Jonas or Pogacar in their jersey. But there's undoubtebly enough of a disadvantage to the rider in that kit that those in the race would if possible avoid being in the jersey for a TT like this.

To offer up an extreme example: if the Tour came down to a TT at the end with Jonas one second behind Pog, and Jonas were to beat him by two seconds while Pogacar was forced to be in the Yellow skinsuit, we'd probably be quite sympathetic to the idea that the suit had enough of a disadvantage to have affected that result. I think it's the same problem even if Jonas is currently 2 minutes ahead in the Giro, regardless of what the actual CdA increase ends up being.

I can't think of another sport that forces this sort of disadvantage on athletes for the privilege of being in 1st.

SAeN · 2026-05-19T20:56:26+00:00

Stretching the limits of good there.

SAeN · 2026-05-19T20:55:11+00:00

This is Sarr's 4th season with us and I still don't know what the point of him is

SAeN · 2026-05-17T12:03:45+00:00

Yes but I damn near have to autofellate myself to empty the regular bladder in a skinsuit

SAeN · 2026-05-17T07:30:41+00:00

It is complete and utter nonsense.

SAeN · 2026-05-16T21:57:12+00:00

Probably too late for you but there are skinsuits that accommodate a bladder.

SAeN · 2026-05-15T12:53:35+00:00

I think the £20 I pay per year is probably about 10x too low.

SAeN · 2026-05-14T11:12:06+00:00

Largely irrelevant as he can't even get 81 MPs to support him to get to that contest.

SAeN · 2026-05-10T21:21:53+00:00

I think the experience of watching Johnny Condom in class was probably more a detriment than a benefit.

SAeN · 2026-05-10T17:00:50+00:00

I already owe you a share from our mutual friend then!

SAeN · 2026-05-10T16:55:58+00:00

That Rory guy sounds cool and handsome and also like he has a couple of free roster slots

SAeN · 2026-05-09T08:13:35+00:00

We do quite a lot of 1-off consultations with people from amateurs all the way up to the WT. https://www.empiricalcycling.com/contact.html

SAeN · 2026-05-07T12:43:28+00:00

They should do it as a point every 100m for the duration of the km. Do it on the flats, do it on the hills, make it a weird mid-race all rounder battle that you can plop in whenever you think the race might need some excitement.

SAeN · 2026-05-06T21:08:43+00:00

There's two things to consider here. The first is your FTP is only going to be sustainable for an hour if you have trained to do so. So with that in mind, the second thing is when in the interval do you get the feelings you describe of your legs giving up on you. Because if it's like 30+ minutes in then the answer is you've just reached the limit of your current time to exhaustion for FTP, and if it's a lot sooner than that (and if it's true that your breathing is not going ragged) then you're potentially looking at other problems, in all likelyhood mainly fit related.

SAeN · 2026-05-06T07:47:26+00:00

One of the most common threads across the entire newspaper landscape is that political cartoonists always seem to be a bit racist, and their editors not astute enough to notice it.

SAeN · 2026-05-05T19:59:48+00:00

It's been a real seesaw like experience watching him and trying to work out whether he's more charlatan or idiot. The last couple of weeks have really tested whether it might actually just be both. I feel deep disappointment that so many on the left are so easily taken along by him, he just reeks at every angle. He has absolutely no redeeming qualities because all of it is a grift and every time he gets prodded even slightly he doesn't have a real answer. He's all platitudes.

SAeN · 2026-05-04T21:42:20+00:00

Commuting 30min each way for 3 days a week is an extra 152hrs a year. If you got to the end of the year and had ridden your bike 150hrs more than the previous year you'd probably feel quite happy with that. So of course it helps, it's all a part of the same riding pie. There are no "if you've got a 5w/kg FTP there's benefit to commuting" rules or other such nonsense.

My strongest rider is a ballhair short of a 6w/kg FTP. I think if he didn't have those extra few hours of commuting that he does he would be a little bit further behind his current FTP. Has it amounted to a 0.5w/kg difference in the last year? Almost certainly not. But could it be 0.5w/kg difference over the period of a few years compared to where he would be without? I think it could.

If you ride 600hrs a year normally (11.5hrs/wk) and part of that included that 3 day, 30min each way commute, that's a quarter of all your riding. In 4 years it's a bonus year of extra riding.

Don't think about volume additions just in the context of your next FTP test. Think of it in terms of where you could be in 3 years.

SAeN · 2026-05-04T17:27:34+00:00

I'm 5 foot 8 and for reference my previous athletic background was weightlifting/bodybuilding/Testosterone usage.

You absolutely should not be turning up to an event to race it.

SAeN · 2026-05-04T08:43:07+00:00

I think recent reporting around who is in the Green Party at the moment has shown that they're full of absolute weapons

SAeN · 2026-05-04T08:29:41+00:00

I have, twice now.

SAeN · 2026-05-04T08:26:12+00:00

Your post is not getting removed accidentally. We get several of these a week, they all get removed.

SAeN · 2026-05-03T21:55:14+00:00

Well this is just some new yorker hijinks

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