Velo Quips
Cycling humor and insight
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Daylight Savings Revelations November 9, 2014
Introducing LetsRide.co October 1, 2014
A Look at the Relationship between Age and Performance in the Pro Peloton November 25, 2013
The Funniest Thing I Have Ever Done October 20, 2013
Can You Imagine? October 14, 2013
This week’s workout again focuses on VO2max power. This workout is considerably easier than the pyramid intervals from last week and a great workout for the very time-crunched! 40/20 Stands for 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off. As you can tell the format is quite simple. Ride hard, 110% of FTP or greater for 40 seconds, spin for 20 then do it all over again. Anywhere from 5 to 10 repeats and anywhere from 2 to 4 sets, 5 minutes between sets is plenty. This is really a great workout because 2 sets of 5 repeats is enough to start waking up those VO2max juices . . . assimilating to the land of pain, but it is easy enough that you can stuff it in the middle of an endurance or tempo ride. This means you can work on sustainable gains while tuning up the top end. To really make improvements one must push the workload, >2 sets and >5 repeats.
Protocol:
warm up
work set (5-10 repeats)
rest ~5minutes
—-REPEAT 2-3 AS NECESSARY—–
cool down
This workout is best done on a flat to rolling road with little traffic and no stops! The key is to keep the rest at 20 seconds – don’t start cheating yourself with a few seconds of extra rest here or there. These efforts might require you to start out of the saddle so low traffic is nice when you are jumping all over the place. Also make sure not to do these on a hill because you won’t be able to pedal uphill during the rest period . . . trust me.
As mentioned before, this is a great workout for the time crunched, it can even be done on the trainer without much mental strain. Two sets of five repeats can be done in 25 minutes with a warm up and cool down. Even doing four sets of ten is just over 1 hour!
This workout also features some cool variations. The easiest would be to increase the repeats as you go, starting at five and ramping up. As previously mentioned include these in a tempo or endurance ride to put a little pep in your step. Lastly do a two sets of five at the end of a hard group ride or Sweet spot ride. Good luck and try not to spit up blood on your riding buddies after your 40th repeat!
Be sure to post in the comments your favorite short and sweet workout!
In the last two Saturdays, I’ve talked about my Dec-Jan training progress and my current ability (power) profile . Today, I’d like to continue with that theme and talk about my plan for the next two months.
As I discussed in the last week’s post on creating a training plan , I need specific training objectives that are in line with my racing goals . Looking at these goals, it’s clear to me that to meet them, I primarily need a high threshold power to weight ratio. Looking at my power profile, my threshold power still is a bit of a weakness, so my primary training objective is to continue building this up.
Next, many efforts in collegiate racing are in the VO2max area of the power spectrum (3-8 minutes). By developing my ability in this range, I’ll be more effective in coping when the going gets tough. Therefore, my secondary training objective is to develop VO2max power.
Finally, my short term power (5-20 seconds) is definitely my greatest weakness when it pertains to my power profile. That being said, having a high maximal power output isn’t terribly relevant to my racing goals, so this will be only a tertiary focus in my training for the next two months.
Threshold
Some sort of sweet spot (88-92% of threshold power) ride once a week. Anything from 2x20min to 1.5 hours+. At this point in the season, I tend to prefer the latter as it should help me sustain long, hard efforts (i.e. being in a breakaway). If one of the races I do on the weekend is really hard, I’ll replace this workout with a longer Zone 2/3 ride.
VO2max
While VO2max power will be stressed in most races, I want to devote training time to it, at least for the first month of the season. I plan on doing the 5x5x5 workout. 5 reps of 5 minutes at 110-115% of threshold power, with 5 minutes recovery between intervals. I’ll do this workout once a week.
Sprinting
Here comes my conundrum. In a typical collegiate racing week, my breakdown is:
Saturday: Race
Sunday: Race
Monday: Easy Ride
Tuesday: Threshold or Zone 2/3 ride
Wednesday: VO2max workout
Thursday: Off
Friday: Easy Ride
At least, this is how I was planning on structuring it. I’m a big opponent of resting completely the day before and after a race (I perform better and recover better by spinning the days before/after a race), so to fit a sprinting workout in every week, I would have to not take that day off on Thursday. I’ll try this initially, and if I’m not getting enough recovery over the course of the week, I’ll play it by ear, probably cutting the sprinting workout every other week.
The sprinting workout I have in mind is something I got from The Cyclist’s Training Bible , basically 6 reps (initially, maybe add more as I progress) of 5 seconds building up speed/cadence/power in the saddle, followed immediately by 15 seconds full gas out of the saddle. My goals are not only to improve my power, but to improve my shift to out of the saddle at the right cadence (>110 rpm).
This gives a rough weekly breakdown of:
Thursday: Sprint workout
This is my plan. As I get further into the season, I’ll probably end up changing this a bit to tailor my needs and expect updates as I do this. Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!
You can’t have a sustainable training plan without goals . The number of goals depends on the individual; if you’re an avid racer (>20 races/year), I’d recommend setting 4-5 race-specific goals, but if you’re only planning on doing a dozen (or less), I’d recommend making only 2-3. For example, my goals for the 2013 season are:
Win a Race
Top 10 in Collegiate A Individual Omnium
Upgrade to Cat 2
3 Top 10 finishes in 1/2 and 1/2/3 races
Get in serious breakaways regularly (once every other race)
Fundamentally, goals are objectives that you probably can’t reach today, but can likely reach with proper training and work. Therefore, when you set goals, make sure not to throw softballs – this might encourage you to stay inside on days you really don’t feel like riding.
For each goal on your list, there is something (or somethings) keeping you from achieving that goal right now, a “limiter.” Perhaps you don’t have the endurance to stay competitive after 3 hours, maybe you can’t quite sprint fast enough at the end of the race, or maybe you’re handling skills aren’t quite good enough. If you identify your limiters, you will know what you need to work on to achieve your goals.
For example, one of my goals this season is to get in a serious breakaway every weekend during the collegiate season. Last season, I was never off the front for very long – why was that?
My threshold power was too low to be able to repeatedly attack and sustain breakaway efforts
I didn’t have the VO2max power needed to get a sizable gap on the field
So threshold power and VO2max power are my limiters for this goal. My training objectives to achieve this goal are (1) to increase threshold power through targeted workouts during the off-season (this also will likely improve VO2max power, too) and (2) work on VO2max power during the early stages of the season with specific workouts.
There are two general schools of thought when it comes to preparing for races Always Fit and Periodization . You can try to make incremental improvements throughout the offseason and during the season (like Bradley Wiggins ), or you attempt to achieve peak performance (>100% for 2-4 weeks twice each season) by periodization . Because my season will be about 6 months long (and I have no idea where I’ll be living or what I’ll be doing 4 months from now), I decided to go down the always fit route, looking to gradually improve throughout the season.
Periodization isn’t to be disregarded though. If you’re only targeting a few big races a season, peaking for those races makes sense. It just takes a pretty good understanding of the effects of training and the ability to transcend life’s interruptions to get the necessary workouts in. If you’re interested in periodization, I’d suggest taking a look at Joe Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible .
You don’t just start training sprint power 4 months before you start racing.
Training periods allow you to break up your training objectives and gradually work towards your season goals. For example, Friel’s plan advocates 7 training phases: Base 1/2/3, Build 1/2, Peak, and Race. An always fit plan is generally more loosely structured, with a base phase, build phase, and season phase. I’ll outline the phases for the always fit plan.
Like the name suggests, this is the time to build your “base.” This means long rides, improving techniques (handling, cornering, sprinting form, pedaling), and going to the gym if you feel like that’s going to help. I generally also did 1-2 threshold workouts per week during the base period.
Base starts ~4 months before you start racing.
The build phase is where you start focusing most of your attention on your limiters. So if you need to improve sprinting power, this is where you do sprinting-specific workouts. If it’s VO2max you need to improve, this is where you’ll do workouts that will improve your capacity in this area.
The build phase can start as early as a month before you start racing. However, if you’re doing a long season the build phase can start as late as the first day of the season. I started building 2 weeks before the season this year.
Here, you’ll continue to work on your limiters as appropriate, but with an underlying emphasis on sustaining and continually improving your overall fitness. You use race experience (or your power meter, if you have one) to get an idea how you’ve improved on your limiters and what work still needs to be done. It is this phase where the always fit plan really differs from periodization. In periodization, you’d be sticking to your predetermined training structure, whereas in always fit, you’ll need to be proactive by constantly reevaluating your fitness and determining what you need to do week-to-week.
There are many different workouts and methods to train each of your limiters, and everyone seems to have a unique belief of how it should be done. The thing is, there is no “one method” that will work effectively for everyone. But, as you gain more experience, you’ll start to get an idea of what workouts are effective for you. This is best determined with a power meter , but cataloging relative performances (i.e. performance in races, time on a specific segment of road subject to similar conditions between tests, etc.) should give you a general overview of what’s working for you.
If you’re not familiar with training zones, I’d suggest you read this article (in particular Table 1 ). Then learn a little about the “Sweet Spot” here .
For exact workouts, BikeForums.net has a pretty comprehensive workout recipe book . If you’re interested in my workout preferences, I will be posting my personal approach to training, including the workouts I do, later this week.
Now that you’ve got an overview of what workouts you want to be doing, it’s time to put everything we’ve talked about.
Up until now you have developed:
Racing Goals
Training Objectives
Training Approach
Training Periods
Key Workouts
All you need to do now is to attribute workouts to the different training periods and get an idea of what weekly hours you’ll be shooting for.
My preference is to do 3 longer rides (2-4 hours) a week at an endurance (Zone 2) or endurance/tempo (Zone 2/3) pace. This is augmented with 2 threshold-building rides each week. An optimum week will have a day of rest and an easy day as well. If you plan on going to the gym, you’re going to have to work that in. When I was going to the gym, I would usually just drop one of my rides and go to the gym once a week.
For those that plan on going to the gym with more frequency, it’s important to find a balance that allows you to minimize leftover strain from the gym so that you can still train effectively on the bike.
Again, like I mentioned before, this is the phase where you start incorporating focused limiter training. Initially, I personally wouldn’t do more than two limiter-developing workouts per week, just because it’s hard to maintain and improve overall fitness if you don’t continue doing the sustainable workouts (i.e. Zone 2/3 rides, threshold-building workouts).
It’s easiest (at least for me) to train during the season. Races provide workouts and it’s simply a matter of filling in the blanks as far as working on limiters and building overall fitness goes. If I race twice on the weekend, I’ll go really easy Monday, and then do two workouts Tuesday and Wednesday with one focusing on building long-term fitness (long Zone 2/3 or threshold workout) and another focusing on a limiter (i.e. sprinting, anaerobic endurance). This is followed up by a day off Thursday and then usually an easier ride Friday.
If I’m only racing on one day of the weekend, I’ll use the other day of the weekend as a workout so that I stay around 4 workouts per week.
Every so often (3-5 weeks) if you’re putting a decent training load, you’re going to need to take more than just a day off to let your body fully recover. I take no more than three days usually, and try to do some easy spinning for two of those three days. While these recovery weeks will be buit into the periodization approach, it takes a lot of responsibility on your part to apply them when you need them if you’re following the always fit method.
There are no strict guidelines as to how many hours you should be doing a week. It’s better to start low in the Base period and slowly push up your weekly hours, backing off every few weeks for a easier recovery week. Once you hit the Build period, hours will likely go down slightly, and in the Season phase, they will likely be most dependent on the number of hours you’re racing (but generally pretty close to weekly hours in Build period).
So, if you know what weekly hours you’ll be shooting for, you can formulate a weekly schedule with approximate workout lengths to achieve these goal hours.
These are the basics of designing a training plan. Before every week, I look back on the workouts I’ve done in the past couple weeks and evaluate what I need to be working on in the coming week. Another big factor of my weekly planning session is figuring how to work around scheduling difficulties. This way my training plan is fluid over the long term to make sure I can cope with school/life while still getting in the requisite workouts.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think in the comments! If you found this useful please share with your friends!
Last week, I talked about my training progression in the last two months and gave a cursory outline of my plans for the future. Today, I’d like to show you the power testing results from the last two weeks.
In the past couple weeks, I’ve gone out and set power “bests” in order to get a gauge of the efforts I’m capable of doing. This is useful because I will be able to better manage my power output in time trials and in races. It will also help me in identifying where my strengths (and weaknesses) lie.
So, I’ve set bests in 5 seconds, 1 min, and 5 min (and estimated my 60 min power) to fill out this chart:
I should emphasize that this chart is not a predictor of performance, it’s just a point of reference. There are a lot more things that go into a good result than power output. Use Cautiously .
This chart confirms my subjective view of my “on-paper” abilities. Since the end of the collegiate season, I’ve thought my biggest strength lies somewhere in the 1-2 min power to weight ratio (i.e. short, steep climbs) just based on my relative ability in the group during efforts like that.
My maximal power output isn’t great, but many sprints (especially in criteriums) are more about positioning than power output. Right now, I’m more concerned with getting to the right position than what I actually do in the sprint.
Still my number one priority is improving threshold power sustainably. Reaching my goals this season is contingent on being able to do decently in time trials and getting into race-winning breakaways.
Finally, I think my second biggest priority now is improving VO2max efforts (3-8 min). It’s these kind of efforts I’m going to have to do to break away or just keep from getting dropped.
Next Saturday, I’d like to talk about my plan for reaching these training and racing goals. Thanks for reading!
Today, I’d like to talk a little bit about my training in the past two months and share some insights and lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Training with Power
I began training with power in the middle of December and it’s definitely proved to be a useful tool in planning and carrying out workouts. However, I’ve haven’t made too big a fuss about it because I know most of you don’t own one. Also, I’ve not been training with the power meter long enough to be able to tell what kind of workouts I benefit the most from, but I’m sure that will all come with time and experience.
Consistency
This picture sums up my training over the last two months well:
Continue reading Training Progression (December-January)
Training with power isn’t cheap. If you’re buying new, unless you find a good deal, you could be spending well over $1,000 including the cost of the head unit and installation. So, it is quite understandable when many upcoming racers hesitate to venture into the market of power measuring tools.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know my past uncertainties regarding the “necessity” of training with power. I publicly waffled on the issue more than once but now find myself training with power; at least for now. I’ve definitely noticed improvements since I’ve started using a power meter a month and a half ago. But this isn’t about me; it’s about you .
I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this post, you’re a roadie. When it comes to doing well in races (i.e. top 10% of participants), you need three things. Firstly, you need an understanding of tactics and the knowledge to be able to apply them in your particular race situation. Secondly, you need the bike handling skills to be able to perform maneuvers necessary to do well in races (you should be able to corner and move through the group better than the average competitor in your field). Finally, you need to have the capability to produce the power requisite to move yourself into a top 10% finishing capacity.
Continue reading Should You Buy a Power Meter?
Training in the offseason can be hard. Sometimes I want to push myself harder than I should and other times I really don’t feel like kitting up at all. Here are the tips I follow to help keep myself on the path to success.
1. Set Goals and Post Them
To train for weeks and months on end takes a lot of motivation. Motivation for an athlete typically derives from a desire to perform at the highest level attainable. Setting ambitious goals helps to remind oneself of this ideal.
Posting these goals in a place you can’t help but looking can be your most powerful ally in overcoming the barrier to getting out and training.
Continue reading 3 Tips for Training in the Offseason
I must confess, I wasn’t always a fan of Bradley Wiggins. That’s not to say I didn’t like him; I just didn’t root for him. After four stage race victories this year, he’s proved that he is perhaps the greatest cyclist in the world right now, certainly the best GC contender.
What has made me come to admire Bradley Wiggins is his methodological approach to training and racing. Never before have we seen a rider so dedicated to preparation for a race. I would go so far to say that Wiggins prepared better for this Tour than any rider in history has prepared before.
Continue reading Bradley Wiggins: A Rational Champion
The last few weeks have been reflective for me in analyzing my training methods. After a few discussions with team members and a lot of thought, I’ve realized that periodization (building to two peaks in a season) was not and is not the best training method to accomplish my goals.
First, I’d like to define the two training methods quickly: Periodization is where an athlete will look to achieve a peak in fitness for ~2 weeks twice a year. The athlete will start in late fall/early winter working on their base fitness (i.e. endurance, lactate threshold, pedaling technique, etc.) then as the season approaches build up fitness with harder workouts that focus on anaerobic capacity and sprinting power and eventually peak and taper for one or two big races. In an always fit training program, an athlete will look to do similar workloads week to week and month to month trying to gradually increase fitness while racing throughout most of the season.
Why Periodization Didn’t Work
I didn’t need a power meter to know that I didn’t peak much (if at all) at the end of my first block of racing. After my supposed “peak,” I continued racing for a couple more weeks and didn’t really experience the loss in fitness that is evidence of actually peaking. So why didn’t periodization work?
With a very hectic schedule at school, I was not able to do all the workouts I needed. But even if I had, I doubt I would have been able to peak because of how new I am to the sport. Even after a few years of running, I never peaked despite pretty decent attempts.
Why Periodization is Still not Right for Me
When creating a training plan, you should be planning around your season objectives. My fundamental goals for this season were to get stronger, gain experience, and hopefully be competitive in every race I entered. Moreover, I wanted to be able to race pretty much every weekend throughout the season. So, a periodization approach is obviously not the best solution for this season as I’d only be on my top game for a few weeks. Furthermore, I will have the same fundamental goals next season as this season, so I will look to pursue more of an always fit training path than a periodization approach going into next season.
This week is supposed to be my longest week of the season, at 15 hours, based on my training plan, developed using the methods in Joe Friel’s C yclist’s Training Bible . I haven’t been following the volume guidelines to a T, instead listening to my body and doing just under “too much.” I got in 15.4 hours back in the beginning of December, but that was because I shifted a long ride from the previous week a day.
I’ll probably get close to 15 hours this week, but it’s more important for me to keep my left knee from getting hurt than to overdo myself trying to stick to (admittedly) unreasonable training guidelines. I’ve been thinking a lot about training methods for new riders, and perhaps a race-into-shape is the most reasonable approach for a rider who doesn’t have the motivation to ride their bike in the winter months. This isn’t to say that new riders can’t pursue a periodization approach. It just takes a lot of motivation for someone that hasn’t developed a love of racing.
Anyways, I went through my training miles so far in this build-up and saw that I’ll have done 2000 miles total through the whole Base period. It seems pretty staggering because I doubt I had a sixth of those miles at this point last year. I think next week I’m going to take really easy because I think I’ve run into the “overtraining” zone and that path never ends well.
Okay, I did a pretty nice route yesterday with Eran, out to Nottingham Park and back, so I’m going to do it again today – 50 miles of rolling hills. Pretty fun, especially once I get the wind at my back.