CENTURION CYCLING PARTNERS WITH SPEED CYCLING
Training Tips
Each week, Speed Cycling will provide training tips because all Centurion athletes, no matter what level, have one thing in common. The desire to get better. So, whether you’re just starting out and want to learn how to do things the right way or are experienced and accomplished and want to continue to develop your skills and fitness to reach new goals, these tips are for you.
Just click on each tip and read on:
Tip #2: PERFORMANCE IS NO ACCIDENT: PLAN, PREPARE, PERFORM
Tip #3: ALIGNING YOUR TRAINING WITH YOUR GOALS
Tip #4: BUILDING FITNESS, THE PHASES OF TRAINING PLANS
Tip #5: THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOVERY
Tip #7: RECOVERY, THE SECRET WORKOUT FOR SUCCESS
Tip #8: SPEED, FORCE AND ENDURANCE – EVENT SPECIFIC COMBINATIONS
Tip #9: MUSCULAR ENDURANCE: THE KEY TO STRONG LONG DISTANCE CYCLING
Tip #10: EVERY DAY IS NOT A TEST
Tip #12: TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, RACE YOUR STRENGTHS
Training Programs To Help You Succeed Regardless of the Level of Your Participation
Speed Cycling combines expert level coaching and a purpose built training facility to provide training and resources for athletes of all levels who want to attain higher performance. Cycling athletes and multisport athletes (triathletes and duathletes) have benefitted from Speed Cycling’s focus on their performance. Athletes have consistently attained their personal athletic goals by using training plans designed by Speed Cycling’s Certified Coaches.
Athletes seeking a higher level of coach involvement have appreciated fully customized training guidance prepared by the skilled coaches at Speed Cycling. Individualized coaching includes preparation of an annual training plan and fully customized workouts with on-going review and monitoring. Speed Cycling’s coach designed resources also includes our indoor training facility. Speed Cycling utilizes CompuTrainers and Saris resistance trainers together with workouts specifically designed by Speed Cycling’s coaches to bring athletes to a new level of performance.
Centurion Cycling Training Plans
Speed Cycling in conjunction with Centurion Cycling is offering Special Training Plans to registered riders. Plans are prepared by certified coaches and are designed to build your fitness and prepare you for your Centurion Cycling event. Proven training techniques from USA Cycling certified coaches will help you get the most out of your preparation regardless of distance or current ability. Plans will provide you with excellent workouts to get ready for the challenge you’ve chosen.
Plan includes:
- Daily email of workouts and complete online training plan with logging through TrainingPeaks.com
- Daily structured workouts with effort guidelines given in Perceived Exertion, Heart Rate Zone and Power Zone when appropriate
- Weekly workouts that build from now to race day
- Scheduled rest to make sure you can go harder when you need to
- Sharpening to bring you to the start line ready to go
- Quality training to get you to the finish line with a smile and the satisfaction of knowing you prepared yourself well
Fee: $50
Get started today by clicking HERE (or by purchasing the plan through Registration)!
Note: The training plans will incorporate training specific to the demands of the different event distances, your age, and your ability level.
TRAINING TIPS
Tip #1: SMART GOAL SETTING:
Putting into words what you want to accomplish is an important first step in almost any endeavor. You need to decide what you want to accomplish before you can set out to accomplish those things. Goal setting gives real purpose to the work that follows. So, here is how to set goals so you can achieve them.
Setting “SMART” goals.
Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Relevant • Time Bound
Specific: What exactly do you want to achieve. How are you going to do it? Why are you doing it? Think about the action you are going to take and what it is you want to do.
Measurable: How will you know you have succeeded? If you can’t measure it you won’t know. Examples of measurable outcomes include: finishing the 100 mile event, riding at a higher average wattage or speed, trimming 1″ from your waistline, etc. Some immeasurable examples include “be a good cyclist”, ”
Achievable: Don’t make your goals too easy or too unrealistic. This is like the 3 little bears. You don’t want it too “hot” or too “cold”. Setting a goal that is too far out of reach will lead to disappointment. “Average 25mph for 100 miles” may be possible in the Tour de France in a group, but may not be attainable for you. Setting too easy of a goal will not challenge you and makes working hard seem more optional. Pick something that you think will be tough, but that you think you can do.
Relevant: Make your goals relate to what you want to do. Improving your sprint might be valuable for a criterium race, but is much less important for a 100 mile ride. Improving aerobic endurance, like riding for 6+ hours is much more relevant to the long distance event.
Time Bound: Give yourself a deadline. You need to make your goal have a date where you can evaluate your success. If there is no deadline, then it never needs to be accomplished. With a deadline you can start working toward your goals today.
Goal Examples:
Ride the Centurion 25 mile at 250W average.
Complete the Centurion 100 mile event on August 7th in the top 50% overall.
Tip #2: PERFORMANCE IS NO ACCIDENT: PLAN, PREPARE, PERFORM
Once you have a goal that you are training for (read about SMART goal setting above), achieving that goal is not by chance. Having a good day is not an accident! A good day is the result of proper planning. In order to have a “really good” day (like on the day of your big event) there is a lot of planning and preparing that needs to occur first. So, let’s look at what it takes to have that good day, and let’s see what goes into a plan.
On the day of the event you want to have 2 things. Fitness and freshness.
Fitness is gained over time. There is no short cut to fitness. Carefully increasing training over many weeks and months will lead to increased fitness. It is VERY important to incorporate RECOVERY with the training. That is where the “carefully” comes in. If you didn’t need recovery you could just go out and ride 200 miles and be stronger at the end than at the beginning. This is not how it works. You need to apply a stress and then recover. Only following recovery will you be more fit.
Freshness requires the above mentioned recovery along with some sharpening. Recovery alone will not bring peak readiness. Recovery will remove fatigue that accumulates as you apply training load. However, when you back things off it can lead to the feeling of being “stale” or “flat”. You need to “sharpen up” to really be on for the big day.
Let’s count backward from race day to see how to schedule that “really good” day.
- The day before the big event you want to do a “leg opener” which includes several elevated pace efforts to remind your body about the work it will be doing the next day. (I think of this as the “warning shot”)
- Two days prior to the event you really want to take it easy.
- The week of the big event you want to include several workouts that are near race pace but are much shorter in duration. You want to give your body stimulus to make sure it can go hard.
- Two weeks prior to the event you want to have a lower intensity and shorter duration week. This lower training volume will remove fatigue.
- Weeks 3 & 4, or weeks 3, 4, & 5 prior to the event are higher intensity and/or duration applying a stress that your body will respond to during the upcoming recovery phase.
- Continuing backward you want to repeat the stress/recover cycle.
With proper planning you can prepare for the big day. Then all of the components will come together to create the performance.Performance is not an accident, it can be planned!
In future installments we will discuss what some of the components of the stress and recover phases are. We’ll also talk about how different types of events and different types of athletes require different types of training to give each individual the best results.
Tip #3: ALIGNING YOUR TRAINING WITH YOUR GOALS
This tip starts with two statements:
- Not everyone is training for the same thing.
- We all have our own strengths and weaknesses.
With these two statements in mind and some goal setting done (see SMART Goal Setting) you can now make a plan to train for your event(s). The first step is identifying what is needed to acheive a goal and which weaknesses overlap with those needs. An example would be signing up to do the 100 mile event but not having any long distance riding experience. Alternatively another example would be signing up for the TT or HC, but having no ability to go hard for 15-20 minutes. When a weakness overlaps with one of the demands of an event we call that a “limiter”. A limiter is a subset of your weaknesses. An example of a weakness that wouldn’t be a limiter would include having a poor 15 second sprint but competing in the 100 mile event.
Train Your Limiters – You need to spend a disproportionate amount of time training your limiters. That means you start working on those areas earlier in your training plan and workouts that address your limiters occur on most weeks, the exception being recovery weeks. Your body will adapt to handle the stresses you place upon it. The longer the period of time over which you can apply the stress the more time to adapt and improve. Often you will incorporate work on your limiters for many months prior to a key event.
Polish Your Strengths – You don’t want to ignore doing things that you are already good at. Use it or lose it! If you neglect certain areas of training then you are not applying a stress on those systems. When no stress is applied the body adapts in the other direction. I think of it as the equivalent of some aspect of your cycling becoming a couch potato. So, as you get closer to the event you want to make sure that you are keeping your strengths (especially those that you will call upon in the event) nice and polished and sharp.
Optimize Your Chances of Success - By spending time working on your event specific limiters and by polishing up your strengths you will be ready for the event. In the next tip we’ll talk about the different phases of a training plan. We’ll talk base, build, recovery, taper, peak and race phases. We’ll look at what goes into each phase and how you will move through them in your training.
Tip #4: BUILDING FITNESS, THE PHASES OF TRAINING PLANS
To be effective, a training plan needs to provide workouts which focus on the things your body can do. A training plan should not require you to try to do things before your body is ready. A good plan will also challenge your body sufficiently so that you will experience an overcompensation leading to improved performance. You will find different terminology used to describe the various phases of a cycling training plan. While the words may vary, the basic concepts are not all that different. Basically, the generally accepted cycling training plan involves periodization, that is, structured training consisting of various phases (“periods”). By dividing the training year into periods consisting of a calculated balance of training volume and intensity combined with rest and recovery a good plan will prepare you for your important events. The training plans prepared by Speed Cycling’s certified coaches use the terminology adopted from Joe Friel, i.e. Preparation, Base, Build, Peak, Race and Transition. While these basic phases can be divided into smaller segments, the focus of the overriding phase remains similar.
Preparation (‘Prep’) Period: The Preparation Period is where you prepare yourself to train. This phase usually follows a ‘transition’ when, for example, you have been away from training for some time. The main object of this phase is to prepare your body to train. Workouts during this phase are low intensity with an emphasis on aerobic endurance. This phase can include some speed work to help develop good pedaling mechanics and high pedaling cadence. If you have already been training, a Preparation Period is not necessary.
Base Period: This phase of training is usually the longest. This is the time when you build endurance and focus on developing force and speed skills on the bike. This phase includes long riding to build endurance, and sprint workouts to build speed. The Base Period is often divided into 3 sub periods, creatively named “Base 1, Base 2 and Base 3”. The volume of training increases with each subsequent sub period. During Base training you will do a higher amount of long duration aerobic- endurance riding.
Build Period: Anaerobic-endurance training is brought in to your training plan in the Build Period. This period includes intervals and fast group riding. Endurance riding is still included in this phase, but the amount is reduced. The intensity of your training at this time is at its greatest. Quality rest and recovery is critical during this period so that you can bring forth your highest level of intensity when called for in your training plan.
Peak Period: You use the Peak Period to consolidate the fitness and performance gains you’ve worked hard to achieve so that you can enter your Race Period with the greatest chance for reaching your goals. During the Peak Period workout volume is reduced but intensity is maintained. If you follow your training plan through the Peak Period you should be well rested and ready to push your performance to the max.
Race Period: Racing isn’t required during the Race Period; it’s the part of your training year when you are going to do your most important riding whether it is racing, or other events. This period is designed to focus the improvement you’ve gained by following your training plan through the earlier periods at the event(s) where you want to achieve your best performance. This is where you make the withdrawals from the bank accounts of fitness you’ve been building up through the earlier training periods.
Transition Period: Rest and recovery are the critical goals during the Transition Period. The best Transition Period is not charted out. It’s important to keep the intensity and volume low and to do what you feel like doing so that you recharge both your physical as well as mental ‘batteries’.
Tip #5: THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOVERY
Do Not Underestime the Importance of Recovery: There is a phase that nearly all athletes pass through where they gradually increase the intensity, distance or duration of the workouts they are doing and they stop seeing improvement. What happens next depends on what you understand about recovery.
“Some Is Good, So More Must Be Better…”: Many athletes believe that they must not be training HARD ENOUGH in order to continue to see improvement. Therefore, they decide that they must need to train more or harder in order to see more gains. Much to their disappointment they continue to stay at the same level or even get weaker. How can it be that more training has resulted in weaker performances? The answer is lack of recovery, more definitely is not better.
While you must place a stress on your body that is greater than it has had placed on it in the past in order to realize improved fitness, you must also recover from that stress in order to realize the improvements. Adaptation to training stress does not occur during training. Think about that for a second and let it sink in. You can not leave for a 100 mile ride and finish the ride stronger than you began. You must first recover from that ride before you will become more fit.
In the worst cases lack of recovery will eventually result in sickness or injury. Your body will get run down too much and your immune system will become supressed. With running there is also the danger of a stress fracture or other overuse type injury.
Effective training is really a mix of applying stress and recovering from that stress.
Next let’s talk about how this paradigm of applying stress and recovering from it is present at multiple levels within structured training.
Recoveries Within A Workout: A well planned workout will have efforts and recoveries. Generally you will have some warm-up phase to prepare your body for the work it is about to do. Then you will do the “main set”. You must pay close attention to what the EFFORTS AND RECOVERIES are within the main set. The length and intensity of both the efforts and recoveries are designed to allow you to stress your body in a particular way. Do not cut the recoveries short and don’t go too hard during recoveries. If you short change your recoveries you won’t be able to perform the efforts at your best. Short hard efforts require longer, easier recoveries. Long moderate efforts don’t require as long of recoveries.
Recoveries Within A Week: You can’t go hard every day. You need to have easier days prior to hard days to make sure you are ready for the efforts. You may have a couple hard days in a row, but generally short hard efforts will come before longer moderate efforts. Longer easy days also come after harder days. In this order you can complete all of the workouts as described and stress different body systems to become a well rounded rider.
Recoveries Within A Season: Some weeks will be harder and some will be easier. You need to place a stress that overloads your systems and asks your body to adapt. Then you need to provide the recovery time to allow your body to adapt. When leading up to your biggest events of the season you will time a recovery and final sharpening period prior to the big event to make sure that your body has fully adapted to the training stress and you are ready to preform at your peak.
You also need periods of time within the season to back things off and recover more deeply. After the last high priority event of the year it is a good idea to back things off quite a bit.
Tip #6: TRAINING STRESS
Now that we have discussed recovery within your training we need to cover training stress. When we write a training plan we first put in the event(s). Then we fill in the recovery because it is only after recovery that you are at your best. Finally we fill in the training stress that will prepare you for the demands of your event(s). Let’s take a closer look at how to apply training stress.
Overload: You need to apply stress to your body in order to stimulate your body to adapt and become more fit. More specifically you need to apply stress that exceeds what you have already become used to and have already adapted to. This is the concept of overload. If you go out and do the same route every day at about the same pace you are not applying an overload. (I am going to come back to this example of doing nearly the same workout several times throughout this tip.) You need to do MORE than what you have been doing. We’ll discuss how to go about that more below.
Doing More: OK, so maybe you have been doing the same ride over and over and then you sign up for something bigger. Many people start with adding distance and/or intensity to “do more”. This is a progression of the example above where you go out and do the same thing. The problem with this approach is that you just end up going “sort of far’ and “sort of hard”. If you don’t feel good on a given day then you just don’t go as hard or as far and often times there is associated disappointment. As spoken about in a previously training tip you have a hard time planning a “good” day with this approach.
The correct way to do more is to BREAK IT UP. One day will be long and easy. Another day will be short but with shorter length efforts. You need to look at the different demands of the event(s) that you are training for and apply training stresses that address those different demands. Isolate the different types of training stresses and dedicate an entire workout to one type of stress. You can not do it all in one workout. You need to break it into manageable pieces.
Every Day is NOT a Test: You MUST avoid trying to best yourself with every workout. This is much like doing a test of your maximum every time, or a “max” test. The primary reason for avoiding this is that you are no longer applying a specified workout load. Instead you are attempting to apply a greater load every time with, frankly, little chance of being successful. Let me tell you why you will not best yourself every time. BECAUSE YOU ARE GETTING TIRED. As you apply a training load that is greater than what you have done before you will get tired. As you get tired the result of a “max” test will get worse. When you try to go harder every day you are essentially doing that “max” test and because you are getting tired you will not go faster every time.
Instread of going out to do more than your effort last time out you need to train at the prescribed level. If it is a long easy day, go long and easy. Don’t go long and hard if that isn’t the plan. More is not better. Better is better. Focus on doing everything right, not harder.
Occasionally you will have a true test day. Only after deliberate recovery from training will you be able to do a better maximum.
Know the Purpose: With your goals in mind, and your training planned out, you will have workouts to do in order to best prepare you for your event(s). When you go out to do the training you need to know what you are supposed to do in that ride. Workouts have a specific target. You should know what the purpose of the training is. Know what you are working on and then go out and do it well.
Tip #7: RECOVERY, THE SECRET WORKOUT FOR SUCCESS
Recovery is so important to improving athletic performance that it warrants an additional training tip. Coach Casey clearly listed the benefits you can experience when you include carefully planned periods of recovery in your training. There is no dispute that, without recovery, there is no performance increase. The ‘athlete’s mindset’ that compels competitors to push themselves beyond their perceived limits does get in the way of well-planned recovery. Don’t be that person. Make recovery the most important part of your training plan and your workouts.
Recovery is a critical part of your training plan. It should not be an afterthought. You need to include adequate recovery at key points in your training in order for your body to rebuild so that you can do the next hard phase of training, and so that your rebuilding takes your performance to a new level.
There is another key recovery opportunity, however, that should not be ignored. This is the recovery cycles within workouts. Naturally, athletes focus on the intensity part of workouts because, in part, that demonstrates athletic performance and because most athletes are very prone to competition, even in the context of training. There isn’t anything flashy about solid recovery between intervals. In fact, some folks might even be reluctant to embrace recovery cycles thinking that they represent weakness, or lack of form. This thinking is not helpful. Your focus should be on taking necessary steps to insure that the intervals you do are performed at the prescribed level, with perfect form. In order to consistently do this, you must recover adequately.
Recovery, you see, is not a sign of weakness or lack of strength. Successful athletes always understand the value of doing high quality recovery, both between intervals, and between workouts. The successful athlete is disciplined about both areas of training, intensity, and recovery.
So, the next time your planned workout has a series of intervals separated by recovery periods, take charge of what happens during the recovery phase. Focus on physical and mental steps that will aid and speed recovery. Begin controlling your breathing and settle it down with deep breaths. Relax stressed muscles, and create a mental image of your heart rate going down like a thermometer. As you get better at controlling your recovery, you will discover that you are able to do more intervals, at a higher level of performance.
- Gordy Paulson, USAC Level 1 Coach.
Tip #8: SPEED, FORCE AND ENDURANCE – EVENT SPECIFIC COMBINATIONS
Cycling requires Speed, Force and Endurance, as well as combinations of these, to produce good results. Let’s look at these 3 components and the different combinations. Then we’ll discuss how to train to develop your performance in each area.
Endurance: Cycling is an aerobic endurance sport. Consider the fact that pedaling is generally at 90-100rpm and a “short ride” might be an hour long. This means that you will be doing 100 x 60 pedal strokes. That is 6000 reps in 1 hour. Compare that to weight lifting where a high repitition set might be 30 reps! The foundation of a cycling training program is endurance training. When training for a long 100 mile event, you need to exaggerate the endurance training. Over the period of months the duration of exercise will build to near or even over full event distance. Keep in mind that in training it is desirable to isolate the system you are training. Therefore with endurance training you don’t want to go “hard” you just want to go long. We’ll train going hard in other workouts.
Example workout for Endurance:
- Ride long and easy, build up duration over time.
Force: Pushing hard on the pedals is an important aspect of fast cycling. Think of this as “Strength” on the bike. It is important to be able to call upon and activate your muscles to push hard on the pedals. Higher force pedaling puts the emphasis on your muscles and takes it off of your cardiovascular system. You have to be careful in events though, because high force pedaling is more fatiguing.
2 workouts to focus on high force pedaling:
- Choose a big gear and pedal at about 50rpm for 10-12 pedal strokes in the saddle.
- Find a 1-2 minute long hill and ride at 60-70rpm in the saddle.
Speed: How quickly/frequently you push on the pedals is another component to powerful pedaling. Pedaling is not just about how hard you push. It is also about how frequently you push. Imagine you had to climb a hill in just 1 revolution of the pedals. You couldn’t do it unless you were a MACK truck. You need to break the work up into smaller pieces. That is what pedaling speed does. It breaks to work up into manageable pieces. Higher cadence pedaling also equates to lower peak force per pedal stroke. This is less fatiguing too.
2 workouts to focus on high speed pedaling:
- Spin-ups: choose a very easy gear and over 30 seconds increase your pedaling speed to maximum speed without bouncing while in the saddle.
- Form Sprints: Out of the saddle efforts performed like a real sprint but without high force. These are for speed not power.
Muscular Endurance: Muscular Endurance is the key to cycling performance once the duration of the effort exceeds a couple minutes. So, for all but the track sprinter this is going to be a prevailing feature in your training. The training is designed to build tolerance to extended periods of higher force work. This is where Lactate Threshold (LT) workouts and “Sweet Spot” workouts fit into the picture. These are workouts with efforts at or just below a level you could sustain for up to an hour. Hill climb and short Time Trial (TT) events feature muscular endurance very heavily. The maximum pace possible for all riding can be described as a percentage of your Lactate Threshold pace. Therefore, training and improving your LT pace means that all distance paces improve!
2 workouts to forcus on Muscular Endurance:
- Sweet Spot Intervals: 2x 20 minutes at tempo pace (88-93% of threshold power, build to 10bpm under LT heart rate, perceived exertion of 7 out of 10)
- Cruise Intervals: 5x 6 minutes at LT pace (95-105% threshold power, build to LT heart rate, perceived exertion 8 out of 10)
Speed Endurance: Performing an action at a high rate for an extended time. This type of work builds “muscle memory”. This is when you can stop thinking about your pedaling and your legs just go around quickly and smoothly. Most cycling doesn’t focus on this for obtaining race results, but it is there in the background. You must be able to pedal smoothly with higher cadence to be efficient and prevent fatigue.
A workout to focus on Speed Endurance:
- Endurance Spinning: spin 10-20rpm over your regular self-selected cadence for 10 minutes at a time for 2-3 reps.
Power: Combining Speed and Force to deliver an explosive sprint or blast up a short “power” climb.
- Jumps: from a fast rolling start (15-20mph) perform 10-12 pedal strokes maximum power and high cadence.
- Short sprints: Sprint all out for 15 seconds. Practice different race finish types; flat, uphill, downhill, corner then finish, etc.
Find the Right Combination for You and Your Key Events
You need to spend the most amount of time training those systems that are needed for your events. You also want to focus on your personal weaknesses that overlap with the demands of the event to make the most out of your training time. Remember to split up the training themes and work on them in separate workouts on separate days. Of course, don’t forget to recover!
Tip #9: MUSCULAR ENDURANCE: THE KEY TO STRONG LONG DISTANCE CYCLING
Muscular endurance is probably the most important energy system that you can develop for high performance in long cycling road riding and racing efforts. High performance cycling requires that you are able to sustain a high muscular effort for a sustained period of time. This type of effort combines force and endurance. On the bike, this means you must turn a relatively high (hard) gear at a high cadence for a long time. This capability is based upon your muscular endurance. Training your muscular endurance is a key and fundamental component of your preparation for long distance events. Trained properly, excellent muscular endurance insures that you can stay with a fast attacking group without suffering, or helps you keep up with the group on long, steady grades.
In order to train your muscular endurance, you must develop the components, force and endurance, as separate areas of concentration. After you have honed these two components, you should begin doing focused workouts that combine the two. Muscular endurance training should begin in your Base training period, but continue throughout your training year. Muscular endurance can be improved using tempo rides, cruise intervals and threshold rides. Optimal muscular endurance workouts are characterized by long repeats, to emphasized the endurance component, combined with gearing that demands greater force, such as high (over geared) gear efforts on a long sustained grade. Begin muscular endurance workouts at a level below threshold, but as you do them over a period of time, increase the intensity to threshold level and, eventually, over-threshold efforts. To make maximum benefit for muscular endurance workouts, you should keep recovery intervals relatively short, typically less than 25% of the interval length.
If you want to be a strong rider, you must develop strong muscular endurance.
Tip #10: EVERY DAY IS NOT A TEST
Performance testing is a critical component to continued improvement. However, one of the most important things to remember when training is that each ride is NOT about doing “better” than your previous ride. You must not go out each day and test yourself. Let’s talk about testing, training given test values and retesting.
Do Some Testing
You should test yourself occasionally to determine your current training zones. A test session should be done after a period of recovery. For endurance athletes a typical test session will include a measure of what pedaling output you can sustain. To that end you can perform a 20-minute test using a power meter and measure the power you can sustain. An alternative is to perform a blood lactate test where you measure accumulation of lactate and preferably also the power output where lactate product and lactate clearing is “balanced”. These are two methods to determine your current fitness.
Note: Heart Rate (HR) and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) are not good metrics to observe without power or blood lactate as they should always be high when you are doing a test. HR and RPE are more of a measure of how your body is responding to stress than how much stress you can place on your body and they should be recorded along with Power and Blood Lactate.
Do Some Training
Train in your current training zones. Workouts are designed to be do-able. You should be able to complete a workout as described. Sometimes it will be a challenge, but you should be able to do it. For example, a “cruise interval” workout is done at 100% of your 60 minute power, but the work intervals are usually 20 minutes or less (often 6-8 minutes). So, you should be able to do them. Realize that as a training block progresses you will get fatigued and you will not be able to go faster or at a higher power output than when you weren’t fatigued. This is what can make those 6 minute efforts still feel quite hard. You are getting tired.
If you feel “good” on a particular day you need to resist the temptation to push yourself when that isn’t the plan. Don’t do 110% when it shoudl be 100%, instead enjoy that 100% feels easier than it used to. Even more important is to not go 85% when you were supposed to go 65%. This short changes your recovery and makes it so you won’t be able to go as hard on days when you are supposed to. There will be plenty of time to ride at higher zones. Wait until a real test tells you that you are ready.
After some training you will need some recovery. We have discussed this before. Only with recovery from the training will you see improvement in fitness.
Do Follow Up Testing
You need to re-test since training (or lack of) will cause your fitness to change. After a recovery period it is common to re-test. This can be another structured test or a race. It is important to do the re-testing to insure that you are continuing to stress your body which will result in further adaptations to the stress and even more improvement. If you use a power meter in your regular training you can keep track of the stress you are putting on your body even in the context of changing training zone numbers, and you can “plan” when you are going to be best prepared to have a top performance.
When you integrate performance testing into your training you can continuously build your fitness and apply a specific amount of training stress. Remember that not every day is a test. Stick to the plan and when the next test day comes around be prepared to reset those zones.
Example Test Protocol
- Warm up at endurance pace 50-65% for 15-20 minutes.
- In an easy gear spin at ~20RPM higher than normal cadence for 1 minute. Repeat 3x with 1 minute easy pedalling in between.
- Ride at an easy pace for 5 minutes
- Perform a 5 minute all out effort. (be steady, it will get harder after 1.5-2.5 minutes as you exhaust anaerobic capacity, finish strong the final minute and really give your all the last 10-15 seconds)
- Pedal easy for 5 minutes
- Perform a 20 minute test effort. This is the “real” test. If you have done a previous test you could start at that output. If not, you can start at a slightly elevated pace and let the effort build to comfortably hard. The last few minutes you can pull out all of the stops and finish feeling spent.
- Cool down at active recovery pace <50%
The 5 minute all out portion serves 2 purposes. First, it exposes your body to elevated pace and switches on the systems in the body to deal with those conditions. Second, it burns off some of the top end capacity so that the 20 minute test is closer to steady state.
The 20 minute test will generally overestimate what you can do for 60 minutes by about 5%. So, subtract 5% from your 20 minute test result and that is the value you should use for 100% in your training.
Tip #11: PEAK FOR PERFORMANCE
You’ve been training hard and consistently. Your ‘A’ goal event is approaching in just weeks. It’s now time to ‘peak’ your performance capability so that you have the kind of excellent event that you’ve planned and worked for. You have been training for a long period to build your fitness to a high level. In order to achieve high performance, you must also combine a level of ‘freshness’ with that fitness to trigger your best effort. This is the goal of the peaking process.
It is very important to understand that you are not going to substantially improve your performance potential to a higher level in the last 10-14 days before your event. You can, if you handle this critical time wrong, insure that you do not have a good event. Another important detail is the fact that you must continue to include intensity in your workouts during this period so that you do not lose your performance edge. During your peak period you should reduce the volume of training and separate your hard workouts with additional recovery days. A good formula that works for many athletes is to reduce the volume (amount of time spent training) to about 70% of your usual weekly volume for the 2nd week before your event, and then for the week ending with your event, reduce it even further to 60% of your normal training load. Intervals called for in this period should also be reduced in number similarly; however, the intensity you bring to the interval should be at 110%. For example, if you typically do 10 Anaerobic Capacity intervals in an AC workout, you should do 7 if the workout is 10-14 days before your event, or 6 if your workout is 5-9 days before the event.
This is the time when you should be focusing on workouts that are designed specifically to meet the demands of your event. Simulating the demands of your event in your workouts is a good training technique. Don’t be afraid to push your efforts in these workouts to your highest performance levels, you don’t need to ‘save it for the event’. However, do insure that you don’t overdo the quantity of these kinds of efforts or the duration of your training rides. At the end of the workout, you should feel like you could have, and should have, done more.
It is equally important that you are extremely diligent in your efforts to rest and recover during this period. The purpose for reducing training volume is to insure that you are well rested (“fresh”) as you begin your “A” event. The peaking process is more than simply doing specific workouts. You must eat quality food, pay attention to hydration and insure that you fully recover from every workout and that you are well rested. You’ve trained well, now peak for perfect performance.
Gordy Paulson USAC Level 1 CoachTip #12: TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESSES, RACE YOUR STRENGTHS
Train Weakness, Race Strengths…
Coaches will tell you that your best bet is to train your weaknesses, so that they do less to limit your race success. But when you show up at the race, race your strengths. If you’re a strong time trialer, but can’t sprint to save your life, it makes no sense to sit back and let the race come down to a final sprint. The better tactic for the time trialist is to try and turn the race in to a time trial. Attack early and hope you can get clear. With a big enough lead, the sprint specialists might be very reluctant to work hard to close a gap. Similarly, the time trialer might be able to attack late in the race, but while the distance to the finish line seems too far to pedal alone. There are times when an attack 5 kilometers from the finish might seem foolhardy, but might be the best odds for victory for the strong time trailer with a mediocre sprint. On the other side of the coin, that pure sprinter will conserve and stay in contact hoping the race will come down to a final sprint. Don’t be surprised if that person only follows wheels, or is never seen on the front of the race. Don’t blame her if she’s only on wheels; labeling her a ‘wheelsucker’ misses the point. She’s racing her strength. It makes no sense for that person to sit on the front wasting energy pulling hard. But when the 300 meter marks shows up, it’s time for the sprinter to shine.
Keep in mind, ‘training your weakness’, although a good practice, doesn’t mean that you’re going to turn a weakness in to your strength. If your physiology is full of fast twitch fibers, you might improve as a time trialer, but you will never match the strength of someone who was born to be one. When you show up at the race, you still want to race your strengths. By improving your weakness you might be reducing your limitations, but it’s a rare occasion when you can actually turn a real weakness into your strength. Most athletes find their strengths early and naturally gravitate to races and opportunities that play to those strengths.
And now for a practical example…
Let’s say your weakness is climbing. If you’re a pretty large cyclist like me (175#-79kg and 6’1”-185cm), you’re likely to never be a climber like Andy Schleck or Alberto Contador. You can maintain a high strong effort, even on a climb, but when the surges and attacks happen on a climb, you suffer and usually get dropped. So what do you do? Training your weakness (climbing) is still important. You should include force intervals, hill attacks and stomps in your training. You should work on proper climbing technique emphasizing strong cadence maintenance to keep your legs from fatiguing. Learn to use leverage and body position to maximize force without ‘fighting’ the bike. Work on your attitude about climbing and the climb. Develop mental cues to help convert a problem climb in to a challenge that you attack. Break climbs down in to manageable segments. As you reach goals within the climb you can create energy for the next challenge. As you gain climbing prowess, you will get to the top of climbs more quickly, but you still may not be able to climb with the best climbers. Trying to match them pedal stroke for stroke may be your undoing. To deal with this ‘weakness’ you can adopt a tactic known as ‘slide climbing’. This tactic allows you to climb at a pace more to your liking without losing contact with the climbers. When you see a climb coming up, don’t lag at the back of the pack. Move to the front. Try to start the climb on the front, or even off the front. Then settle in and climb at your strong climbing pace. Be willing to accept the fact that you’re going to get passed by the true climbers. Stay mentally focused; keep your pace at a level you can handle. As the pack gets strung out going up the climb you may be passed by most or many of the other riders, but with luck you’ll still be in contact with riders as you reach the crest of the climb. Rather than facing a miserable solo chase to try and reconnect with the pack after you’re dropped, you have wheels to follow and riders to work with. Low and behold, you’ve raced your strength.
Tip #13: SAVE IT FOR THE RACE
We are coming up on late summer and fall racing. Often we are very close to our biggest event of the season. Now is the time to make sure that you can use all of the training you have done—on Race Day! There are a few things to remember to ensure you are getting the most out of what you have put in.
It is too late…
It is too late to gain NEW fitness that you will be able to use in your event when you are within the last couple of weeks prior to the event. That is right, you can’t (and shouldn’t try to) get real benefit from one more big training day when you are in the last couple of weeks before your big event. It takes about 2 weeks for your body to adapt to the training stress you place on it. It takes about 3 weeks to fully recover from very hard training. That means that if you have less than 2 weeks to go a workout will not cause a fitness gain before the event. Worse yet, that hard workout WILL cause fatigue that you will carry with you. So, don’t try to squeeze in extra workouts that really stress you, because it is too late.
Don’t get stale.
The last couple of weeks prior to a big event ARE about getting the fatigue out WHILE getting sharp and not feeling stale. Recovery is important, but if you back things way off you can feel stale. Within a well structured training plan there will be a recovery week and then a couple of “peak” weeks leading up to a big event. You need to get the recovery in first, but then you need to do some efforts at elevated pace (during the peak weeks) to make sure that you are ready to go “full gas”. If you just back things off you will not have the snap that you are wanting to have on race day. There is a balance to find though. You don’t want to do too much or too little. Too much will just be fatigue. Too little and you will feel flat and stale. A good rule of thumb is to do about 70% of your intensity volume 2 weeks before and 60% the week before your race. This has the effect of making sure your training right before the event is less intense than earlier so you have extra energy to give, but it is also intense enough so that you aren’t turning into a couch potato.
Resist the urge to go harder.
With a recovery and a peak leading up to the important event your brain will start to tell you things.
“See what you can do.”
“Push a bit harder.”
“One last ‘test’ before the big day.”
“One extra climb.” etc.
You do NOT want to give in to these voices in your head. You need to SAVE IT FOR THE EVENT. You COULD go out and ride really hard. This is because you have prepared yourself for a big event. Remember that pushing that extra bit at this point is only going to reduce what you can do in the event. Remember that the event is what all of the training was for. You didn’t work so hard just to go a bit harder 2 weeks BEFORE the event. You trained for the event. Save it for the event!
Tip #14: RACE DAY TIPS
You’ve done the training. You’ve tapered and peaked for the race. The big day has finally arrived. Now is the time to make sure you make the right decisions before and during the race.
Don’t waste your energy.
This applies to many facets of race day. I’ll go into a few of those facets.
- Nervous energy does not make you go faster. Try not to waste your energy being nervous. Arrive early. Get things set. Let other people be nervous. Save your energy for the race.
- Everyone has a full tank at the beginning of the event. It will feel easy at the beginning. That is because it is the beginning. It is later in the race that counts. Make sure you don’t wear yourself out early. Save it for when it counts.
- Be smart about your position in the group. In mass start events taking advantage of the draft provided by other riders is key. STAY OUT OF THE WIND. If the wind is from your left stay to the right. You can save 30% by simply getting into the draft of other riders. Other people will take advantage of the draft, don’t give up that edge to your competitors.
- At key points in the race you will have to spend energy to keep yourself in the race. It might be a decisive hill, or a group of 6-8 strong riders making a move where you will need to spend energy. You need to spend energy sometimes. Spend it wisely.
- Spend your energy for a reason. If you are working hard and you can’t answer “Why?” then you need to STOP. If you are on the front of a large group pulling everyone along and you can’t answer “Why?” then STOP. If you are strong on the flats but weak on hills and you are pulling everyone on a flat leading up to a hill, STOP. The exception is when you can answer “Why?” For example, there is a group of 6 up the road and my teammate is a strong sprinter, so I need to pull everyone along, even if it is on a flat before a hill, to bring things back together for the team.
Set yourself up for success.
You have made the commitment to prepare for the race and enter the race. Now that you are in the race you need to make the commitment to succeed. Make sure that you don’t let your weaknesses hold you back. Race your strengths. Do not second guess yourself.
- If you are a weak climber then make sure you are recovered prior to the climb. Start the climb near the FRONT of the group so that you can slip back several positions. If you start a climb tired and at the back then you will find yourself OFF THE BACK. Don’t do that.
- If you are a strong climber then ride near the front and when it is at a point in the race where a move can stick until the end then be prepared to make a move and commit to it.
- It you are a weak sprinter then make a move before the finishing sprint. If you get away with a small group then you only have to sprint against a much smaller group. Maybe you can even get away from that smaller group too!
- If you are a strong sprinter then you need to spend your energy to stay with the group so that you can SPRINT FOR THE WIN! Keep yourself in the race leading up to the last few hundred meters so that you can compete in the last few hundred.
- When you make a decision COMMIT TO IT 100%. If you second guess yourself and you don’t succeed then you will never know what would have happened if you were “All in.” If you do commit fully to your moves and they don’t work out, then at least you know that you gave it your all. If you commit fully and the move WORKS, then you win and you earned it.
Have Fun!
Never forget that we are doing this because it makes us feel good. Enjoy the day!
Tip #15: RACE WEEK COUNT BACK
The week of your big event is here! Now is the time to make sure that you are ready to go. The workouts to build your fitness are behind you. You have rested to get rid of residual fatigue. You have been doing some “peaking” workouts to make sure you are sharp for your event. Now let’s look at the details of doing your best in the final week. To do this we’ll count backward starting with the event.
Race Day
On race day you need to get ready for the event prior to the actual start. Here are a few things that can really help:
- Get there early; this will prevent the feeling of being rushed.
- The warm up is really important for short events. When the effort is short and hard you need to make sure the engine is hot before the start. You can read the description of the “leg-opener” given in the next section and use the same efforts for your warm up.
- Stay calm. Nervous energy is wasted energy. Let everyone else waste their energy, save yours for the event.
- Stay cool. Summer heat can rob performance if you get too hot. Before you start riding drink cold water to help keep cool. Once you start riding cool sports drink is a good idea.
- Have FUN. This is the main reason we are out there. The training and the events are about doing what we enjoy. Don’t lose sight of that!
Day Before Race Day
The day before the event you want to do a “leg-opener”. The day before is NOT the day to do nothing or just take the day really easy. I think of the workout the day before as a sort of “warning shot” to tell your body that it still needs to be prepared to do hard work. A “leg-opener” workout will include a couple race specific type efforts. The day before all events it is a good idea to do some higher cadence work ( 3x 1 minute at 10-20rpm over your normal cadence at Zone 3 (tempo) or under with 1 minute of Zone 1 easy pedaling between each effort, is an example). After the high cadence efforts 2x 3 minute effort efforts at Zone 4 (LT pace) with 5 minutes easy pedaling in between. If you are doing a criterium type race with lots of accelerations you will want to do several the day before with 3-5 minute recoveries in between each acceleration or sprint.
Two Days Before
Two days before the race is the day that you want to focus on rest and recovery. Have you ever started a new activity that made you sore afterward? I remember lifting weights for the first time. The day after your first time doing that new workout you are sore. 2 days after is worse still! With cycling you will probably not get sore from a workout, but you will be carrying that fatigue in 2 days. So, active recovery pace or even a complete rest day are the best 2 days prior to the event.
Early Race Week
Make sure you include some elevated pace the week of the event. This is a lower volume week continuing on the trend of the “peak” weeks that preceded it. Workouts done this week WILL NOT improve your fitness on race day. It takes 10-14 days to adapt to a training stress, so workouts now are too late to positively impact your general fitness. Workouts this week will affect you fatigue level and your freshness level. You want to make sure that this week is not too easy so that your body thinks it can move to the life of sitting on the couch, but you also want to make sure that the week isn’t too hard so that you are not adding a bunch of fatigue.
Focus on getting a good nights rest the entire week of the event. Usually the night before an event isn’t going to be the best for rest. One bad night will not have a huge negative impact, but the entire week leading up to the event will have a huge impact. Get those hours of sleep!
