View Single Post
Old 01-06-06, 11:53 AM
  #8  
WarrenG
Oldbie bike racer
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: NorCal
Posts: 196

Bikes: Steve Rex road, track, Richard Sachs road, Giant mtb

Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 0 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts
LT, you're training sounds very good. Your focus on LT power is what will allow you to finish with the pack feeling relatively good, and ready for the finale. (races with cat 5-3 rarely end with succesful breakaways) Far too many people think they have to do sprints and little surges because that's the type of effort they seem to struggle with in races, but if you're able to do the majority of the race at, or even below your LT then you can handle the surges and sprints more easily, and recover relatively quickly before the next one.

With a "tempo" power near 240 watts your threshold power is probably near 260-280 and that's enough to get you through most Cat 4 criteriums unless you're way over 200 pounds. I suggest that you add in some intervals that take you a bit over your LT (but keep doing nearly all of your current training below LT).

You could try some 1-3' intervals at about 106-110% of your LT, Allow recovery about 1.5 to 2 times the work interval. IF you're more of a natural born sprinter (like me) then you can do this VO2max training with intervals with 15" on at 110% of LT, 45" rest, repeat for 5-7 times. Rest 5', repeat again.

Gradually you can add to the total time of this training until you're near 8-10' of total work but start out with just 5' or so. Eventually the interval will be 30" on/ 30" rest. Right before peaking it could be up to 40" on/ 20" off. Don't jump into this type of training too hard in January. Build it gradually until May or so.

Maybe you can start out by just adding the CTS "Over-unders" where you do a few minutes just below your LT, then a minute or two at, or just above your LT, repeat, etc. This is good training for racing too because it trains your body to recover from efforts even though you're still riding fairly hard.

If you're at EB's on Sunday, I'll be there mentoring and doing the p123 race.

-Warren
WarrenG is offline