Training & Nutrition - Training for an Event, and little cluless as to how. Help please.

Hello

Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read this and offer advice.

This coming season (2010) will be my third on the bike. Until now, I've gotten away will essentially JRA, and some unstructured intervals thrown in whenever I felt like it. I'd like to take things more seriously this coming season, and take my riding up to whatever the next level is for me. I'm also going to New Zealand in February, and am going to do a bit of riding. Some of it will be gentle rides with my family, but there is at least one ride (Taupo - Napier for anyone that's familiar) that I would like to do, and I'd like to be able to be in good enough shape to enjoy it.

My current strength is endurance - I've done some 200k rides this season and finished them strongly. The terrain wasn't too tough, granted, but I rode well, managed my nutrition and hydration well, and finished with a lot left in the tank.

Weaknesses - climbing. My legs are not as strong as they ought to be, and living where I do, climbing is not something you encounter often.

So - I have 3 and 1/2 months to get ready for this. What should I do?

Most of my training will have to be done indoors on my trainer since winter is coming on. I'm happy to devote 10 - 12 hours a week to training (more if needs be). If I could do all the work on the bike I'd prefer it, but I can spend the $$ on a gym membership if lifting is going to help significantly. (I was going to lift this winter anyway, but funds are tight).

My only training aid is HRM, and I plan to do the 20min threshold test thing on Monday. FWIW I'm 30 years old.

Hey Trigger, sounds like fun. First thing popped into my head was "hire a coach," 'cause you're coming off the blocks here on your first attempt at self-coaching and there's a heck of a learning curve. Mostly in knowing when to say "enough." But you don't have unlimited funds.

There's always Friel's The Cyclist's Training Bible. That's a good place to start. You aren't time-crunched, but Carmichael's new book The Time Crunched Cyclist is great at explaining the reasons for a lot of things.

For just plain getting coached when you have known experience and a known goal within a known time frame, PC Coach (www.pccoach.com (http://www.pccoach.com)) is hard to beat. Buy the base software and the cycling plan. It includes good logging software. It'll tell you exactly what and how long and when. And the plan it will create for you is modifiable as you go along, so it can handle overdoing it, etc. Not the same as a human, but better, I think, than starting with a book, because it's more interactive. It includes an optional lifting plan. You'll need to know your max HR so it can output your zones. A good guess will work, because you can always change the MHR figure or ask it to modify the plan if it seems too hard or easy.

Good luck!

Thanks.

My problem is that I find books like Friel's (which I've look at a bit) very complicated. There's so much math flying around that I just tune out. It seems it would take an inordinate amount of time for me to make sense of the numbers before I could actually start training.

I'm going to do the threshold test on Monday. I imagine that is going to be sobering.

What I think I'm looking for is a general idea of how to structure things. I understand that 2 x 20 intervals will be very useful, but how often should I do them? If I'm spending say 12 hours a week training, how much of that should be tempo, endurance, long intervals, short intervals, lifting? I know, I know, I know ... hire a coach. I'm a cash strapped grad student, and that ain't going to happen.

Anyone willing to toss out some guidelines?

Again, a huge thanks to anyone willing to spend their time and share their knowledge. I can't pay you, but I'll go out of my way to pay it forward. :D

(and yeah, if it doesn't kill me, it's going to be awesome!)

Thanks.

My problem is that I find books like Friel's (which I've look at a bit) very complicated. There's so much math flying around that I just tune out. It seems it would take an inordinate amount of time for me to make sense of the numbers before I could actually start training.<snip>That's why the PC Coach software makes so much sense. (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with this company)

You need to do many different things at different times, with varying lengths of doing something else between them. Yeah, it's complicated if you want to really have at it. But for simplicity, we also have Homeyba's advice, which I'll quote because I totally agree with him :thumb::

"No, you don't just ride a lot. Actually you don't need to ride a ton of miles. What is more important is the quality of the miles that you put in. Speed and climbing work are essential. When I train for an ultra I usually ride 3-4 times a week. One day of speed work about 25 miles, one day of climbing repeats also about 25 miles (1 1/2hrs) one recovery day ride 30-35miles and a longer ride on the weekend 45-75miles."

Hmmm. If they made a MacCoach, I'd be all over it.

Had a look at the site you suggested, but it's not Mac compatible, unless I also go and buy Parallels or something similar I guess.

Otherwise - one day go fast (tempo with maybe shorter faster intervals mixed in). one day go far (2 - 3 hours on the trainer at endurance HR - watch a movie). one day recovery / JRA. one day hills - OK, how best to simulate hill work on the trainer.

Perhaps this is what I meant to be asking all along. How best to replicate hill work on my trainer? 2 x 20 and 2 x 30 at threshold? Above threshold? Use higher gearing and really blast my legs?

You really are analog, aren't you? :)

I suggest three different trainer workouts for hills.

1) One-legged pedalling. Search this forum for posts by me about this.

2) Tempo. I do these in zone 3, or 85% -90% of LT, at a steady 70 cadence. They are killers. Do 15 minute intervals, with 15 minute rest periods, maybe working up to 1/2 hr. intervals. Once a week, but don't do for more than 3 weeks in a row. You'll kill your legs.

3) Sub threshold. At about 95% of LT, cadence 78-85. Two 15 minute intervals, working up to 2 ea. 1/2 hour intervals.

If these intensities seem too hard, you can drop them 5%. Do the tempo workouts before starting the sub threshold. You can do one-legged pedalling on a recovery day.

Don't forget to taper a week before your trip.

Thanks! :thumb:

For the exercises you suggested, since the cadence is quite low and the intensity quite high, I take it this suggests reasonably steep gearing? Find the gear at which I have to be at the intensity level you suggest to produce a cadence of 70?

Ouch. :D Perfect. :D

Thanks! :thumb:

For the exercises you suggested, since the cadence is quite low and the intensity quite high, I take it this suggests reasonably steep gearing? Find the gear at which I have to be at the intensity level you suggest to produce a cadence of 70?

Ouch. :D Perfect. :DYes. :cry:

And for the speed work, I've found this drill very useful: 2 ea. 25 minute intervals with only 5 minutes between them, done at a 100 cadence, and the same HR you use for the tempo intervals. This is a much less stressful workout because high HR is easier at high cadence. It improves conditioning and pedalling skills. By the time you warm up and cool down, it's 1.5 hrs.

Great, thanks!

So - 1 day hills, 1 day endurance, 1 day JRA (one legged drills), 1 day speed / tempo

I'd like to ride one more day to make 5 (with two days of rest) days on the bike. What kind of workout should that be? More hills, another normal tempo ride?

These workouts will kick your butt if you're doing them at the suggested HR. If you want another day, just have fun and keep the HR down. Do the tempo on the hills day. Think of other fun things to do on the speed day, besides that one workout, but keep the cadence up to 90 or better.

Take your morning resting HR every day when you wake up. If you see it bump up by 5 beats or so over what it's been most mornings, don't do the next hard day. Substitute another recovery day. If you're doing one of the climbing workouts and your HR just won't come up like it has been, back it off to endurance level or even less. Never do a hard workout with a HR that seems much too low. Quit doing intervals when you think you may not be able to manage another one like that, or when your speed drops off noticeably for the standard HR. You want all the hard time to be quality time.

Ok - will do. :thumb:

I'll probably be back with some more questions after I do the threshold test on Monday or Tuesday. Thanks very, very much for all the advice. I'm going to map out a little training plan over the weekend, do the test, and get at it. It's going to be a painful 3 months, but the payoff will be totally worth it.

And I do promise to educate myself as I go ... thanks for getting me started though!! :love:

(though I suspect that this (:love:) will turn to :cry: soon after I start working on these.)

Tell you a funny story: A triathlete gets roped into participating in one of those athlete studies. They want to instrument him and have him ride to exhaustion. So he's on the stationary bike and going at it, and going really hard, and it starts to hurt a bit, but he keeps on going, he's been through this before. So then it starts hurting really a lot, a highly trained athlete riding to exhaustion after all, and tears start streaming down his face, but the researcher doesn't notice, assuming it's sweat. Finally he just can't go any more. The researcher looks at the data and says, "Hey man, your data is really an outlier, way off the curve for the rest of my data. It's too bad I can't use it."