dizon510

hello forum,

i had my first race since early april yesterday, a 4 corner crit with slight incline on back stretch. i did 13 collegiate races earlier this season with some success in crits. took a break to deal with graduating from undergrad.

i had great resources around my school. team to train with and plenty of fast group rides.

now at home, nothing starts around my area. access to great riding, but no training partners.

i put in 3 weeks of training solo, 490 miles with 40.8k feet of climbing. no intervals or repeats, just going by feel.

short story: not happy with the result. i didnt expect 3 weeks to make me a champ, but i never thought id get dropped in a crit/whistled off.

today i tried to get some anaerobic capacity work with 10 second efforts, but i cant stand that kind of thing. it takes the pleasure out of cycling.

20 minute intervals aren't as bad with some music, but the crit specific workouts i see online all involve repeats. seeing the same stretch of road over and over just sucks. id hate to become sick of my bike.

has anyone found success just riding solo, making gains with time/volume? integrating intensity differently?

ericm979

Repeats means repeating the effort, not repeating the same section of road.

Are you sure that you wern't tired from doing a lot of volume?

You should check out Friel's Training Bible, specifically the part about planning your season. If JRA worked for training that's what the pros would do and there would be no need for coaches.
I dislike short intervals as well. It's one of the reasons I don't do crits, the other being that I can't sprint and don't enjoy them much.

You could try doing your short intervals fartlek style- thrown in randomly during a ride. That's less tedious than doing them on the same stretch of road, but does not give you the same feedback on how you are doing (unless you have a power meter).

chasm54

You need intensity in your training as well as volume. If intervals bore you (personally I used to feel too sick to realise I was bored) why not integrate them into your usual rides? You seem to be doing plenty of climbing, so once or twice a week do some short (one minute) sprints up the hills, giving yourself five minutes or so to recover before the next one. Half a dozen should be enough, and there's no need to do the same section of hill over and over. You can do them on the flat, too - hills just happen to be my preference.

gregf83 

Maybe crits aren't your thing? Sprinters enjoy anaerobic efforts.

Two obvious factors that didn't help your recent result would be lack of freshness in your legs, given you'd ramped up your training in the last 3 wks, and lack of intensity during training.

One workout I like is to do an hour at tempo, say 80-85% of FTP, and sprint for 10 seconds every 3min. After the sprint you go right back to tempo pace. Add some time at the beginning and end for warmup and cooldown. Mentally, it's not that hard and it provides similar intensity to a crit. My NP for the 1 hr ends up being a little higher than my FTP.

cyclezen

nothing much says 'crit' better than intervals... they suck...
but gettin shelled sucks more...