Heathpack 

Hi y'all.

I am just finishing 12 weeks of training for a flat-ish century, which takes place this coming weekend. That has gone well and a normal weekend ride for me is now 60-65 miles, I can ride that pretty hard and be fine the next day. I've done rides in the 80-90 mi duration and not felt particularly taxed by them.

Phase two of training begins next week, and in that I am training for a hilly century (7000 ft of climbing) and I have 10 weeks to train for that. I am trying to put together a training schedule and I'm not sure if I still need long rides in the mix- ie will I lose aerobic endurance if I am focused mostly on training for hill climbing? I'd rather spend more time on hills if possible and skip the really long 80+ mi rides.

I am thinking of a schedule something like this:
Mon Core yoga
Tues Trainer- pedal drills, progressing to big gear repeats, then possibly in April switching this to hill climbing repeats in the real world (ie not on trainer), although with time constraints with work schedule I might have to keep this a trainer day
Wed- Hill repeats in real world, about 60-75 min
Thurs- Off
Fri- Yoga, core and upper body. 3 of 4 Fridays I'm off, so I could add easy miles here some weeks.
Sat- Group hilly ride, typically 40-50 mi, but I would possibly (depending on what Im doing Sunday) add miles on my own to bring it up to 60-65 mi. I could easily add more miles to this if necessary.
Sun- Initially hill repeats, probably transitioning into hill climbing rides (maybe another 60-65 mi) with some friends who are training for an even more hilly event than I am

So in the early part of this program, I would be cutting back my weekly mileage from around 150-160 to maybe 100. Towards the end, I will probably be back up to the 150 mi/week range.

My question is: will I lose too much aerobic fitness with this plan? I don't mind putting in the miles, can for example do Sunday hill repeats in the context of 50 easy miles if necessary. But my thinking was the hills will be tougher and I should maybe take it easy on the miles for awhile?

Any advice would be appreciated.

H

bigfred 

"It depends". :-)

Heathpack 

Lol. Of course in the time since I posted I've already decided what I'm going to do. Because that is my modus operandi.

Mr. H cannot let the idea of the Valentine's power meter go. He keeps coming back to it. Maybe I will let him give me an IOU. I cannot cram any new training concepts into my brain right now.

H

Carbonfiberboy 

I don't know if you've run across Homeyba here. He mostly posts on the LD forum. He does all sorts of brevets, ultra races, RAAM, that kind of thing. One of my cycling gods. Anyway, here is what he posted maybe a couple years ago in response to a question about how much riding is required to ride ultras:My experience is that this is good advice. I've ridden 400k rides in the mountains at a very good pace with an easier schedule than his and no training ride longer than 80 miles other than one very hard 200k ride. I'll usually do one day on the trainer doing OLP and recovery, a speed work day or a climbing repeat day, one long moderate somewhat hilly ride 30-50 miles, and a hard weekend group ride, 60-80 miles, really going for it. He's younger and recovers faster - his sched might be better for you. The important thing, as he says, is the quality of the hard rides.

I think you'd like a PM a lot. No need to get into fancy analytics with it. Just watch it and use it to hold effort steady.

Heathpack 

What does he do for "speed work," do you know?

I had decided on one day of short tough hill repeats, one day of trainer pedal work, one group ride with hills topping off miles as necessary to bring it to 65-75 mi, then one day of longer hill repeats possibly morphing into a training ride with a hill climbing group. The second group will be tougher longer climbing and if I start riding with them, I might drop out the first group ride.

I'm going to see how it goes. My leg strength is my biggest issue. It it really improves during the training period, I was thinking of adding this ride from Friels book: "Tempo ride. Continuous ride at zone 3 without recovery at time-trial cadence. Stay in aerodynamic position throughout. Start with 20-30 min, increase by 15 min per week to 75-90 min". It is to build muscular endurance, but not until after the leg strength is there. But I was wondering if this is what he meant by speed work?

H

Carbonfiberboy 

You'd have to PM him - introduce yourself. He's friendly.

Yes, the Friel tempo thing is a very good way to increase leg strength, but it's not speedwork. IIRC he says ~70 cadence for that, or maybe that's from Carmichael. Anyway, it's the lower than normal cadence and steady high effort that hits your strength and the trying to not stop that increases muscular endurance. Hard to find a place to do it because not stopping is critical: I've always done it on my rollers. I start with 2 X 15 X 15, work up to 2 X 30 X 15. One day/week for 3-4 weeks, then stop. Otherwise there's a good chance of overcooking it. Those are tough. I've never been able to do them for 60-90 minutes, but a lot of Friel is for more talented riders than I. For speed work, I do 2 X 30 X 5, same tempo HR, but steady 100 or higher cadence in slightly rolling terrain, shifting a lot. I've also done LT intervals on the flat, sets of 12' intervals, high cadence. But adding those in overcooked me quickly, so I stopped doing them. Very effective, though. As always, YMMV.

Heathpack 

I know Friel does not consider tempo rides to be speed work but I was assuming one would be going faster on a tempo ride (which I've never done) so that's why I was wondering if he (your guru) would consider that speed work.

But that does bring up another question. From my notes from Friel, I have "Tempo ride. Continuous ride at zone 3 without recovery at time-trial cadence. Stay in aerodynamic position throughout. Start with 20-30 min, increase by 15 min per week to 75-90 min"

What cadence is a "time trial cadence?"

H

Heathpack 

[QUOTE=Carbonfiberboy;16472811]You'd have to PM him - introduce yourself. He's friendly.QUOTE]

I will. Poor guy. I can be a little time-consuming, lol.

H

Carbonfiberboy 

I did notice, after I posted, that the workout you were talking about was different from the one I was talking about which was totally confusing. Sorry. I got that 70 cadence workout I was talking about from a different coach. It's strength specific.

When planning targeted training rides, I don't do much that I would normally do on an ordinary hard group ride. I usually train outside that performance envelope, because of inside-the-envelope work I get plenty. So I work easier, harder, higher cadence, lower cadence, etc.

By time-trial cadence, he means the cadence you would use to get up the road fastest during a time-trial race, usually 20k-40k. That varies with the individual. For most folks, that would be 95-100, but there is a lot of variation, so he doesn't specify. Some people turn the cranks much more slowly. Lance went up to 115.

Heathpack 

Thanks.

BTW, Friel considers his tempo ride workout to be in the training category of "muscular endurance" which is a later phase of training after the development of muscular strength. So I don't think you were wrong.

H

f4rrest

How'd it go?

Heathpack 

Exceeded my expectations, really went great. I'm going to write up a training summary to post sometime in the next few days. I'll put more details in that.



H

Dudelsack