Originally Posted by
BummBull
I guess I wasn't thinking too much about resting my heart. I want to be able to add more cardio without wearing down my legs. I think it's easy to over train my legs, but I wasn't thinking that I could over train my heart. I should do more research about that.
I was more concerned with resting my legs for cycling for the hard days. Even on easy days, it's just so easy to go longer than intended or riding with little effort up a hill, or riding into the headwind making my legs little tired for my hard rides.
Perhaps you need to have a very focussed mission for these days. Go out, do cornering drill slaloming between markers in some car park or whatever, go home? With an HRM set to scream if you work too hard, following a pre-set route.
I do strength training following this website, simplefit.org. I do level 6 currently. It's very easy to follow, and I definitely get my core worked out doing bunch of push ups and pull ups. I'll look into adding yoga, but I just haven't been a huge fan in the past b/c I get so bored with it, and I didn't see much help.
I share your feelings on yoga. But other than stronger legs and better cardio, flexibility is the main way to add speed - riders who can ride more of the time in the drops with a low stem have a real advantage.
My understanding is that it is quite hard to overtrain the heart in the sense of doing damage. But it is a muscle like any other, so if you're trying to develop a crit-worthy heart it needs intense stress and then decent rest so that it can supercompensate. Training for a crit isn't like training for a triathlon - you need a much higher top for those tactical sprints. So the problem of trying to fit running in with cycling is much more difficult for you, and you're looking at a very questionable gain.
Also: I'm really not sure that running on recovery days will be good for you. Again, triathletes get away with it, but that doesn't mean it is optimal. Trying to use a muscle (at more than the equivalent of walking pace) that should be recovering seems dubious to me. There's one set of tasks it needs to perform for recovery, another for effort - is confusing it a good idea? I'd really want to see some very detailed studies. Even if Run Less, Run Faster is valid on its own terms, I'm dubious about applying it on "reverse" to crit racing - it seems to be aimed at marathon runners, who are training to meet a completely different metabolic challenge. They don't need to develop a crit racer's sprint ability, so they need less rest for supercompensation, and cross-training serves the purpose of saving their knees.