Originally Posted by
DaveLeeNC
The question on my mind is illustrated in the following example. Take two identical cyclists who train in the following different ways
1) 9 hours per week with say 30% at/above 93% of his/her lactate threshold
2) 9 hours per week with say 5% at/above 93% of his/her lactate threshold
Assume that overtraining is not an issue in either case. Now both
#1 and
#2 are heading toward 'the century of a lifetime' where in 12 weeks said cyclist will get $2000 for every minute under 5 hours that he/she finishes a reasonably fast course century. Is somehow
#2 better off because of his/her better ability to preferentially metabolize fat? Maybe that is true but I am not seeing this in my research (or this discussion) outside of what Chapple says.
dave
At 9 hours/week, I'm seeing best results from 10-15% subthreshold/LT and less than 5% suprathreshold. Others may have different results - everyone is different. You have to experiment on yourself. It's known as walking the knife edge. You want to do as much as you can do without falling into overreaching/overtraining. You definitely don't want to sacrifice needed intensity in favor of more low end work. The question for you to answer is, for you, how much is "needed intensity?" One definitely needs intensity to increase one's power. That's why we do hill repeats and speed work. Chapple is saying that one gets best results from also incorporating a lot of base. You might want to get Carmichael's The Time Crunched Cyclist and compare his recipe for max power from short workouts to what Chapple is saying. I don't think they're advocating different systems, just that the less time you have, the higher the percentage of high end.
Overtraining is always an issue. In fact, it's
the issue.