sac02

Since I started racing recently, I discovered I suck at hills and accelerations (pack surges). So, I made the promise to myself to trade some training time for increased intensity. But I wonder if I'm overdoing the trade-off.

This week one of my rides was: 8 mile warmup, ~10 miles of hill repeats, 8 mile cooldown = 26 miles.
Another was: 7 mile warmup, 5min of 15s/15s intervals, 3min rest, 5 min 15s/15s intervals, 7 mile cooldown = 22 miles

Normally both of these rides would have been 50 or 60 miles, and it just feels like I haven't ridden much this week. Have I cut too much mileage out of my half-baked "training" regimen?

Mac

Duke of Kent

I don't know how far you are into your season, but I think most people suck at dealing with accelerations at the start of the year.

Hell, I nearly got popped in my first race of the year last season. A couple of weeks later, I was at the pointy end of things, grinding bones, making bread.

umd

bone bread?

Duke of Kent

Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead
I’ll grind his bones to mix my bread.

-Jack and the Beanstalk

sac02

Where's the smiley with something zipping right over his head? Because I have no clue what you're talking about.

Mac

Duke of Kent

See my response, then his response, then my response.

Surely you've heard of Jack and the Beanstalk?

Anyways, it means beating the living tar out of the competition.

sac02

Check. Sometimes I'm a little slow.

I thought perhaps it was a new way to call someone a troll,
but I wasn't sure what was troll-esque about my post.

Mac

waterrockets 

sac, what category are you racing? How long will the races be?

In general, I don't start doing all my intensity rides at the same time. I'll do a few weeks in each of endurance, then change to SST for a few weeks, then add one 5x5 interval workout for a few weeks. Then I add in the 1' intervals, at which point I'm doing short intervals 2 days and SST 3 days each week (unless I race, then I take more time off).

You don't need more than a couple of long rides (a bit longer than your races) every week. I'm just racing crits, so I'm not ever riding more than 24 miles, and most of the time it's less than 20 miles. I think I could start doing P/1/2 road races (and being active) if I just replaced one of my 1-hr SST rides with a 4-hr ride each week.

It doesn't take much. Last year I won a 52 mile road race having not ridden further than 22 miles in the previous couple months. It appears that doesn't apply for me in a 62 mile road race this season, where my muscles just fatigued and started cramping . I still finished and attacked at the end -- I just couldn't stay away with the cramping.

carpediemracing 

Speed and quantity of training are two different things.

In fact, I think that training on your own does little to increase speed.

Although Botto's rules on how to race are brief, they work because of one thing - racing emphasizes speed like nothing else, and the only way I know of to get that speed is to race. The way to build up to race speed is to do fast group rides.

It's normal to find the fast stuff difficult when you start racing. As you become acclimated to it (more fit, smarter, and knowing what to expect), it becomes, well, more tolerable. I was going to put "easier" but I don't think it gets much easier. Even folks like Bob Roll will write about how he'll be in the Tour, groveling in the 53x12, at the back of a single file field, wondering who the eff is pulling at the front.

A kid I mentored asked what his first race will feel like. I asked him to remember what it was like when he was going so hard in a TT that he almost rode off the road. I told him that'll be how it feels when it's the easiest part of the race (keep in mind he was racing Juniors so he'd be with Cat 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s). He finished the race but was so out of it he started getting dizzy during it. He finished, his face was bright red from effort, totally exhausted. He told me afterwards he thought I was nuts when I told him about the TT/race analogy but he said I was right - he couldn't believe how hard he could go in the race.

Speed work on your own is difficult to do, but I tell riders to try this:
https://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...sprinting.html

On a self-led out sprint, no wind, you should be able to hit mid 30s mph. Anything over 40 is very good.

But ideally you should be doing group rides with similar or higher level racers. Rides that regroup are good, and rides that regroup and have better racers are also good. I do a group ride that isn't a "race" group ride, and rarely has more than 15 riders, but it's fun because we can attack each other because we know that we'll regroup. So I'll attack, explode, go off the back, and then catch up to everyone at the next regroup spot.

cdr

waterrockets 

You mean when someone is starting out with racing, right? In my first season, the group rides were incredibly important. These days, I don't need group rides for anything. They're fun when I have time though.

challaday

As I've mentioned here before, I have started racing again after many years of being being completely out of the saddle and with a couple of years of riding regularly. I put in a lot of base miles over the last 8 or 9 months and added in interval training since about last November.

I was very nervous in my first race this year about having enough fitness to keep up with the pack, but that didn't seem to be a big issue. The bigger issue is finding my way around the pack again, and the final field sprint.

Now I know what I need to work on, so I think pretty much more racing is the only cure for those weaknesses. Even group rides don't go as fast and sprint as hard for intermediate points.

ldesfor1@ithaca

I subscribe to a similar perspective as WR: quality over quantity (which it seems like what you're doing now)

I will also say that boosting my LT this year has made handling surges SOOOOOO easy, even though I spent NO training time doing short intervals. I've never felt that moving around in a pack was ever as easy as it is now. All that time spent doing SST has pushed my ability to recover from surges, more to the specifics of your query.

So, as long as you're getting one long ride per week ("long" could mean 2 hard tempo hours or a 4 hour endurance ride), i think your plan makes sense.

You need to address your weaknesses, and if surges are your limiter, then.... try and get better at handling surges.

-L

efficiency

I think he's talking about speed work: motorpacing, holding a wheel at 35+ mph. Work of this type is hard to do by yourself (you need somebody to drive the motor, or a pack to draft off of that's pulling at 35 mph).

umd

I think that as long as you have people to ride with that are much faster than you are, riding in those groups can make sense.

ridethecliche

Or you can just motor by yourself at 30mph+ for intervals for 30secs to a min at a time as part of 'bridging' intervals. I did a few of those during a race today. I've never had a bigger smile on my face.