Combining long distance training with race/speed training
 

This season I am planning on doing a few shorter races, in addition to a randonneur series (200-600k rides). I want to train for speed, not just being able to ride slow indefinitely.

Right now I am trying to develop a training schedule for the spring/summer, and I am trying to focus mostly on improving my speed while doing just enough to make sure I can handle the distance. If I do one long ride a week (50+ miles and more as the season progresses). During the course of the week I will ride 4 other days devoted to speed/recovery. 2 off days. Does this seem like a reasonable plan?

My other question is about where to fit in my two rest days in the schedule. Before or after hard training day? Before or after distance day? Back to back or split up?

Thanks for any help or other advice that stems form this topic!

You should do your most intense training when you are the most rested. You can do a long endurance ride when you're already a bit tired.

Decide which (randonne or racing) you are most interested in doing and make your training focus on that. Trying to be your best at both is tough and will probably mean that you do poorly at both.

There's no such thing as a speed/recovery ride. It's one or the other.

With two days off a week, you probably don't also need recovery rides.

Working on raising your FTP with longer intervals will probably help both racing and distance riding. But for racing you need the ability to go fast for shorter periods of time as well, and those kind of workouts are what will tire you out and reduce the amount of distance work you can do.

If 50 miles is a long ride, I'd suggest that you need to work on that before you start racing. If you are new to this, spend the coming year doing the randonneur series, work on your endurance base and have fun. Racing can wait, it's not all that wise to start busting a gut with sprint intervals several times a week before you've developed much of an aerobic base.

Don't try to get too high tech with your training at first, either. Just go on as many long group rides as you can, without going out so often that you wear yourself out.

If you've already got that endurance base, you need to maintain it with one long ride a week (60-100 miles, or 4-5 hours saddle time, depending on how long your longest race is) though the season. Then add in interval sessions, faster group rides like a chaingang if there's one in your area, and competing as often as you can.

If the "shorter races" you mean are criterums, you'll need a very different type of training than if they are road races, and your randonneuring won't be very transferrable.

I'd say stick to the long rides at least through winter and early spring. You will be surprised how fast you can get on big volume alone. Leave intervals under 20 minutes for the start of your racing season.

If you do a couple 4 hr rides a week at a decent "endurance pace" clip, you'll end up being a faster racer and randonneur.

The shorter races I'm doing are more about a shorter sustained effort than true racing skills. The first is a 30 something road bike leg of a relay race, and the second is a 25 mile hill climb. I want to improve my times in these events, but sprinting and other race skills aren't really necessary for me in these events. The real racing may come in 2011, but the rando series is a goal I've had for a while and I don't want to try and focus on both.

My race training will be 1-2 "race pace" group rides each week, and maybe some form of individual training (long intervals sound good). I've done a few of these and they were great fun. My long ride will be a weekend group ride with the extra miles tacked onto the end.

I've done a couple pf 200ks, so 50 miles isn't too long. It's just the base I would use for my distance ride, and probably more than I will do on the other rides during the week. I am traveling all year and only get back in April, so it will be a good distance to start with when I am back on the bike.

Thanks for the great info; it's not very often I see a perfect 3/3 on useful responses here! When it comes time I will post my days of the week and when my group rides are. Then maybe I can get some help filling in the blanks to get a good schedule.

My training this year consisted of lots of 100+ mile rides. I usually did them 2-3 times a week and didn't do any intervals. I felt really good road racing a did fine, it was in crits where I could feel the difference not having the bursts of power out of corners

Oh. There's a big difference between long TTs and mass start races. Long hillclimb races are ridden like TTs... almost everyone rides at their threshold. Which race is this?

You don't need any speed work for these races, just a high FTP.

Yes, both of these races are like long TTs. The hill climb is the Ride 542, otherwise known as the Mt Baker Hill Climb. What is FTP?

functional threshold power...watts you can maintain for a 1 hr effort, without being wrecked...

fixed

No, you are pretty much completely wrecked after an hour at FTP.

This winter I'd follow ZeCanon's advice and ride quite a bit of volume (8 hours a week is PLENTY for starters through Cat 3 in my opinion), with maybe 1 day for threshold work, the rest just endurance riding and some easy tempo stuff. You can add in the speed work and more intense threshold work 8 weeks away from your race day and that'll be plenty of time to get fast.

You will meet guys that are doing 12-15 (or more) hours a week, and are still Cat 4 pack fodder. They are riding above their ability to recover, and will never get faster because they aren't allowing their body to heal and progress. The key is to get as much gain as possible out of minimum amount of riding, THEN slightly increase when you start showing up to every ride extremely fresh. If you are carrying residual soreness into any of your rides at 7-8 hours a week, DO NOT increase your volume. Give it some time, and when you are ready to move up, you will feel it. I started around 6 hours a week last year, progressed to 7-8 hours a week (which took me to the top of Cat 3, enough to earn points towards my Cat 2), and a year later I'm finally able to handle 10-12 hours a week (will be racing Cat 2's this season). My cousin (former top level Cat 1) averaged 12-14 when he was winning local Cat 1 races and competed well at even NRC events. WaterRockets can crush the cat 3's on 7-8 hours of riding a week as well. A friend was on the olympic development squad riding less than 20hr a week... OLYMPIC level.

The above is some of the best training advise for new racers I've ever seen.

I'd go further than that. I'd say that you will still hurt for a couple of days if you put in 1 hour at FTP.

It would seem you could get away with hours (7-8)like this if your focus was on crits but be a bit light for 200k-600k brevets. I am curious of what your base weeks looked like with that many hours because I admittedly probably fall into the category of someone who is fatigued from putting in those 12-15 hour weeks.

I don't think you can really assume a linear progression between training volume and categories like that. People are different and respond to training loads differently.

I thought the coggan/allan (allen?) approach was that you'd have the same fatigue from a 100 TSS ride whether it happened in an hour or in 10.

It's supposed to be the same metabolic stress but that doesn't mean that it will feel the same. You can putz around at a recovery pace long enough to rack up 100 TSS, but's certainly not going to be the same as the hour at FTP.

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

My previous winter base consisted of ~6-7 hours a week... several tempo-ish rides during the week, then a 36 mile group ride on the weekend. I didn't know much about training at that point, other than 'you gotta keep your heart rate up'. Thankfully, bikeforums.net, a powertap, and 'the book' changed all of that.

At the peak of race season last year, my training included about 3-4 hours of specific interval training during the week days, and a sub-5hr century on Saturday. I could probably get away with that this season and get the rest of my upgrade points to Cat 2, but since I'm physically able to handle a few more hours, I'm using them to help with weight management and preparation for the multi-day events I plan on tackling this year.

I'd like to reiterate this. On both the internet and in my personal experience with teammates, those who ride more volume are not always the faster riders. The reason is likely twofold and connected: lack of recovery and lack of adequate nutrition. I see on forums quite a bit people with threads basically asking "why am I not getting any faster?" and they have a single rest day through the whole week of their schedule. Likewise, I have cat 4/5 teammates getting into 17 hour training weeks with six days on and one day off. It's imperative to never forget that riding the bike is only half the equation: the body gets weakened from training rides, and in turn strengthens itself in the off-time for the next time out.

Two good ways to hasten recovery: protein shake after the ride, eggs somewhere in the vicinity of the next meal after riding and yogurt before bedtime. Whey is a fast-digesting protein and that's what you want after a workout; eggs make up the most bioavailable source of amino acids of any food, i.e. your body absorbs and uses protein at a better efficiency from eggs than say, steak or chicken; casein, the majority protein found in dairy products, is a slow-digesting protein that can help recovery overnight - plain yogurt just happens to be the healthiest form of dairy. It's doubtful that the body is able to process more than 20-25g of protein in one sitting though, so don't try to play bodybuilder and over do it.