I participated in a group workout last night. 6 x 1.2 mile ITT's on the road bike @ L6 or Z5b. Our coach set us off with 10 -15 seconds on the guy behind to keep the efforts honest. It hurts to clear my lungs or take a deep breath today. On interval # 1 I had way too much adrenalin. Data shows that I averaged 698 watts for the first 45 seconds, then suffered dearly, and nearly had to piss myself once backing off at the end of the interval.:eek: I metered the effort much better on the remaining intervals.:lol:

Hi, my training has been going reasonably well since last week's debacles at the mid-week training races. Had to cut Sunday's climbing marathon short as my buddy decided he had enough after 5 or the 7 Sisters. Ended up with 85 miles and about 5,100 ft of climbing. The 4th and 5th Sisters were new to me and had some of the steepest sustained grades 15%-25% that I have ever done. I was OK with skipping the last two since I've ridden up them a number of times. Also, I might have done myself in 25 miles from home if I'd done them. :o

Will probably go to the velodrome tonight. I have the Mt. Baldy hill climb race on tap for Saturday. Will have to see if I can get the new 29-tooth cassette to work on my race bike. Otherwise I'll gut it out with the 26 (39 X 26) as I did at last fall's race and earlier this year with Racer Ex and Big John during the Tour of California stage.

This is my rest week and I'm doing intervals.

You California guys are putting in some serious climbing. Well, Ex is doing his in Nevada, but he's still a California guy (most of the time).

I'm back and forth across the border a bunch here.

Yesterday I did 17 miles and ended up with 3000.

Yeeesh.

As brutal as this summer has been, I'm seriously Jonesing for a place up in Pinetop, where a bunch of cyclists I know have 'cabins'. You know they are cabins by the fake logs on the outside ;) But it's cool, with hills everywhere and a great group of riders.

I'm in! Or Payson, or Prescott... whatever is cheapest. We can get 10 or so cyclists and make a cheap training camp base! Ha.

I set up the rollers and did a simulated track workout this evening. warm up and 2 x 1' z1, 2' z2, 20" z4, 1' z2, 20" z4, 1' z2, 20" z4 repeat.

We have a log home along the Alleghney River in Western PA. There is great riding in the area that includes hills, paved rail trails, lonely paved country roads and gravel roads. Last spring a group of us did a three day cycling camp and it ended ip being a great time. I think we will be doing more get-a-ways like that in the future.

I'm racing a MTB TT this weekend as my last race of the summer. The following weekend I'll be traveling to central PA for a three day weekend of riding gravel roads in PA's Little Grand Canyon. I'll be taking the MTB and cross bike on the trip. It seems like the perfect plan, drop my wife off at her mothers, travel one more hour to the B&B located on Pine Creek, meet up with friends, ride a bunch, eat and drink, sleep, repeat x 2 more times. Drive back to the mother in law's, say "hi", take a shower, get my wife and dog in the car and drive home. I wonder what will spoil this perfect plan?

Hermes, how many reps? Are you using PE for the 20" z4's or power? Our track will officially open before Sept and I do want to get started. Riding rollers seems like a good option in lieu of the Tue Worlds or MTB TT's. There is supposed to be a State Track Championship in late Sept. with details forthcoming. Not sure which races will be offered since this will be new for most is us.

A'Jet it was two sets. I get the sequence from Roger Young's posts on Twitter. Roger uses these sequences at VSP for his 7 to 9 PM sessions. However, the last set after the intervals is a motor burnout. I will try to answer your question about exertion. Roger considers z3 as Tempo or race pace. So z4 has to be something greater and is more like a bridging effort but not sprinting. So at VSP, when Roger blows the whistle for z4, there is a big acceleration and the faster groups on the track end up 30 to 32 mph and depending on who is on the lead, it could be much faster. But it is not supposed to be a 200 meter sprinting effort.

So what I do to "simulate" that on the trainer is pick a gear that I can spin at 80 rpms at mid z2 power. For z3, I spin it up to 100 rpms and for z4 110 to 115 rpm. I note the power and adjust the cadence slightly if required.. My z4 power for this workout is above my road z4 Racing and Training with a Power Meter Power and more like z5. I think it is more important to have the high cadence at high power versus just high power. Just high power is too easy. Also, my trainer z4 power is lower than my road z4 power. I apologize for making this too complicated but there is a lot of feel to this and I know how it feels at the track fixed gear.

Thanks for the reply Hermes. I get what you are saying regarding power at higher cadence and the difference between trainers and on the road. I do know that when using my rollers it is easier to keep the power constant as compared to the trainer and/or road. I have the Preformance Travel Track rollers and have to take some air out of the tires in order to ride at Z5 power without the tires bouncing on the rollers at 40+ mph. Riding in the 53/12 at high cadence can be a little unsettling with the bike shaking under you.

I don't use Twitter but will check out Rodger Young and see if there is any other links to his post.

Did a team training ride on the TT bike. 8 of the 12 of us slated to do the TTT on Sept 9 showed, and we broke up into two teams once we hit a decent practice spot. One of the teams was complete, but the other 2 (mine included) had only two members there. We were pretty ragged. Maintaining a steady pace without surges is hard, particularly when there are some hills. Gaps were too big, speed too uneven, etc. But it was good training, and we ended up with 56 miles and 2.8K of climbing. It was only in the 80's, but we've had some rain, so the humidity was up in the 60's.

One of the biggest problems in TTT, team pursuit and team sprint is getting team members to show up and practice. IMO, it is crucial. Many racers believe that ad hoc TTTs are possible especially if the racers are experienced. That is true to an extent but without practice one does not really get to the fastest speed that the team is capable of. In team pursuit, it is easy to control the time at the front because each racer takes a lap. On the road, it is much harder. I find racers go brain dead and stay too long on the front and go to fast. 15 to 30 seconds, IMO, is an ideal rotation time with stronger riders doing double that time. Practice as a team will determine the best rotation times.

Since Roger (@youngstraining) hasn't been tweeting for a while, here are the intervals that we did this week: Z1 1 min, Z2 2 min, Z3 3 min, Z4 20 sec - X4 reps per set - 2 sets

I'll try to post the intervals after each session that I attend.

I've done a bunch of TTTs with varying levels of team form. Getting everyone together and finding a good section of road is tough in SoCal. I agree that practice makes perfect, but I've had some great experiences with little practice when I've done TTTs with teammates who race AND with whom I've done thousands of miles in group rides.

Another thing to consider is making sure you pull through at a constant speed. If you or a teammate is feeling strong pull longer and/or accelerate slowly AFTER everyone is back in line. Nothing breaks up and kills a team faster than rapid accelerations that start before everyone is back in line.

We targeted 1' pulls today, but it seemed a bit long to/for me. The state course is much flatter, and 1' may work fine for that. We are going to have our strongest guy take longer pulls: maybe 20" more. Maybe it will keep him from dropping us. :-)

1' is probably a bit long for anybody but your strongest rider. Best way to judge is to look at average speed...the rider on the front, unless there's an external course factor, should never be going slower at the end of their pulls.

Most TTT's I'm the strong guy and would pull 2m and almost always drop off after raising the pace around 2 MPH from when I took over to when I dropped off. Steady ramp up. What's vital is that whenever a rider comes to the front that they maintain pace. I do cadence and count...no increase in cadence and at least 7 seconds before you start to pick things up if that's the decision.

Great stuff in today's Vuelta TTT. Saxo got it perfect; Bertie was the tow truck. And Moviestar showed that it's the sum of the parts. None of those guys would be considered exceptional TT riders but they were very well drilled.

A few years back we had a 4-man TTT team that had 2 top guys and two strong guys. Never got a practice session. We finished 3 riders and took second by a bit to a four man team that finished all four and rode with precision and had several sessions under their belt.

Did a "Rest Day Opener" this morning. That's where you drain yourself, knowing you have the next day to recover. :) Actually, I did 30' of 5' criss-cross intervals (between high z3 and high z4) in the middle of an hour of just riding around. Except I wanted to be where I wouldn't hit stoplights, so I made the JRA part about 2 hours. Went harder on the way out than the way back, because it's still pretty danged hot here, and it's been a fairly high load weekend. I was also a bit lower than my targets, and couldn't hold the final 5' at the top of z4. Legs said 'no mas', whining about how I didn't feed them anything before or during the ride. All in all a great weekend of training!

Ran 5k today, preceded by some squats and followed by a SST session on the bike for an hour. No, I'm not turning into a triathlete, just trying to mix it up a bit and get some balance into my leg work. From the way my glutes and hamstrings are responding to the squats, I have clearly been neglecting them. And while I realise that running has its limitations as far as cross-training is concerned, I have a theory that working the muscles that don't get much action while cycling is a good idea. I feel a bit stronger for it, anyway, having now been at it for three weeks.

Blerg. Running is high on the list of things I know would be good for me, but can't quite seem to pull the trigger on. I haven't run for exercise since boot camp, and am deathly afraid that it will cause some injury (knee, achilles) that will thwart my cycling. Still, with cx season fast approaching... might be time to finally add it to the mix.

Pain from running is what got me back on the bike. Whatever makes the most sense for you, chasm. Please don't turn into a trigeek.

If you are anything like me, you will be astonished at how hard it is on quads that are supposed to be fit from cycling. Something to do with the eccentric contractions caused when your feet hit the ground, your quads have to act as a brake. So for the first week or so you hobble around with sore muscles, adductors as well as quads. But after a week or so - three or four runs - that passes. Nobody could mistake me for a runner - the guy who sold me my trainers videoed me on a treadmill and observed "you run like a cyclist" - but I'm happy enough churning out 30 minute 5ks at a gentle lope. And I do think that doing nothing but cycling carries some risk of one's leg muscles getting out of balance.

No danger of my turning into a trigeek, shovel. I swim with all the grace and ease of a caterpillar tractor.

I do not run due to injuries. Running is not good for cyclists per se. Cyclists develop strong muscles but weak tendons which can be injured easily running. Of course if one builds up to running it should be perfectly fine. The key point is if you have more time or / and energy available for training or resting put it into cycling to improve results. If results do not matter, then running is fine. At masters track state track championships a few weeks ago, my wife jogged across the staging area when the announcer called for her to come to registration and everyone was aghast and a couple screamed no running.

I both agree and disagree, Hermes. Yes to cyclists being vulnerable to running injuries. No to reacting to that by doing nothing but cycling.

I have plenty of time. This is about an extended preparation for next season, not about immediate results. And I feel, rightly or wrongly, that toughening myself up for a while with running and strength training, as well as cycling, may pay dividends when it comes time to build the intensity on the bike once again.