sgrapevine

Greetings, all! I need some guidance.

I'm struggling to find a consistent plan that works for me and accomplishes the goals I have. Maybe best to start with my goals:

1. To be able to hang with the fast group rides I ride with all the way until the end.
2. To enter Cat 5 races early next year and finish with the pack.

Seems reasonable right?

I've been participating in a couple weekly group rides from my LBS and it is an all-out effort for me. I think I'm exerting myself in the same way many people do for races. I get psyched up for it, think about my strategy, try to conserve my energy and get blown up about 80% of the way through. For me, the climbs just absolutely kill me. We're north of Atlanta where the terrain is "rolling". The climbs toward the end are about a mile in length and average 4% with some obviously steeper parts. My legs just can't take it anymore on those last hills. HR is pegged and legs are dead.

Here's what I need help with:

If I want to participate in 1 weekly group ride per week, what should I be doing the rest of the week? My temptation is to get out there and ride up and down hills all week. Bad at hills? Ride more hills. This isn't necessarily a great move, though? I've been coming around to the idea of training at lower intensities, but I want to make sure I'm not missing out on any potential fitness gains.

Here's what I naturally want to do:

Monday: Excruciating group ride (1.5hr)
Tuesday: "Day off" (Run 3-4 miles)
Wednesday: 1hr fast lunch ride (hilly and flat)
Thursday: 1.5hr flat ride on MUP. Sometimes I can manage to keep my heart rate low, but generally end up time-trialing like a dummy
Friday: Day off (run?)
Saturday: 1.5hr ride. Aimless. Sometimes hard, sometimes not.
Sunday: Squeeze in an hour on the rollers at Z2.

So, I'm all over the place. If I have this difficult exertion once a week (the group ride), should I be limiting the rest of my rides to endurance/recovery rides (Z2)? Should I take my Z2 rides up and down the major climbs I struggle on? Will going slowly up the hills that kill me help me go faster up them when the time comes?

I have about 6 hours per week to work with here. Should I just divide it up like this:

25% Hard/75% Easy?
25% Hard/10% Tempo/65% Easy?

Thanks, in advance, for your help!

sprince

Note day off is not the same as "run".

Lazyass

Riding more hills to get better at hills is a great move. Ride the hell out of them, do hill repeats. Some professional cyclists have moved to the Alpe d'Huez so they can climb it 3-4 times a day. But you want to do some interval training. Intervals help lower your lactic acid which will help your climbing and it will also help you to not get burned out when the speed of your group surges, or for those times when you're daydreaming then look up and notice the guy in front of you is getting dropped and the rest of your group is already 100 meters ahead. Then you kill yourself to catch back up.

deapee

Can you give us any indication of your current skill level...hanging with a 'fast group ride' can be a very different thing depending on that group. How many miles and elevation gain...average speed? Do you know your FTP? How about how long you've been actually trying to get faster (not just putting along on a bike once a week).

I only ask because if you're at around 2 w/kg, you can improve just by riding hard 2-3 times a week with a couple easy days thrown in.
You may just need to lose weight, etc.
If you're at 3 w/kg, you're already well into CAT 5 range and may need a more focused training plan.

Anyway, just as a general recommendation - I think if CAT 5 is the goal, you can get there just from riding. Try to push hard 2-3 times a week and take it easy a day or two with a day or two off in there somewhere as needed. Think about the group you're riding with. Are they all gainfully employed, etc. How many hours a week do they put in? If they're anything like the local guys here, it's a mix. Some people are riding 100+ miles a week even into the winter. Some guys are training inside. Some guys are just natural and go on one ride a week and seem to hang just fine somehow. My point being put your training level at or above the average in the group and you will get there. Most local rides I've found you just need a decent base level of fitness and some training at FTP. Local race teams are a bit different obviously, but this applies even to most of the triathlon groups I've seen. Now obviously there's going to be some bike racers in there that are going to be well above the average, but those triathlon groups seem to be a good place to train for cycling when you're new and want to get into the racing scene. Just obviously skip the pool and running in favor of more cycling.

sgrapevine

It's hard for me to tell how fast these groups actually are as I'm pretty new. It's about 1,500ft of elevation gain in 24 miles or so at about 17.5mph. Is that fast?

I think I'm somewhere in between. I'm about 80kilos and others in the group who are training with power and who are about my size are putting out about 200-210W on average (which is also what Strava estimates for me). That's right at 2.5w/kg.

Nobody in the group seems like they're super competitive although it's hard for me to tell. It does seem like most of them have been at this for quite some time and like this really a tune-up ride for them... When I'm at my absolute last breath/muscle twitch one of them will hammer up a hill for "fun" and the rest of the group will respond seemingly easily. I can even hang on to these in the first half of the rides, but by the end I am seeing stars... And also seeing them recede into the distance.

Also, thanks for the feedback @deapee, @Lazyass, and @sprince.

Here's what I think I'm hearing may be a good idea.

1x Group Ride
1x Easy
1x Hill Repeats
1x Easy
1x Intervals
1x Crosstrain (Optional)
1x Off

In some order or another. What do you think? Thanks!

deapee

Averaging 17.5 over 24 miles with 1500 feet of gain is a lot of climbing. But assuming you ended where you started, you also came down 1500 vertical feet...depending on how the hills lined up, it's tough to say. Sometimes you have momentum to get back up the hills.

Honestly, I think you're like me - I think you're thinking a lot more than is necessary about something that you'll just get to on your own. Do you (or the guys you ride with) put their rides up on strava when you're done?

Check what the weighted avg power is for the ride...it sounds to me like they're decent rides and probably giving a figure in the 160's. This is completely doable just from getting more fit. Once you get up into the 1.5 hour rides that average in the low 200's, that's like somewhere you would aspire to be after coming out of a strong winter (with lots of indoor training that winter, etc).

The "average weighted" figure in strava is to be taken with a grain of salt if someone wants to get technical. But for me, what's stated above is just something I've observed. Our top local racers will average in the 22 mph range on a 1-1.5 hour ride and be in the 220's-230's for average weighted power. Most social, or even semi-social, group rides, I don't even see our fastest guys averaging over 180 for the duration.

With a tool like an indoor trainer and Zwift, getting your ftp up to the point where you can average 200 for an hour will really put you in a good spot (and you have all winter to do that on your own). I think in reality an ftp of 200-225 really puts *most* rider in a really good spot for any local rides. Even at 225 (which at 70 kg is about 3.2 w/kg) will put you in a very comfortable place to *very rarely, if ever* find yourself in a group ride where you struggle at all.

--

My fault, I just read your second paragraph again. I think you're at a good spot. I think any riding you do to improve your base will be beneficial. You sound like me when I first starting coming back into things - very power, very strong, but get winded easily. I'm telling you, the more you sit in that saddle and ride, it will come back so quickly it's not funny. If strava is averaging 210 for the course of a 24 mile ride, that's legit...I think you'll not only enter a cat 5 race and finish with the pack, but you'll finish at the front. You definitely are at the point where intervals and a dedicated schedule will do you justice.

sgrapevine

@deapee

Thank you! This has been helpful. I do overthink things and tend to just sit and mull things over in my head and second guess myself. You've been extremely helpful.

Yes, I feel like I have the strength, just not the capacity to do it over and over again. I think the rides themselves will continue to help and an extra hour long workout of 4-8min hill repeats will get me the rest of the way.

I'll update the thread in a month or two to let you know that I'm finishing strongly with the group.

Carbonfiberboy 

I've been doing fast group rides for ~20 years or so, however our standard group ride was about 4 hours. 1.5 hours is too short to develop much endurance, which happens to be key to riding really fast for 1.5 hours. At first I was off the back on most hills and totally bonked, coming back solo by the last couple hills. That's great training! That's just how it's supposed to be. You're doing that right. Yes, it sucks now but you'll get better with time. And it does take time. Aerobic ability is slow to train. I think it took me about 7 years before I was leading the fast group.

With a 4 hour group ride, my training looked like this: midweek is lots of zone 2 time. Lots of it. No intervals. I saved that for the group ride. Instead, I did as many hours as I could/had time for at a pace where I was breathing deep and steady, but not fast. I did what I had to do to get over hills, but spun easy gears. It's time that builds the aerobic system. And one day completely off before the group ride.

Looking at your proposed schedule, stop running unless you are also training for bi or triathlon. Running tires you out and doesn't particularly help you on the bike. Which is the reason that the bi and tri disciplines are so difficult.

For time percentages, you want 80% easy or zone 2, 20% as hard as you can go. You may not be able to manage those percentages, because that's what the elites do. Try 90% easy or zone 2, 10% hard. Looking at my percentages back when I was in my 50's and early 60's, in a typical week I'd try to do about 6 hours zones 1 & 2, 1 hour zone 3 (because that's unavoidable), 1 hour zone 4, and 20 minutes zone 5. If I could do that, I was killing it. Every 4th week, no group ride and cut the zone 2 time in half.

If I were training entirely solo, in a 10 hour weekly schedule I'd try for 1 hour zone 5 and the rest zone 2 with only a tiny bit zone 3 and 4.

So figure what your midweek schedule will look like week-by-week by the above percentages, depending on what you did on your group ride and your time available. Not enough zone 4 and 5? Do zone 5 intervals, say 4 X 8' X 8' because that's where the big bang is. Otherwise, just the zone 2.

If you can't hit zone 5 on the group ride, you did too much high end in the preceding week. Back it off! Same with the midweek intervals. The biggest training mistake is too much high end. If you can't hit zone 5, you're overcooked and need to back it off.

Drew Eckhardt 

One hard interval session riding 6-10 minute intervals as hard as possible, as many as you can complete remaining above FTP. That intensity range will have the highest impact on VO2max and FTP. Do this after a rest day so you're as fresh as possible. You can do this on hills or flat ground, although many people have an easier time pushing themselves on hills.

Your group ride for fun.

Otherwise below your aerobic threshold (where conversation doesn't flow, breathing becomes rhythmic, lactate starts to accumulate, about what you can manage with an even power split on a five hour ride) the rest of the time. This is usually in Friel's heart rate Z2. Use low enough gears to maintain an acceptable cadence (this may mean a mountain triple for some riders) or avoid hills.

Make one day a long ride day and go twice as far as you usually do.

The endurance pace will make you good at going slow, which can reach 20 MPH all day every day on flat ground for a larger fit rider. It'll also run primarily off fat, so you can eat less without hunger and reduce fat until your abs are visible (about 10% body fat for men) so you're not hauling more weight up hills than you need to.

This works on 6 hours a week, but you want to ride more - a lot of people (Greg LeMond, Connie Carpenter, various coaches, random internet people) think 10 hours a week is where things come together and you achieve most of your genetic potential. Work up to that adding 10% to your volume each non rest week.

Six days a week is good.

Take a lower volume, low intensity rest week out of every 4. That's when adaptation occurs.

Lazyass

And go buy some creatine, it's cheap. Contrary to what some may say, it does help with cycling. It reduces your lactic acid. Oh how it works, trust me