bigfred 

I'm targeting improvement in a near century length event for next year.

I've been back on the bike for a little over 15 months and riding 150k/wk regularly. The first 3-4 months were little more than time in the saddle rides, working up to 153km. The next 9 or so, were an ad hoc highish intensity approach, but, without any real formal thought to it. Just, that I wanted to ride faster, so, I went out and road faster or harder. Plenty of hills, repeats and the occassional flat sprints. One longish temp ride per week. I eventually purchased "Time Crunched Cyclist" and the "Training Bible" and spent the last three month following time crunched's experienced century program with a three week volume block thrown in the month before my event.

Looking toward next year, I would like to further improve on the same target event. Just the one "A" event to the entire year. And, am wondering, on approximately 400 hours/yr which approach is likely to be more effective?

I know more hours would serve me well. But, realistically 8 hours a week is what I'm likely to average.

The event is the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge.

The first 90km are reasonably hilly and my success is dependent upon reaching the flats sufficiently fresh to stay with a quick group. This year I definately went too hard too early and then couldn't stay with groups that I should have been able to.

Next year I'll start with the next slower group. But, I still need to improve my hill climbing more than anything else.

Friel would have me doing plenty of base work with build periods that might address my need to improve strength and speed closer to the event.

With a Carmichael Time Crunched approach I could do at least two repititions of the 10-12 week cycle and add in some additional volume closer to the event.

Thoughts?

ericm979

Friel for setting goals, planning a season and peaking for an A race. Normally you'd do more volume and less intensity in the winter and more intensity and less volume as you approach you A race.

Repeating short plans is no way to plan an entire season. But if there are good ideas in CTC there's no harm in incorporating them in your plan.

bigfred 

Friel's plan when scaled back to just 400hrs per yr doesn't include much intensity. I will spend a considerable amount of time building base aerobic fitness and endurance. But, if I don't come out of the hills with enough in the tank to stay with the groups, that may be for naught. I would only experience 2 build periods with much intensity immediately preceeding the event.

CTCC while only a 12 week plan has definately proven to me that large measurable gains are possible in that time. With the addition of a block or two of volume it might serve me better in that I would be focusing more of my total on higher energy skills.

My goal is sub 5 hours for the event. To achieve that I definately need to improve my climbing in order to stay with whatever group I start with and not loose distance on each reasonable climb or constantly be going past my redline.

The three things I anticpate working on in order to achieve that are:
1. Loose weight. 5-10kg. Sadly, I have that to loose.
2. Power, comprising of speed and strength work. My current comfortable max cadence is around 110. But, not for that long. I would like to be able to maintain 110 indefinately and peak out at 120+ (functional). I max definately spin up quicker as a test, but, I'm bouncing all over the show and not for long. Strength, current 5 min (strava) power is 393. If I can increase that by 10% or more and come close to 450, in combination with the weight loss I'll have a power to weight ratio similiar to the other riders that are achieving the time I have in mind.

While I see a lot of value in Friel's approach. My concern is that he, wouldn't have me spending much time on the strength portion of that equation. Speed work I could get in spades during all that prep and base.

My other week spot is that I'm spent after 90kms. That is very possibly a consequence of the time crunched approach, or, in the case of the event that I was riding in excesss of 90%+ of MHR for the first 25 minutes +.

A blend will probably be in order. But, is it Friel's approach with more strength and climbing work pushed into it? Or, two time crunched cycles with an additional volume block or two?

Eric, sounds like you would favour the former.

Carbonfiberboy 

You didn't make a mistake going out too hard. You just didn't train for it. Going out hard is good for you. The fastest 200k I ever did, I did the first 50 miles in a group with the fastest endurance rider in the country. Needless to say, I was at or over LT a lot of the time while he was cruising. Also needless to say, I was fairly tired the rest of the way, but still fast enough at the finish. And luckily, he and a few of his fast buddies left me at the first control or I probably would have bonked.

Starting with a slower group won't put you on the wheels of the fast group, that's for sure. On a mass start thing, I go hard right from the start, working my up through the mass of idiots, who should have been further back in the start pack, but being careful not to let anyone take me out, until I start to see some good looking teams lining out, then I grab one of those. You want a team that's moving about 2 mph faster than your normal cruise.

I define "fitness" as the ability to repeat hard efforts. That's what you need to develop. The best way to develop that is to do long group rides with people who are faster than you are. Short of that, the next best thing is to ride a hilly route for time. Try to get your time down. You'll need to ride 60-80 miles of that to develop repeatability. If you want to put up a fast time for a century, you need to ride 200 miles/week. So say a 60 mile hard ride, then a couple of 50 mile hilly tempo rides, then all you have to do is a couple 20 mile flat Z2 recovery rides and you've got it with 2 rest days. Just to finish a century, I recommend a total of 100 miles/week, so you aren't even riding the minimum. Of course you got dropped.

Another way to apportion it is one day of speed work of about 25 miles, one day of climbing repeats also about 25 miles (1 1/2 hrs.) one recovery day ride 30-35 miles and a longer hard ride on the weekend 45-75 miles. So that's about 150 miles/week.

All that said, you are riding fast. You need to develop endurance and the ability to repeat. IME, that's a matter of more hours/week.

ericm979

Your A event is an endurance event. If you have better endurance you won't be burning so many matches to stay with the group.

You train so little that any program will make gains.

It's a 5 hour+ race, not a crit. First you need the endurance to finish strong after 5+ hours. Then worry about speed.
Actually that's a good thing, because losing weight is easier than gaining power, and it'll help you on the hills.
While it's good to improve your cadence and pedalling form, being able to spin a fast cadence doesn't make that much difference for your event.
If you have better threshold power then you won't be burning as many matches to stay with the group.
Yea. Stacking cycles together isn't a plan. If you do a plan right your fitness will be at a peak for your A race. That's worth 5-10% right there.

I do a mostly long races with lots of climbing. Some of them are 7-8 hours long and have 15,000' or more of climbing. I use Friel as a guide for making a plan but don't follow the training plan so much since that's more for people who are racing crits and regular road races. When my A race is a regular road race I do more intervals in the months before the race, but not much shorter than 5 min. Lots of 20 min efforts, and longer 40-1:10 efforts @ SST (high tempo). When it's a long race I do more SST and skip the 5 min intervals.

The basic theory for peaking is that your endurance takes long to build and long to fade. While fitness for shorter efforts builds faster when you train it and fades faster when you don't. As you approach your A race you scale back the endurance work and add in more short intense efforts.

Carbonfiberboy 

Going at it in a little more depth . . .

The idea I presented is hardly a periodized plan. I think that coaches make money selling periodized plans and/or books about periodized plans. Yes, it works, but I think folks get bogged down in the details. It's simply not necessary. To create your own periodized plan, you can start a few months before your event and just start ramping it up. Ramp up the distances. Ramp up the intensity.

I started a couple months ago to work on form. I do pedaling drills on the rollers - FastPedal I think Carmichael calls it. Pedal 115-120 continuously in a low gear. Start with 15 minutes and work up to 45 minutes to an hour. I use a low enough gear that I'm only in zone 2. I warm up and cool down in zone 1, and do this as a recovery ride, which it is once your legs get used to it. If you can't pedal that fast and stay in zone 2, just pedal as fast as you can and still stay in zone. You'll get better. I'll pedal a 42 X 23 against some resistance. I do that once a week. Then about the middle of January, I stop that and substitute one-legged pedaling in the same time slot, 2 minute intervals, some at 50-55 cadence, some at 80-85 cadence, 2 minutes of legs together between an interval pair. I do that for the same length of time, but HR doesn't matter. You just want to be hurting badly at the end of each 2 minutes.

Then about April, I do a couple weeks of 20' LT intervals, then a couple weeks of 50 cadence muscle tension intervals, then back to the LT intervals. Then add some shorter power intervals. Then a few weeks before the event, add some 45 second uphill sprints. You can also do a lot of this in the context of a group ride, attacking etc. You just have to watch your recovery and be careful not to overtrain. That last is really the biggest trick.

Since you're down under, you'll shift those months a bit. My A events are usually in July, so you'd shift to about 4 months later.

bigfred 

I most certainly did make a mistake with regard to starting groups. I ended up starting with those that were intending to finish in 4:30-4:50. Friend who I regularly ride stronger than, but, who started in the 4:50-5:10 group finished with considerably shorter times on course. I could have probably shaved 0:10-0:20 off my time by starting more conservatively, spending more time below my redline, less time wasting energy while riding alone or in smaller groups transitting back to the next pack and hitting the final 60k of flats with energy to stay in the 38-42kph groups instead of riding in a 31-36kph group.

This is a fairly large event with several thousand participants. Within general declared goal groups they further seperate everyone into starting waves of a hundred or two. The course starts with a 12.5km climb. While drafting may have some effect it's not nearly what it would be on a flatter start. Subsequently, I need to be climbing with guys that I can hand with. I suffer a greater disparity between my climbing speed and my flats speed than lighter riders who maintains similiar averages. One thing I was proud of and that I won't mind repeating is completing the ride knowing that I contributed at the front of the groups that I rode with as opposed to the leaches who simply look for a faster group and attempt to "hide" for the entirety of the course. I'm not racing for the podium. I'm riding for a personal goal. I know that I'll need to ride as part of a group to achieve that goal, but, enjoy contributing to that group.

"Repeating" hard efforts isn't my challenge. I climb well enough that most the guys I ride with are surprised such a big guy can do what I do. But, on events such as this, there isn't any recovering on the descents. Someone will infallably move to the front and keep the realative effort just as hard as the climbing was. Subsequently, while I trained for climbing, I didn't train adequately for "continuous" effort at or above LT. I'm already doing most of what you would recommend (just got back from my 90k morning). Sorry I don't meet your minimums. I'm only just averaging 90 miles a week. I guess in your eyes it's a small miracle I even completed the ride. I won't realistically find time for 200 miles/week. My wife's tolerance max's out at around 10 hours per week. 6-9 aren't an issue. So, I'm aiming at an average of 8hrs/wk. Which does mean that during base I'll be getting 10+hours and closer to 200 miles/wk, but, probably no more.

To, "not get dropped" you would have needed to been on a 3:45 pace (41kph);-)

Thanks. And, amen, to endurance. However, like so many, I've got the available time I've got and am looking to maximize my return on that time that I can commit. I'm not afraid of posting this on the forum, because, I'm reasonably sure I'm not alone in this challenge. In Time Crunched Cyclist, Carmichael comments directly on the fact that such a program is not well suited to such endeavors. But, then goes on to proficise that the "experienced century" program will probably get more use than any other program in the book. Likewise Friel comments on the fact that there is a minimum number of hours, below which his program is optimum and I'm below that. But, then the first case study he provides is for a guy not dissimilliar to myself. Because, that's where the lion's share of the market is.

bigfred 

Yep, endurance will be key. Any program may provide improvement. But, I would like to maximize the return on those limited hours that I do have to invest. With limited training time, I feel as though none, or very little, of it can be wasted. If I'm going to achieve the goal on 400 hours, every hour has got to count.

Thanks for the comments on endurance. It's probably what I need at this point. Last summer I knew I needed to get faster in order to enjoy riding. Riding with a reasonably quick group, even if I was getting dropped progressively later, was better than riding alone.

I need to read up a bit more on threshold power and development of it. I was viewing improving my ability to maintain a reasonably high cadence as time time well invested in the power equation of power=strength+speed

hamster

Generally speaking 5 min power of 393 is a lot. Unfortunately, Strava's 5 min, if you're referring to its "5-min/10-min power" entry in your profile, is easily misled by wind and poor terrain data. You have to use a power meter or figure it out manually. Looking at a couple of your recent rides, I see a 1-min effort of 580 W, a 4-min effort of 365 W and a long sustained effort of 280. That should put you around 350 for 5 min. Which would still be very respectable for an average size rider.

Your problem seems to be that you're really big. I'm guessing ~110 kg? If I had your power and my weight (70), I'd probably be in the top 5-10% of serious recreational cyclists in this area and approaching pro level. I don't know how tall you are, but there's almost certainly more than 5-10 kg to lose. (And I suspect that it would be a lot easier to lose more weight than to bump the 5-minute power to 450.)

bigfred 

Generally, I agree with you. I only use strava's 5min figure, because I don't have a power meter and won't for some time. As I don't have a meter, I'm not using power for any form of training. It's only a realative, after the fact tool to observe trends and in this case to look at the rough averages of those who are achieving what I would like to do. I hold no illussions about the accuracy or lack there of for strava numbers.

Yep, I'm big. 6'5" 115kg +/-2 40" waist, chest 8-10" bigger than that. By cycling standards, I could certainly loose more than 10kg. However, realistically I would be happy with 105-110 kg. My wife will be the limiting factor to how much I'm allowed to loose. She already complains that I'm not as comfy to snuggle with as I once was. Below 107kg people start to ask if I'm ill. I faced the fact that I'm not ever going to be a competitive cyclist long ago. That doesn't stop me from challenging myself to achieve as much as I can.

Yes, I put weight loss at the top of that list for that very reason. But, I don't think I'm going to achieve the goal through that alone.

Carbonfiberboy 

In Imperial terms, it looks like you have about century there with about 6000' of climbing, so about 60'/mile. That's not too bad. You start with a long sorting climb, which is good. Then most of the climbs are short and not too steep, so there'll be some drafting effect even climbing, and a lot more on the descents if, as you say, people are pedaling hard.

So what I'm saying about repeating is that you'll want to climb at around 95% of LT or so and be able to recover at as high as 90% of LT, shooting for a ride average HR of about 85% LT. You shouldn't see but an hour of zone 2 for the whole ride. So you're saying you're pulling near LT on the descents? Even if you are, a drafting rider would be about 15 beats below that at that speed and able to recover. I'm not saying you should be sitting in, just ride with a group that's a little faster than you can ride solo and take your turns at the front. You'll have to beat yourself up on the climbs, but you'll get it back overall.

That's my focus on long hard rides - being able to recover while still going hard. I work on that by doing long hard rides where I don't back off. That's the recovery part of it. As Greg says, there's also the power at LT part of it, and it's necessary to do those intervals that increase it, so speed work and various lengths of hill repeats. One thing we used to do is get about 6 good riders and do intervals on the flat where we're at LT in a rolling paceline and go over when we hit the front, and just do that until enough people have gone off the back that it doesn't work anymore. Need a long bit with only gentle rollers. That was really fun.

bigfred 

Yep. Agreed for the most part. One of my problems this years was the fact that I was at or above LT for that first 0:28. You'll see that later in the ride I my HR was below LT on the flats, because I was managing crap and simply couldn't ride hard enough to maintain a higher HR. I suspect that if I had started with the groups targeting a 4:50-5:10 pace I would have been able to ride closer to your recommendations with regard to staying at or below 95% of LT for those first two climbs. I agree abour riding with a group a little faster than I can ride solo. I started with a group faster than I can ride in a group.

So, you're absolutely correct about power at LT, climbing and recovery at a high percentage of LT. My question is related to how I'm best going to acccomplish as much of that as I can on the hours that I have available. I'm in the process of drawing up an annual Friel plan. I haven't figured out how to paste an excel spreadsheet into my post in a recognizable way. Right now I have a 26 wk program starting on June 3rd. I'm taking onboard what others have said and am going to modify it to focus on those issues that we all agree on.

The next question is how I'm going to treat now through June? I've got the rest of this summer to work with and now that "the event" has come and gone, I don't have a plan. I need to put some structure to what I'm doing now and figure out a way to tie it into the greater plan. I don't know if I should perhaps put a transition/prep cycle in now and progress in a manner that might give me more than one base/build cycle before next year? Or, do I utilize the shorter days of autumn for that and come up with a plan to bridge from now to then?

Guys, thanks for your thoughts.

ericm979

Being able to ride a faster cadence will help with sticking with the accellerations that a group makes. If you are churning in a big gear it takes some effort speed up to match the group. Spinning makes that easier. But it doesn't affect long term power output. It does affect how long it takes to fatigue, but that seems to be mostly a concern on long climbs.

400 hours is still a reasonable amount.

Why only a 26 week plan? Why not a full year (minus time "off")? You can have a nice build up for the one A race, or pick an additional A race at least a couple months before Taupo and do two peaks in a season? At least find some similar events before Taupo, even if they're only B or C events, and use them as practice or testing.

For using the rest of the summer, can you find some events to ride? Just for fun. Use the fitness you just built.

Carbonfiberboy 

Being so interested in this event, you live on the north island? So you can ride year 'round?

Yes, you need a late season peak now. The November event should be an early season test to assess fitness. I ride with a guy your size who specializes in randonneuring. See Kiwi Randonneurs:
https://www.kiwirandonneurs.org.nz/
They have what looks like a fine series of brevets all year, mostly shorter ones which should be more appealing.

My friend's biggest problem was getting a suitable bike. He had a Ti bike custom built for him. It has a higher than usual BB and the longest crankarms he could find. He should have had custom cranks made, as they still look like toys under him. He's one of the few local randonneurs who runs clip-on aero bars. He's one of those guys that you want to keep track of at the start and make sure you're in his paceline when things get sorted out.

Anyway, yeah, for the rest of the summer get out there and ride your butt off. I'd recommend trying some of those 200k and 300k brevets. They say their rides are open to non-members, which is unusual. There will probably be some small entry fee. A brevet per month is a good schedule, not too difficult, time to recover and train for the next one. If you do go, ride them for time. See how you do. Many people make the mistake, in my view, of riding these longer events slowly, which only teaches one to ride slowly. It's not necessary to do that until you get into the 1000k and 1200k distances. These shorter brevets are one-day classic race distances, available for the ordinary rider, which I think makes them a total gas. Training for these longer events is just like what you'd do for Taupo, no more volume necessary. Same bike, same nutrition.

Most of the better distance riders I know ride at a reasonably high cadence, around 100 on the flat, maybe 85 climbing.

Come back here in April, which is when you should start your prep for the next Taupo.

bigfred 

The 26 weeks is a consequence of planning back from the event date and looking at the season calendar. As Taupo is in November it's reasonably early in the summer for us. 1 Race week, 1 week Peak, 8 weeks Build, 12 weeks Base, 4 weeks prep, brings us back to the beginning of June. That seems to be a reasonably fit to most folks normal seasonal pattern.

I am looking forward to a full year. I'm not off the bike or anything. There are only two races of consequence that preceed Taupo, one around Lake Rotorua, 2 X 42km laps with one climb in it. This was three weeks preceeding Taupo this year. I would have liked to have done this one this year. But, a long weekend away with my wife and one her colleagues prevented it. The other early spring event is a race around Coromandel peninsula called K2, 192km and 2300m of climbing. Next year this its scheduled for three weeks before Taupo and hopefully Rotorua will be earlier. However, K2 is generally viewed as a good way to tear yourself up and leave yourself with insufficient time to recover before Taupo. You either need to ride it very carefully as a training event or not at all. Folks usually agree that you can't realistically contest both at the sort of level that I'm at.

I'm continuing to ride and don't want to waste the rest of summer. Hence, starting to plan this right now. We're away to Oz for the holidays and will be credit card touring the Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island through the new year. Jan 19th is Tour de Ranges, 110km with three pretty reasonably climbs. I don't have anything plannned beyond that. But, will look around at what is on the calendar.

So, I have 5 months to fill with training. A base and build cycle?