Training Ideas for May
Hey team,
I’m super proud of all of you guys that have been out there racing and
riding together!
A bunch of you may be wondering what sorts of training you should be doing
now. Here are some ideas.
*
If you’ve been a slacker:*
Continue to work on building up continuous rides at threshold efforts. Go
by heart rate, effort or power if you are using it.
The “gold standard” threshold workout is called “two by twenty”, in other
words, 2 intervals of 20 minutes at threshold pace. This is a pretty big
workout, so build up to it week by week by starting with shorter intervals.
Even relatively untrained folks should be able to do 5-6 minutes in thresh
zone repeated 4 times in a single workout cntinue adding minutes to your
intervals each week. Go by the total time you are spending at threshold
effort So a 4 x 6 minute workout with 3 minute rests would count as 24
minutes at threshold. The next week do 30 minutes, or 5 x 6 minutes.
Alternatively 3 x 8 or 4 x 8 would both increase your workload a bit…the
first by increasing teh interval time, and the second by increasing the
total time at desired effort.
Do at least one threshold ride per week in addition to any racing you are
doing.
*If you havn’t been a slacker, but have been avoiding doing workouts that
put you in the pain cave…*
May is a good time to start adding short hard efforts if you have not been
doing so. Examples would include any interval length LESS THAN 3
minutes…this draws on an anaerobic energy store. These efforts will help
you do things like bridge gaps in a race, grab onto wheels that are
accelerating away from you and give a teammate a leadout at the end of a
race.
Examples of these workouts include:
1-2 minutes at max effort with 3-5 minutes rest inbetween. At the track,
this could be 1 lap all out, with 2-3 laps recovery. Repeat 6-8 times to
start with. The next week add 2 intervals. Stick with one interval length
for a few weeks, then decrease the intrerval length as you increase the
repetitions and keep rest intervals the same.
These are also perfect workouts to do on hills instead. It’s vital to time
yourself when doing this intensity…ride hard uphill for exactly the time
interval you are working on (1 minute, 90 seconds, 2 minutes, etc) and STOP
at the end. Turn around and spin down, ride along the flats for your rest
intervals until 3-5 minutes has elapsed, then repeat.
*
If you are thinking you need to do more “hill repeats”….*
Hills are a PLACE to do a workout, not a workout in itself. Anytime you say
you are doing a “hill workout”, you have to know beforehadn what you want to
accomplish with that workout and tructure it accordingly. Pittsburgh is a
hard place to do threshold workotus on hills because the hills are too
short…so the hills are better suited to anaerobic (1-2 minute) or VO2 max
(3-5 minute) efforts.
*
Finally, *sprint workouts are 30 seconds or less, even as short as 10
seconds. If you are not currently a contender for sprint finishes or simply
want to devote more time to developing your threshold than don’t worry about
these for now…but consider starting to add them in by the time June
starts. However because sprint efforts rely on energy that is by nature
exhausted in such a short period of time, doing 10-15 second sprint efforts
with FULL (5-8 minute) recovery should not significantly impact your ability
to do other workouts the following day.
Basically there are an infinate variety of intervals you can do, as well as
places to do them (oval, hills, trainer, etc). The key is to know what you
are currently trying to accomplish and to draw up a progressively difficult
plan to continuosly challenge your body to acheive those results.
Feel free to email me with specific quetiosn about your current training.
-Coach
