Steel City Endurance Racing

Well the vast majority of you didn’t want to take time off and instead wanted some killer workouts for July & August.  First I review the threshold testing and HR Zones so that we are speaking the same language. Then I list a few good workouts to add into your mix once or twice a week.

If you don’t have a good idea of your current threshold, you may want to take an opportunity to retest with a 20 minute all out test, following a good warmup.

What’s a good warmup?  Here’s an example. Experiment and use the same warmup each time.
10 minutes easy pedaling
30 seconds fast pedal (easy gearing, pedal as fast as you can until you begin to bounce in the saddle, then back off of bit)
2 minutes easy recovery
30 seconds fast pedal
2 minutes recovery

Then start your  20 minute threshold test and record the distance covered as well as  your avg heart rate for the 20 minute test. Your threshold heart rate (LTR) is roughly 95% of your 20 minute avg. HR.

Calculate your zones as follows:
Zone 1 (Recovery) 0-68% of THR
Zone 2 (Endurance) 69-83% THR
Zone 3 (Tempo) 84-94% THR
Zone 4 (Threshold) 95-105% THR
Zone 5 (VO2) 106% THR up to sustainable effort of 5 minutes

Here are the July workouts to consider adding to the mix.  I would choose one of these to do once a week, separated by at least a day from your racing days.

Criss-Cross Workouts, also known as “Over Unders”
There are a variety of ways to do these workouts as far as the duration of time you spend over and under your threshold. The idea is th do sustained work at or above thresold to traing yoru body to recover from suprathreshold workouts (like bridges or attacks) as well as learning to ride at your threshold for longer periods of time.
Do 2 x 20 minute efforts…minimum HR during these efforts is 91% of THR
every 2 minutes pop up to 105% of THR or your VO2 effort.  It will take 30 seconds for your HR to reach the VO2 level, so don’t overshoot. These are not sprints, just harder efforts above threshold. Recover back to 91-95% of THR, but nothing lower than 91%.
Rest 5 minutes between efforts
Finish with 2 VO2 efforts of 5 minutes each (106% THR) with 5 minutes rest inbetwen
Cool down well, 10 minutes easy spinning minimum.

Anaerobic Capacity Workouts
Warmup: 15 minutes
Main Set:  6 x 2 min at 106-110% THR all out with 1 min rest
5 min easy
6 x 1 minute close to all out efforts, 2 min rest
5 min easy
finish 6 x 30 sec all out w/ 1 min rest
Cooldown 15 min easy spinning

The 2 minute efforts will be slightly less than the all out effort you can sustain for 2 minutes. The idea is to tap into your anaerobic energy stores without totally blowing yourself out so that you can complete all 6 intervals. 1 minute efforts are slightly harder than that…again, not quite your all out effort for the duration but close. The 30 second efforts are all out.

Sweet Spot
Sweet spot is training at high Tempo low threshold zones. This zone gives you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of increasing your threshold.  You get solid aerobic training without requiring as much recovery as threshold efforts of the same duration would require.
Warmup 15 minutes
2-3 x 20 min at 91-95% THR, right in sweet spot. Rest for 5 min btwn each
Finish with 20-45 min of solid tempo (Zone 3) but not hard.
CD: 15 min.

Enjoy, let me know how they go!

-Coach