|
|
|
Planning Your Training
by Karen Brems
Planning an effective weekly, monthly or yearly training schedule
is something that requires a fair amount of trial and error, but can
really pay off. If two people follow exactly the same schedule,
they will not necessarily achieve the same results. It is a good idea
to talk to other riders and find out what they are doing as far as
training, but everyone has to figure out for themselves what works
the best for them. Also, remember one workout does not equal a training
program. Training is a package deal and everything is cumulative. If
you do a certain top rider’s favorite workout every time you ride without
any knowledge of what else is in their schedule, chances are you will
not receive the same benefits. Unless you are independently wealthy
or riding your bike for a living, your training will be the
result of trade-offs with your “real” life. Each person has to determine
for themselves how many hours a week they have to devote to cycling
and make the most of them. To achieve the greatest benefits from your
training, you have to stress your body as much as possible and then
give it enough time to recover and adapt to the stress. Your rest periods
are actually when you grow stronger. As you grow stronger, you have
to stress your body more and more to continue the adaptation. If you
do the same thing every week all year, you will eventually just reach
a performance plateau. Stress is cumulative as well. Professional cyclists
do a tremendous amount of training and racing, but when they are not
on their bikes, they are most likely sitting or lying down somewhere
relaxing or taking a nap (except when they are traveling all over
the world!). They also probably get 8-10 hours of sleep a night, a
luxury most people trying to fit cycling in around a full-time job
and/or family life cannot afford.
When we are at national team training camp, we tend to do all our
training in “blocks” : 2 days hard, one day easy, 3 days hard, 2 days
easy etc. Days of the week have no meaning. In “real life”,
however, I think it is easier to dedicate certain days of the week to certain
workouts. Most cyclist the world over sort of fall into a general plan
during the racing season of: race Sat and Sun, Mon. easy, train Tues.-Thurs.,
easy Fri. If you use this plan, Tues. and Wed. should be your hardest
workouts since that is when you are freshest. When you are first starting
out, you may find that you can only go hard every other day. As you
get fitter though, you will have to start going hard 2-3 days in a
row to continue the adaptation. You should always keep at least
one day a week completely easy.
You can then put the weeks together to form monthly blocks. I find
that a schedule of 3 weeks hard, one week easy works well for
me. That means that approximately once a month, I will take at least
4-5 days in a row very easy. Where you fit these “rest weeks” in can
depend on your race schedule or other obligations. For example, if
you know that because of your job, you will not be able to train much
a certain week, schedule that as your easy week and go as hard as you
can the few weeks before it. There have been times when I felt like
I didn’t need the “rest week” and skipped it, but I almost invariably
regretted it later... I also find that in general, I ride the best
the 2nd week of the block. After more than 1-2 days of easy riding,
you may become “blocked”. In general this means after a period of rest,
your body will sort of shut down and start up its repair processes.
You may feel pretty sluggish the first time you go hard again. This
is completely normal. Most top riders like to do a “race opener” type
workout the day before a race. This is usually a few short, high intensity
intervals and/or some jumps. You can use smaller gears than normal
to save your legs while still getting high heart rates. In a long stage
race such as the PowerBar Challenge or even, I’m sure in the Tour
de France, if there is a rest day in the middle, most of the riders
will be out doing a few intervals that day. You need to keep your
race systems active - otherwise you will really regret it the next
day.
The key to a good training program is variety. To be a successful
road racer takes many different skills and energy delivery systems.
If you only train one system all the time, your race tactics will be
very limited. The basic requirements for road racing and the types
of workouts that develop them are the following:
Aerobic capacity: Long rides (at least as long as your longest
race) at a steady (but not hard) pace. HR less than 80% of max. These
will help you be fresher at the end of the race and teach your body
to use fat for fuel and thus spare precious muscle glycogen
Aerobic power: Longer intervals (10-30 min.) at or just below
your anaerobic threshold. Rest about half the work time. These will
help your climbing and time trialing as well as allow you to spend
more time riding aerobically when just going along in the pack as opposed
to being anaerobic most of the time and then when the pace picks up,
you have nothing more to draw on.
Anaerobic power: Very short (20-40 sec.) very high intensity
intervals with complete recovery in between (4-6 min.). These must
be a maximum effort the entire interval.
Anaerobic capacity: Short (1-2 min.) very high intensity intervals.
Rest about 3 times the working time.
Sprinting: 10-15 sec. maximum effort. Full recovery in between.
This will train your creatine-phosphate energy system. You can also
get a lot of the benefits of a sprint workout without the fatigue (for
example if you are not really a pure sprinter and training that system
is not your highest priority) by just doing very short (8-10 sec.)
jumps in a relatively small gear. This will also help your leg speed.
Strength: Lift weights. Or, you can do hill repeats of
3-6 min. in a large gear (45-60 rpm) at moderate heart rates (80-85%
of max.). Don’t do this if you have knee problems.
Threshold training: medium length intervals (4-10 min.) above
your anaerobic threshold (hard time trial type intensity) with incomplete
recovery (3-5 min.). These should be as hard as you can go for
the given amount of time.
You can also train your body’s ability to clear and buffer lactic
acid by doing short, high intensity efforts (30 -45 sec.) with short
recovery (1-2 min.).
All these intervals can be done either uphill or on the flats, except
for sprints and anaerobic power intervals which are best done on the
flats. Where you do them depends on what your priority is. In general,
doing them on the flats is harder - your legs will hurt more for the
same heart rate. Ideally, you should do some of both, or you can do
the shorter ones on a varied loop so within a workout, you will sometimes
be climbing and sometimes going on the flats.
Obviously, nobody can train every system every week. This is where
the theory of periodization comes in. The basic premise here is that
is takes less to maintain a system than to train it. Therefore, you
can train each system individually and then just do a minimum number
of workouts to maintain it while you train the other systems. So, for
example, you can work on strength and aerobic capacity in the winter.
Then you can work on aerobic power and threshold training for a month
while doing one long ride a week to maintain aerobic capacity and
maybe hit the weight room once a week or do a few climbs in a bigger
gear than normal. Then the next month you can keep your one long ride
(which will eventually become your road races as the season starts)
and one aerobic workout and add some anaerobic ones. Once the season starts
in full force, you may do one aerobic, one anaerobic and one sprint
workout a week. Or you can fit your sprints into an aerobic ride,
or ride your bike to work and do some jumps or sprint out of every
stoplight you hit and then have space for another type of workout in
your week. The emphasis you put on each type of workout depends on
your individual strengths and weaknesses and your particular race goals.
Everything is a trade-off - the more emphasis you put on one type
of training, the more other areas will suffer. Even at the highest
level, NOBODY can do everything all the time. For example, if you
are training specifically for the district TT, you may do 2-3 threshold
workouts a week and sacrifice your sprinting. Same thing for training
for a hilly RR. If you want to specialize in criteriums, you need
to emphasize sprinting and anaerobic intervals.
So where does the noon ride fit in? There is nothing inherently wrong
with group rides. Their big advantage is that you can use other people
to push you harder than you can push yourself. Plus, they are fun,
and after all, that’s the reason most of us got into cycling in the
first place! They are also a chance for newer racers to test out tactics.
However, if you are doing the same group ride 2-3 times a week plus
racing on the weekends, you are basically training the same thing all
the time. Also, NEVER do a group ride on your easy day - you will invariably
get sucked into going harder than you should. When you first start
riding, as long as you just ride your bike, you will get stronger.
Then, you will need to go harder to continue getting stronger, and
this is where group rides can come in. However if that is all you
do, you will develop significant “holes” in your overall ability. The
closer you get to your potential, the more you will need to add specific
training to your program.
What about “double days”? The advantage of fitting 2 workouts
into one day is you can put more stress on your body for greater adaptation,
and get more rest days to grow stronger in. For working folks, it also
has the advantage that often it is easier to schedule 2 shorter workouts
than one long one. This is especially true after daylight savings
time hits. For example, you could do a double day on Wed. and still
get your 3 workouts in for the week. Then you could take an extra
rest day on Thurs., do some jumps on Fri. and be that much fresher
for your race on Sat.
Part of racing is just learning how to ride through pain. No matter
whether you are a cat 5 or Miguel Indurain, going hard hurts! As you
get fitter, you just go faster for the same effort - the effort is
always there. The fresher and stronger you are, the harder you can
go and the more it will hurt. It is usually my best races that have
hurt the most. It takes time to develop the ability to suffer on a
bike. So, if you are just getting into racing, you will probably be
better off doing most of your hard training in a group setting until
you learn to push yourself hard enough on your own to benefit from
interval training. This is also where having a training partner comes
in. If one person is stronger, they can start the interval later and
chase and everyone can benefit. Be careful when doing any kind of intervals
where you are trying to stay at a particular heart rate that is less
than your max. Here, having a competitor next to you can cause you
to go too hard and be “out of your zone”.
You also have to keep your training fun and interesting. If you are
not motivated to train, you will get nothing out of it. Do not be afraid
to take extra rest days if you feel you are getting tired. Mental
attitude is a big indicator of overtraining. Most of us basically look
forward to getting out on our bikes everyday. If training is becoming
a chore, you are probably tired. Find a way to measure your progress
– seeing improvement is the biggest motivator of all no matter what
your level. The intervals I describe above are based of time. You
can also find a hill or stretch of road that will take approximately
that amount of time to ride and time yourself on repeats. |
|
|
