Summer Training
At the recent seminar by Pete Read it was highlighted how winter training should take place. Taking this further onto
summer training here is an article written by Pete suggesting what to do in the summer training / racing season.
DON'T RACE YOURSELF SLOW
Rather an odd title but there again rather an odd subject and one you won't see written about very often. The
reason I have chosen to write about this particular subject at this time of the year is that racing slower tends to affect
the majority of competitive club cyclists around the middle of the racing season. In fact it affects some racing cyclists
so badly that they either pack in racing for the rest of the season or in some cases hang up their wheels for good.
Racing slower is a strange phenomena and one that appears to have no solution. But there is!
Has racing slower as the season progresses happened to you? At some point in every cyclist's career it does and
the reason often remains a mystery but it needn't be so read on. What actually happens is that you are going well
and racing at a level you are reasonably happy with, probably even improving on previous races and previous
seasons and then for no apparent reason you start a race and there is nothing there. You feel heavy legged, your
heart rate won't respond to effort and you are breathless at a relatively low intensity. Your immediate reaction to this
is that you are under trained and need to train harder so you thrash yourself mercilessly all week and when it comes
to the weekend your performance is even worse that the previous week. Again you convince yourself that you can't
have trained hard enough so another mentally hard week follows only to result in the worst ride of your career at
which point you decide enough is enough and hang up your wheels for the rest of the season.
You will definitely have experienced this or at least known someone in your club who has and it is extremely
frustrating. I know because I have done it myself in the past.
So what should we do when performances start to dip and what actually causes it to happen? Well generally club
cyclists (time triallists are the biggest culprits) tend to over race, in fact they often race three times a week and
occasionally even more in some cases. As you can see (well some of you can) the body never gets the chance to
recover and the massive base of miles you did in winter slowly gets eroded due to the fact you haven't got time to
train because all your spare time is taken up racing.
Competitive cycling, particular time trialling is possibly the most demanding sport of all if done correctly, and
correctly means riding right on your threshold for the entire event.
I agree that not all cyclists race at this intensity, in fact many race in the comfort zone, consequently they can
actually race every day with little or no adverse effect. However, the ones of you that do race at the very limit of your
ability need 3 or 4 days or even longer to recover fully from the effort and if recovery isn't allowed and aerobic base
rides are neglected then we get into the position where we race slower each time we compete.
This doesn't happen early in the season as the effect of racing with no base is accumulative and it generally takes
until June or July before the base is finally eroded and the full effect is felt. So to quote the old proverb but in my
own words, 'All race and no base makes Jack a slow boy' and there is nothing truer.
The cure for the above ailment is simple, cut time trialling back to once a week and train between races. If you ride
road races then the above problem won't affect you quite as much as a road race doesn't, or shouldn't, require you
to ride at threshold for the entire race unless you are competing at a level out of your depth.
What we need to do is resort to what I refer to as base 'n' race and this will enable you to race harder each week.
Base must be ridden relatively easy, around level one if you work on heart rate, this being an intensity that most of
you never ride at as it feels almost too easy. Small gears, low heart rate, high cadence for 2, 3 or even 4 hrs, the
more of this you do mid week the better you will race at the weekend.
If you race at the weekend and also do long hard training rides during the week then all you are effectively doing is
racing every time you train which is racing 3 or 4 times a week!
If you feel that just doing base 'n' race is missing that vital ingredient of hard top end training then introduce just one
session of very short hard intervals during the week, perhaps Tuesday, but to be fully effective these have to be
harder than you would dare race hence they have to be short.
Try one session of flat out intervals of 15-20 seconds in length with 2 or 3 minutes rest between - this should be
enough rest to allow for full recovery. If you do these intervals hard enough then 6 or 7 will be all you can manage.
So to summarise on the above I suggest at this time of year you race once at the weekend and perhaps a mid week
time trial or a road race if you must. Then fit in at least one long base ride as mentioned above, (these should
almost feel too easy) but ideally two base rides if you have the time, plus a short hard interval session and also take
a couple of days off the bike completely.
So a perfect week for a club level cyclist should be 1 or 2 races, 2 base rides and 1 interval session and 2 days off,
simple! Try it and I promise you won't race yourself slow.
At the recent seminar by Pete Read it was highlighted how winter training should take place. Taking this further onto
summer training here is an article written by Pete suggesting what to do in the summer training / racing season.
DON'T RACE YOURSELF SLOW
Rather an odd title but there again rather an odd subject and one you won't see written about very often. The
reason I have chosen to write about this particular subject at this time of the year is that racing slower tends to affect
the majority of competitive club cyclists around the middle of the racing season. In fact it affects some racing cyclists
so badly that they either pack in racing for the rest of the season or in some cases hang up their wheels for good.
Racing slower is a strange phenomena and one that appears to have no solution. But there is!
Has racing slower as the season progresses happened to you? At some point in every cyclist's career it does and
the reason often remains a mystery but it needn't be so read on. What actually happens is that you are going well
and racing at a level you are reasonably happy with, probably even improving on previous races and previous
seasons and then for no apparent reason you start a race and there is nothing there. You feel heavy legged, your
heart rate won't respond to effort and you are breathless at a relatively low intensity. Your immediate reaction to this
is that you are under trained and need to train harder so you thrash yourself mercilessly all week and when it comes
to the weekend your performance is even worse that the previous week. Again you convince yourself that you can't
have trained hard enough so another mentally hard week follows only to result in the worst ride of your career at
which point you decide enough is enough and hang up your wheels for the rest of the season.
You will definitely have experienced this or at least known someone in your club who has and it is extremely
frustrating. I know because I have done it myself in the past.
So what should we do when performances start to dip and what actually causes it to happen? Well generally club
cyclists (time triallists are the biggest culprits) tend to over race, in fact they often race three times a week and
occasionally even more in some cases. As you can see (well some of you can) the body never gets the chance to
recover and the massive base of miles you did in winter slowly gets eroded due to the fact you haven't got time to
train because all your spare time is taken up racing.
Competitive cycling, particular time trialling is possibly the most demanding sport of all if done correctly, and
correctly means riding right on your threshold for the entire event.
I agree that not all cyclists race at this intensity, in fact many race in the comfort zone, consequently they can
actually race every day with little or no adverse effect. However, the ones of you that do race at the very limit of your
ability need 3 or 4 days or even longer to recover fully from the effort and if recovery isn't allowed and aerobic base
rides are neglected then we get into the position where we race slower each time we compete.
This doesn't happen early in the season as the effect of racing with no base is accumulative and it generally takes
until June or July before the base is finally eroded and the full effect is felt. So to quote the old proverb but in my
own words, 'All race and no base makes Jack a slow boy' and there is nothing truer.
The cure for the above ailment is simple, cut time trialling back to once a week and train between races. If you ride
road races then the above problem won't affect you quite as much as a road race doesn't, or shouldn't, require you
to ride at threshold for the entire race unless you are competing at a level out of your depth.
What we need to do is resort to what I refer to as base 'n' race and this will enable you to race harder each week.
Base must be ridden relatively easy, around level one if you work on heart rate, this being an intensity that most of
you never ride at as it feels almost too easy. Small gears, low heart rate, high cadence for 2, 3 or even 4 hrs, the
more of this you do mid week the better you will race at the weekend.
If you race at the weekend and also do long hard training rides during the week then all you are effectively doing is
racing every time you train which is racing 3 or 4 times a week!
If you feel that just doing base 'n' race is missing that vital ingredient of hard top end training then introduce just one
session of very short hard intervals during the week, perhaps Tuesday, but to be fully effective these have to be
harder than you would dare race hence they have to be short.
Try one session of flat out intervals of 15-20 seconds in length with 2 or 3 minutes rest between - this should be
enough rest to allow for full recovery. If you do these intervals hard enough then 6 or 7 will be all you can manage.
So to summarise on the above I suggest at this time of year you race once at the weekend and perhaps a mid week
time trial or a road race if you must. Then fit in at least one long base ride as mentioned above, (these should
almost feel too easy) but ideally two base rides if you have the time, plus a short hard interval session and also take
a couple of days off the bike completely.
So a perfect week for a club level cyclist should be 1 or 2 races, 2 base rides and 1 interval session and 2 days off,
simple! Try it and I promise you won't race yourself slow.
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |