Above race pace training

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Permalink Reply by Julian Downing on August 20, 2009 at 6:05pm

Hi Stuart, I focus on 10mile TT's. My schedule (fitted in around work/family commitments) generally looks like this:

Sunday: Circa 1hour ride on a road bike at a fairly pleasurable pace - no real requirement to ride any further than 20 miles. I do a hilly loop in the big ring for strength.

Tues: Either a club 10mile TT or a 1/2 hour interval session on a turbo

Thurs: 1/2 hour interval session on a turbo

Sat: 10mile TT race or a 10mile TT on a turbo

So as you can see what works for me is spending circa 60-70% riding @ race pace. The other thing that I try to do is a couple of weights sesssions a week - focus on squats.

Hope this helps. How are your times - are they coming down?

Cheers

JULIAN

Permalink Reply by Stuart Ashley on August 20, 2009 at 7:26pm

Hello Julian,

Firstly, thank you for the advice, I have read so much about the need to do lots of base miles, I have been doing this and then the odd TT and found my times not really altering that much.... I changed my schedule 4 weeks ago and set a PB today actually of 33:06 for a 20k TT 36.6 KPH - I was delighted with this as I do not use a TT bike just the road bike with TT bars....

I am going to focus much more on strength training and speed work, your suggestion regarding the "hilly loop" in the big ring sounds fantastic and I am going to start doing this - one question, when you say hilly, can you quantify, I am in highland Scotland at present and "hilly" is everywhere from 1 in 4 gradients downwards.

Thank you again,

S

Julian Downing said:

Hi Stuart, I focus on 10mile TT's. My schedule (fitted in around work/family commitments) generally looks like this:

Sunday: Circa 1hour ride on a road bike at a fairly pleasurable pace - no real requirement to ride any further than 20 miles. I do a hilly loop in the big ring for strength.

Tues: Either a club 10mile TT or a 1/2 hour interval session on a turbo

Thurs: 1/2 hour interval session on a turbo

Sat: 10mile TT race or a 10mile TT on a turbo

So as you can see what works for me is spending circa 60-70% riding @ race pace. The other thing that I try to do is a couple of weights sesssions a week - focus on squats.

Hope this helps. How are your times - are they coming down?

Cheers

JULIAN

Permalink Reply by Julian Downing on August 21, 2009 at 6:17pm

Congrats on the PB. Base miles are important but at the right time of year - generally through the winter and pre-race season. Now we're at the tail end of the race season I concur that your get more results through doing more high intensity work.

Do a google search on "periodization" - to see the different phases of training recommended at different times of the year, and to see where base miles best fit in. I've also learnt a lot on this from the book "Serious Cycling" by Edmund R Burke.

Ref hilly - afraid the "highest peak" around Surrey is Box Hill at 867metres! I tend do do a loop up Box Hill and its near neighbour Headley Hill. I aim to do the climbs in the seated position in the big ring to maximise strength.

cheers

Julian