On The Fly Reply
This is a reply to my earlier post of today which you can read here.
ChrisG
Interesting, as always. Following your proposed calendar, when does "race season" arrive? April? I'd offer that the endurance base rides are important not because they should equate with your common race distance, but because a "bigger" endurance base (theoretically) will allow you to build your intensity to a higher level.
The actual race season would really be a 4-6 week race peak, or a pair of them to be more precise. That would be determined by how the races fall, likely May-ish and September-October time frame. Maybe I'll lay those details out sooner than later and plop some races around to see what falls where. The lull will probably be July and maybe early August. I'm not planning on doing the 24 HoA race this year so mid-summer is open for valleys and subsequent peaks.
The endurance stuff is a balance because I lack time. My winter rides on the weekend are one thing but weekdays I'm limited to an hour or maybe 90 minutes. Plus building a base on a trainer is a mentally draining proposition. So that leaves a pair of weekend rides, one of which should be off-road to stay "fresh" with that. Then top that off with a longer tempo ride.
Would pushing that tempo ride to the 3 hour limit hurt? Maybe from a rest perspective it might. But I also know that what I called tempo last year was probably more along the lines of medium-low tempo where now I'm really just trying to work up to medium-high tempo. Those are assessments as made before I knew what it was like to race as opposed to now, after I've raced. So I'm really looking at adding time to that slowly. Basically 65 tempo minutes last time out and hopefully stretching that as the winter goes on and cooperates, or doesn't. In other words, trying to lay out a slow and steady build to 90 or 120 quality tempo minutes as opposed to 3-4 hours of junk miles.
Make sense?
ChrisG
Interesting, as always. Following your proposed calendar, when does "race season" arrive? April? I'd offer that the endurance base rides are important not because they should equate with your common race distance, but because a "bigger" endurance base (theoretically) will allow you to build your intensity to a higher level.
The actual race season would really be a 4-6 week race peak, or a pair of them to be more precise. That would be determined by how the races fall, likely May-ish and September-October time frame. Maybe I'll lay those details out sooner than later and plop some races around to see what falls where. The lull will probably be July and maybe early August. I'm not planning on doing the 24 HoA race this year so mid-summer is open for valleys and subsequent peaks.
The endurance stuff is a balance because I lack time. My winter rides on the weekend are one thing but weekdays I'm limited to an hour or maybe 90 minutes. Plus building a base on a trainer is a mentally draining proposition. So that leaves a pair of weekend rides, one of which should be off-road to stay "fresh" with that. Then top that off with a longer tempo ride.
Would pushing that tempo ride to the 3 hour limit hurt? Maybe from a rest perspective it might. But I also know that what I called tempo last year was probably more along the lines of medium-low tempo where now I'm really just trying to work up to medium-high tempo. Those are assessments as made before I knew what it was like to race as opposed to now, after I've raced. So I'm really looking at adding time to that slowly. Basically 65 tempo minutes last time out and hopefully stretching that as the winter goes on and cooperates, or doesn't. In other words, trying to lay out a slow and steady build to 90 or 120 quality tempo minutes as opposed to 3-4 hours of junk miles.
Make sense?
Labels: training
1 Comments:
At 4:08 PM,
Anonymous said…
Hear you on the need to get the most out of the workouts, and agree that "base" riding on the trainer is for the birds, so doing higher-end efforts with your limited time during the week makes perfect sense.
As for the longer stuff on the weekends, that's where you can get the base effort in, even if it's just the one ride. And tapering up the "tempo" portion of that one long ride is exactly what I do as the winter progresses and the season gets closer. Two longer-ish tempo intervals, with some substantial recovery between, is a really good use of a 3 hour road ride. In keeping with the "race length" element as an indicator, I'd say that attempting more than 90 minutes, maybe 2 hours, of true tempo, would be plenty. And that would be something to build to over the next 8 weeks or so. I usually work in 10 minute increments when adding tempo.
That's my off-the-top response, anyway.
-ChrisG
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