Interval Training for racing only

Spinnerman

Okay, out of curiousity, how many here are willing to admit they only interval train by using chaingang's, group rides, small group rides, trianing races or races and only do aerobic/endurance/recovery rides when riding alone because the motivation to go hard just really isn't there? How does this work for you versus structured training for you or racers you know?

Sometimes, I think it is just about experimenting to find the right mix and style for each rider. I tend to think there is no one size fits all formula. I can see why the pros ride long hours, but for us amateur and Master's/Vet's maybe a mixutre all year round is a better formula. Probably. tje most bang for the buck (pound) is to get the interval work in some kind of group/race format where other riders (including better riders) will push you to your limits and thus stimulate improvement in all areas of development. Tthen do some aerobic work outside this format because hammering everday willl just wear you down. Kind of a twist on what LeMond recommends on his website.

What are your thoughts and experiences on this subject?

Rich

Mike Willcox

I agree.

It seems to me from this forum that many riders do not train to their full potential because they fail to see the bigger picture. There are no short cuts to reaching your full potential, but we all have to play with the cards we are dealt with. Those cards are age, health, time available to train, motivation and objectives, family committments, experience, and resources etc.

Training for training sake is not going to cut it for you because there is no time constraint to make the objective meaningful. Train towards a time constrained objective and then a plan can be devised and implemented. Fitness needs to be built up and worked towards a peak to turn out peak performance maybe two or three times a year.

To this end it's a case of mixing up rides for endurance and speed in proportion to where abouts you are in the build up cycle to the target time period. Less endurance and more speed the closer you get. I feel a bit sad to be honest for those that concentrate on speed all the time with turbo based intervals as they are missing out on the enjoyment side of the sport and will in all probablity be unable to sustain their interest for very long.

I do all my riding on my own. My speed work is unlike those routines that are promoted here. My intervals aren't structured to the minute and aren't measureable in terms of effort (power/HR) and I won't attempt them until I know that my basic fitness is adequate from a good base. The first time I do them is hard because it's all down to me, no wheels to chase, but the next time it's easier and so on.

My aerobic base contains lots of tempo riding and very little recovery easy riding. My speed training is temepered with lots of easy recovery riding. This time of the year I'm on the edge of overtraining what with the miles and the gym work. Racing and interval training time is much easier on the mind and body.

SteveR_100Milers

Succinctly put Mike, and your approach is closese to how I tackle it. I know I have to do so much effort per week for a given time in the season, though I mix it up on single rides. I guess my training is almost totally fartlek based: for example on a 20 or 30 mile loop that I use there are two good hills for climbing, some long straight flat sections that I use to measure speed for a number of minutes, plus plenty of small rolling sections that I simply sprint up out of the saddle. Weekend is much the same only longer distance, and probably less sprinting and TT efforts. My HR is only used as a post ride measure of approx effort, so I know that I have spent so much of my weekly time in 5 basic zones, though I tend to look at the overall distribution rather than the rigid analysis of Z1 Z2 etc.

I also do and prefer to train on my own, though I do enjoy long distance club rides in a group more than same distance solo.

J2R2

I'm the opposite of what Spinnerman describes; I use the club for long steady rides (doing a 4 hour endurance ride on your own is dead boring) and all my interval training is done on my own. Most of that is on the turbo trainer.

I don't seem to have any problem pushing myself to the limit on my own - quite regularly by the end of my turbo sessions I am retching over the kitchen sink.

Doing hard training is best on your own - you are working to your own training agenda, not someone else's.

Alex_Simmons/RST

Mike Willcox wrote:

I agree.

It seems to me from this forum that many riders do not train to their full potential because they fail to see the bigger picture. There are no short cuts to reaching your full potential, but we all have to play with the cards we are dealt with. Those cards are age, health, time available to train, motivation and objectives, family committments, experience, and resources etc.

Training for training sake is not going to cut it for you because there is no time constraint to make the objective meaningful. Train towards a time constrained objective and then a plan can be devised and implemented. Fitness needs to be built up and worked towards a peak to turn out peak performance maybe two or three times a year.

To this end it's a case of mixing up rides for endurance and speed in proportion to where abouts you are in the build up cycle to the target time period. Less endurance and more speed the closer you get. I feel a bit sad to be honest for those that concentrate on speed all the time with turbo based intervals as they are missing out on the enjoyment side of the sport and will in all probablity be unable to sustain their interest for very long.

I do all my riding on my own. My speed work is unlike those routines that are promoted here. My intervals aren't structured to the minute and aren't measureable in terms of effort (power/HR) and I won't attempt them until I know that my basic fitness is adequate from a good base. The first time I do them is hard because it's all down to me, no wheels to chase, but the next time it's easier and so on.

My aerobic base contains lots of tempo riding and very little recovery easy riding. My speed training is temepered with lots of easy recovery riding. This time of the year I'm on the edge of overtraining what with the miles and the gym work. Racing and interval training time is much easier on the mind and body.

All sounds pretty reasonable to me. I suspect that many who think they take this approach perhaps don't have as well a tuned a personal exertion monitor as you Mike.

Also, many crave the motivation / social interaction / camaraderie / ego opportunity of bunch rides, irrespective of whether it is suitable training at that point in the season. Going solo or in a small bunch of like minded souls with similar fitness levels is generally more optimal for training.

Ste_S

For those people training on your own - is this mainly for TT's ?

I think group rides and training sessions are pretty much essential for anyone considering road or track racing.

Alex_Simmons/RST

Ste_S wrote:

For those people training on your own - is this mainly for TT's ?

No

Ste_S wrote:

I think group rides and training sessions are pretty much essential for anyone considering road or track racing.

The only group rides I typically do are races. Unless it's a small group where my training objectives are similar to the group.

If you are fairly new to racing, then bunch rides are a good idea so you become accustomed to having riders in close proximity. But even then you won't always address what typically happens in a race from a tactical POV and most bunches ride in a line 2 riders wide. Not many races are like that.

On the track - well you need to build up track experience. It is different and there is a lot of etiquette and track specific skills required.

stevejmo7

Reasons to train on your own -
no one hour bloomin cafe stops ( I used to do a sat cafe stop every week for four years - stopped last feb and haven't done one since.
Not having to wait whilst the people who want to ride on racing tyres thru' the winter repair their punctures
You know what time you will get back as against being slowed because there is a newcomer who X knows who slows the whole thing down
very little chance of a crash trying to go over a junction where the front few just got over and forgot to shout ' CAR' !!!
less chance of being hit by a car whose driver is frustrated by being kept behind a group who ride two abreast and who roars past just in time to cut in before being hit by the tractor who just appeared cause he overtook on a blind bend (it happens)
all the effort is your own - it's dead easy to draft in a group and find sixty miles later that the only real work was where you took your turn at the front
you see the potholes that the people in front can't be bothered to call out

Reasons to train in a group
If its a known route of known length where everyone takes a ten or whatever minute turn on the front at a pace that you know is going to deliver the HR that you want from the ride and that there aren't going to be the usual weekend warriors/winter racers winding it up just before the start of the season that they don't race in, then OK

NJK

Ste_S wrote:

For those people training on your own - is this mainly for TT's ?

I think group rides and training sessions are pretty much essential for anyone considering road or track racing.

Hello Steve

I train mainly on my own even when doing reliability group rides in bridgnorth :roll:
If you follow a structured training plan it is very difficult to target certain areas when training in a group. For example last wks reliabilty ride i was on the last day of a 3 day block which meant i felt pretty fatigued before i started. So there was no way i was going to try to stay with a fresh rider on a steep climb.

Neil WWCC

SteveR_100Milers

stevejmo7 wrote:

Reasons to train on your own -
no one hour bloomin cafe stops ( I used to do a sat cafe stop every week for four years - stopped last feb and haven't done one since.
Not having to wait whilst the people who want to ride on racing tyres thru' the winter repair their punctures
You know what time you will get back as against being slowed because there is a newcomer who X knows who slows the whole thing down
very little chance of a crash trying to go over a junction where the front few just got over and forgot to shout ' CAR' !!!
less chance of being hit by a car whose driver is frustrated by being kept behind a group who ride two abreast and who roars past just in time to cut in before being hit by the tractor who just appeared cause he overtook on a blind bend (it happens)
all the effort is your own - it's dead easy to draft in a group and find sixty miles later that the only real work was where you took your turn at the front
you see the potholes that the people in front can't be bothered to call out

Reasons to train in a group
If its a known route of known length where everyone takes a ten or whatever minute turn on the front at a pace that you know is going to deliver the HR that you want from the ride and that there aren't going to be the usual weekend warriors/winter racers winding it up just before the start of the season that they don't race in, then OK

Snap! Trouble is finding a group that does just that!

Alex_Simmons/RST

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

Snap! Trouble is finding a group that does just that!

Be a rebel. Start your own.

SteveR_100Milers

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

Snap! Trouble is finding a group that does just that!

Be a rebel. Start your own.

Funny you should say that, process already started...except its a group of one....

Spinnerman

stevejmo7 wrote:

Reasons to train on your own -
no one hour bloomin cafe stops ( I used to do a sat cafe stop every week for four years - stopped last feb and haven't done one since.
Not having to wait whilst the people who want to ride on racing tyres thru' the winter repair their punctures
You know what time you will get back as against being slowed because there is a newcomer who X knows who slows the whole thing down
very little chance of a crash trying to go over a junction where the front few just got over and forgot to shout ' CAR' !!!
less chance of being hit by a car whose driver is frustrated by being kept behind a group who ride two abreast and who roars past just in time to cut in before being hit by the tractor who just appeared cause he overtook on a blind bend (it happens)
all the effort is your own - it's dead easy to draft in a group and find sixty miles later that the only real work was where you took your turn at the front
you see the potholes that the people in front can't be bothered to call out

Reasons to train in a group
If its a known route of known length where everyone takes a ten or whatever minute turn on the front at a pace that you know is going to deliver the HR that you want from the ride and that there aren't going to be the usual weekend warriors/winter racers winding it up just before the start of the season that they don't race in, then OK

Luckily, one hour Cafe Stops are not really part of the cycling culutre (at least in the NW) during a group ride. (We have a new rider from Scotland on our team that seemed a little disappointed that we don't typically do this during the middle of a ride in the US.) Usually only an after ride stop so it becomes optional. Of course, the more riders the more chances of a puncture it seems and then you stop and get cold waiting for the repair before starting up again.

Thanks for the feedback from everyone so far. Seems reasonable to avoid large group rides unless it is a small group that is going to be training wih the same objective. The other option is to show up for the beginning to get warmed up and socialize a bit and then turn off once it starts to hot up and complete your own training ride. Then stop at the cafe afterward if you want to socialize and see if any of the riders are there.