TT specific training

mikeh202

I have done an ok winter with a good base of miles and have now decided to do more TTs than anything else and am wondering what sort of training plans people use for this. Am I best to just keep doing 10's on a turbo and the road or is there something a bit more structured that will help me increase my power?
Time available - Commute of 20 miles each way done two or three times a week, 1 good weekend ride of 3 - 4 hours and a couple of half hour turbo sessions.
Thanks for you help.

Pokerface

Intervals. Intervals. And more intervals!

sub55

Pokerface wrote:

Intervals. Intervals. And more intervals!

strongly disagree, intervals will only ever tweak what you already have.
tting even over 10 miles is an endurance sport ,unless you are putting in 30 hours aweek
at level 2 ,they wont help. so in my answer to the question ,you need to put in more hours at a hard steady pace.

a_n_t

2 x 20 turbo sessions are working for me.

Alex_Simmons/RST

sub55 wrote:

Pokerface wrote:

Intervals. Intervals. And more intervals!

strongly disagree, intervals will only ever tweak what you already have.
tting even over 10 miles is an endurance sport ,unless you are putting in 30 hours aweek
at level 2 ,they wont help. so in my answer to the question ,you need to put in more hours at a hard steady pace.

What twaddle.

The less time you have, the more important it will be to include some increased intensity in the training (once you are ready for it). And what's wrong with intervals of, say, 20-minutes duration?

sub55

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

sub55 wrote:

Pokerface wrote:

Intervals. Intervals. And more intervals!

strongly disagree, intervals will only ever tweak what you already have.
tting even over 10 miles is an endurance sport ,unless you are putting in 30 hours aweek
at level 2 ,they wont help. so in my answer to the question ,you need to put in more hours at a hard steady pace.

What twaddle.

The less time you have, the more important it will be to include some increased intensity in the training (once you are ready for it). And what's wrong with intervals of, say, 20-minutes duration?

Alex,
in my opinion, people are inherently lazy and permantly looking for the easy way out. as far as intervals go ,there is a self perpetuating myth circulated on these pages from people who never quite make the top grade. where in reality, if you go and talk to the riders competeing at the highest most level in the country ,you`ll discover they all have completely different training regimes. but the common thread amongst these people is about 25 hours a week off sustained hard work.

jibberjim

sub55 wrote:

in my opinion, people are inherently lazy and permantly looking for the easy way out. as far as intervals go ,there is a self perpetuating myth circulated on these pages from people who never quite make the top grade. where in reality, if you go and talk to the riders competeing at the highest most level in the country ,you`ll discover they all have completely different training regimes. but the common thread amongst these people is about 25 hours a week off sustained hard work.

But if you don't have 25 hours a week to ride, then it's not particularly useful a training plan. It's likely the original poster asking for help isn't competing at the highest level in the country (if you are get a real coach who can work with you and help you get what's right for you, as sub55 notes, people are different in how they react to training types)

He simply wants to optimise his training to improve his TT'ing given that he only has 5 hours + commuting time in. If you only have that time available - then the only possibility is increasing the intensity of the rides to improve.

And you will almost certainly improve simply by increasing the intensity - the exact structure of the intervals almost certainly can't be known without knowing the athlete and how they react to the training, or their goals etc. etc.

skavanagh.bikeradar

Search on this forum for:

sweetspot training
2 x 20
Hour of Power or HOP
FTP

Pokerface

sub55 wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

sub55 wrote:

Pokerface wrote:

Intervals. Intervals. And more intervals!

strongly disagree, intervals will only ever tweak what you already have.
tting even over 10 miles is an endurance sport ,unless you are putting in 30 hours aweek
at level 2 ,they wont help. so in my answer to the question ,you need to put in more hours at a hard steady pace.

What twaddle.

The less time you have, the more important it will be to include some increased intensity in the training (once you are ready for it). And what's wrong with intervals of, say, 20-minutes duration?

Alex,
in my opinion, people are inherently lazy and permantly looking for the easy way out. as far as intervals go ,there is a self perpetuating myth circulated on these pages from people who never quite make the top grade. where in reality, if you go and talk to the riders competeing at the highest most level in the country ,you`ll discover they all have completely different training regimes. but the common thread amongst these people is about 25 hours a week off sustained hard work.

Yes - but the OP didn't ask hoe to become a top-level athlete and clearly doesn't have 25 extra hours a week for training.

The most effective way he can improve within his given time restraints - is to increase the intensity of his training. Intervals (whether 2 minutes or 20 minutes) get the body used to working at near threshold levels and make sustained rain (or TT) efforts easier to manage.

This is not advice found merely 'on these pages' but from coaches, trainers and magazine writers around the world.

Alex_Simmons/RST

sub55 wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

sub55 wrote:

Pokerface wrote:

Intervals. Intervals. And more intervals!

strongly disagree, intervals will only ever tweak what you already have.
tting even over 10 miles is an endurance sport ,unless you are putting in 30 hours aweek
at level 2 ,they wont help. so in my answer to the question ,you need to put in more hours at a hard steady pace.

What twaddle.

The less time you have, the more important it will be to include some increased intensity in the training (once you are ready for it). And what's wrong with intervals of, say, 20-minutes duration?

Alex,
in my opinion, people are inherently lazy and permantly looking for the easy way out. as far as intervals go ,there is a self perpetuating myth circulated on these pages from people who never quite make the top grade. where in reality, if you go and talk to the riders competeing at the highest most level in the country ,you`ll discover they all have completely different training regimes. but the common thread amongst these people is about 25 hours a week off sustained hard work.

I would suggest that many of those riders would be far better off doing 15-16 hours of better quality riding that the 25 they are doing. Unless we are talking Pro Tour/GT types riders.

skavanagh.bikeradar

Quite often on training threads the critical issue for people is time. I'd guess that most people with a full time job, kids, a wife, DIY, etc have between 5 and 10 hours per week to dedicate to training on the bike and that time is very valuable and you've got to make every minute count. The OP seems to have about 10 hours available, which is pretty good.

So, bearing this in mind how do we help him get faster at TTs of presumably 10 or 25 miles?*

* I don't know, I'm not an expert.....

joeyhalloran

I have heard that 20 second sprint, 10 second recovery, and repeat for as long as possible (not too TT specific but is a good workout with time restraints) perhaps these would be a good session for the half hour turbos. The commutes to work i would recommend a 20x2 interval session with a warm up and warm down, try and keep the rest time as short as possible, perhaps 5 minutes? (not sure if it would be possible to fit that in to 20 miles, i guess you could make it 15x2 if need be). Maybe once every now and again turn your 20 mile communte in to a 10 mile time trial with 5 mile warm up/down to practice pacing and see where your limit is. As for long weekend ride, keep it just that, make sure you're going hard but remember the priority is maintaining the endurance base you built over the winter.

This seems like the only actual plan anyone has suggested, and maybe it needs some verification/tweaking by someone who really knows what they are talking about.

Pokerface

From Lance Armstrong's facebook feed today:


"Out for training #2 today. 6 by 3 mins uphil at max effort."

Someone should tell that guy that intervals won't do him any good! LOL

garetjax

I am certainly no expert but over Winter I have been doing a work-out taken from Chris Carmicheal's Time Trial DVD, which seems to be helping.

Warm-up for 10 minutes and include in this 2 x 1minute max efforts, then 4 minutes steady cycling. Then comes the fun bit:
* Five minutes hard cycling at above time trial pace. First 2-3 minutes feel hard, the last 2 minutes feel really, really hard. It's an effort that you feel you really can't sustain for much longer than a few minutes. Then pedal easily for five minutes. Those easy five minutes will fly by....
Do two more of these five minute intervals.

This could be squeezed into your 40 minute turbo work-out.

I should add that I have been doing lots of 20 minute efforts through the Winter, done at a lower intensity but which are still hard, so if you haven't done any of these I'd do them for awhile before adding the "above time trial" efforts.

zammmmo

I found a direct correlation with how fast I was at time trials and the amount of Level 2 work I did (My max HR is 200, and Level 2 is 155-170 for me). I've only ever done about 8-10 hours a week, but this would be week-in, week-out, including racing.

If you want to get better at time trials, I would mix this aerobic conditioning work with some road racing, time trials for training themselves (as well as ones where you want to taper for) and turbo sessions e.g. I used to do 3mins following by 3mins followed by 3mins, keep cadence the same but go into a smaller sprocket each time so that the middle one is at your 10 mile time trial speed and the last one is beyond it. Repeat 2-3 times with 5 mins rest in between. The point is, you know your abilities better than anyone and you need to tailor the session acoordingly, and make it progressive.