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skavanagh.bikeradar
Posts: 1,097
It struck me last night while dozing off that it is easier to do long rides in nicer weather especially if you require early morning starts. If you are training for the Etape or Marmotte as your main event of the year or even the Fred Whitton in early May, why can't you do your intensity work in the winter and build up the longer rides when the sun comes up earlier in the day and the weather is a bit better? On limited time to train could you invert the base miles first, intensity later model and do it (to an extent) the other way around?
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I think that "high end fitness" is lost the quickest so if you did high intensity work in January and then focussed solely on base mileage, you'd just get slower again.
The other thing to consider is that high intensity work is harder on your body and I suspect that you'd make yourself more prone to injury and illness if you try to do too much high intensity work without some decent base fitness to build it on.0 -
Do you need to do any high-intensity training for a sportive lasting 6 or 7 hours? Or put it another way, are you really going to reduce your volume of training in the spring and summer (compared to what it was in winter) to concentrate on short, hard intervals if your main aim is a very long endurance event? Surely you would increase your volume (and the intensity to some extent) as your fitness improves and the events approach?
Ruth0 -
Just a thought. Perhaps a rubbish one......
What is a recommended long ride during winter for prep for say the Etape then? Say I start training in November and the Etape is at the start of July. When do my long rides peak and how long should they be and how many of them?0 -
It's impossible to say. (How long is a piece of string?) The answers would depend on things like what are you background and previous fitness? How much time do you have available to train? What level of performance are you aiming to achieve for the Etape? There's a massive difference between how you would have to prepare to finish in the first 10% compared to just staying ahead of the broom wagon. Some people could turn up and ride it with no specific preparation at all, whereas others would need to spend a year preparing for it.skavanagh.bikeradar wrote:What is a recommended long ride during winter for prep for say the Etape then? Say I start training in November and the Etape is at the start of July. When do my long rides peak and how long should they be and how many of them?
Ruth0 -
It doesn't strike me as a silly idea at all, especially if you are time limited in the winter months.skavanagh.bikeradar wrote:It struck me last night while dozing off that it is easier to do long rides in nicer weather especially if you require early morning starts. If you are training for the Etape or Marmotte as your main event of the year or even the Fred Whitton in early May, why can't you do your intensity work in the winter and build up the longer rides when the sun comes up earlier in the day and the weather is a bit better? On limited time to train could you invert the base miles first, intensity later model and do it (to an extent) the other way around?
Periodisation is, after all, moving from general fitness development to event specific fitness.
It is pretty common for long course triathletes/Ironman to train the harder intensity work early and then do the more race specific long rides closer to the event. Any riding at aerobic levels (no matter how hard) is all basic fitness development (even doing some Level 5 work to lift MAP and VO2 Max, provided it's not in great volumes, won't hurt your basic fitness development).
Certainly working to raise your threshold power is an excellent use of limited/indoor trainer time and will be of tremendous value for long rides later on.
One doesn't lose this type of fitness that quickly. It's peak aerobic and anaerobic fitness that has a shorter time course for adaptation and retention.0 -
skavanagh.bikeradar wrote:It struck me last night while dozing off that it is easier to do long rides in nicer weather especially if you require early morning starts. If you are training for the Etape or Marmotte as your main event of the year or even the Fred Whitton in early May, why can't you do your intensity work in the winter and build up the longer rides when the sun comes up earlier in the day and the weather is a bit better? On limited time to train could you invert the base miles first, intensity later model and do it (to an extent) the other way around?
That's pretty much what I did to prepare for last year's Etape. The previous winter was spent doing lots of 2*20s and intervals like those suggested by V. Billat and a steady ride at the weekend. I don't enjoy cycling in the dark so the turbo was used a lot. Then as the weather got better and days grew longer I was increasing volume but reducing some intensity. Certainly not all though and would do longer intervals to help prepare me for prolonged periods of work climbing. I am not a club cyclist and family and work commitments mean i am quite time limited so this suits me.0 -
Thanks for that reply sound like we are in a similar boat. How'd you get on with the Etape?
I've posted a few things in the training forum now and the time I have to train is the overriding concern for me, I have to snatch sessions when I can and make good use of them. Generally I've got 10 hours a week, probably less to train on and can't affort to use up too much of it on noodling rides on a Sunday taking up family time. No, I need focused effective sessions. This is why I've found the HOP, 2x20 and Sweetspot discussions so interesting and helpful recently.
I'm not sure how long or at what intensity my long rides should be. Generally 4 hours is my longest long ride at a hard aerobic pace (probably 2 or 3 hr in depths of winter) - tempo pace perhaps - maybe 80% MHR. I've then got a shorter more intense ride of 2 hours and some turbo sessions. Last year I did more intervals and intense work than previously but still not 2x20 or HOP sessions.
Anyway, time is the great limiter to my ambition. And laziness. And age.0 -
Hi there.
Yup - Reverse Periodisation is a common tactic for long-course triathletes (ironman). Not so useful for short course events (2hr duration) as it does blunt your speed.
Unless you're planning to win the etape with a sprint finish then it probably makes sense.
Cheers, Andy0 -
andrewgturnbull wrote:Hi there.
Yup - Reverse Periodisation is a common tactic for long-course triathletes (ironman). Not so useful for short course events (2hr duration) as it does blunt your speed.
Unless you're planning to win the etape with a sprint finish then it probably makes sense.
Cheers, Andy
Seems to me that this is a nonesense term or at least how I understand things. Periodisation is still periodisation even if the intensity of the training moves from short intense efforts to longer steady state rides so long as the event being trained for calls for longer steady state efforts ie you are still taking your training from the general to the specific. In other words periodisation makes no mention of intensity - it is all about the event being trained for and nothing else. For the triathlete it is clear that by adopting such an approach they are actually going to be training more specific to their event during the pre competition phase so nothing is happening in reverse here on the contrary it is working exactly as a periodised training programme would run.0 -
doyler78 wrote:andrewgturnbull wrote:Hi there.
Yup - Reverse Periodisation is a common tactic for long-course triathletes (ironman). Not so useful for short course events (2hr duration) as it does blunt your speed.
Unless you're planning to win the etape with a sprint finish then it probably makes sense.
Cheers, Andy
Seems to me that this is a nonesense term or at least how I understand things. Periodisation is still periodisation even if the intensity of the training moves from short intense efforts to longer steady state rides so long as the event being trained for calls for longer steady state efforts ie you are still taking your training from the general to the specific. In other words periodisation makes no mention of intensity - it is all about the event being trained for and nothing else. For the triathlete it is clear that by adopting such an approach they are actually going to be training more specific to their event during the pre competition phase so nothing is happening in reverse here on the contrary it is working exactly as a periodised training programme would run.
It's just semantics... It's referred to as Reverse Periodisation because it's backwards to the way things were traditionally done. No one said it wasn't periodisation...
But feel free to go for the pedantic angle - thats what usenet was invented for.
Cheers, Andy0 -
this is exactly what I have been doing. I guess I'll find out if it works on the 5th July :-) I will still have a 3 week peak and taper phase before the event tho - need to have that Cav-like sprint finish for the official photographers
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Obsessed is just a word elephants use to describe the dedicated. http://markliversedge.blogspot.com0 -
This sounds very familiar to what I've done over the winter, max 2-3 hr rides on Sundays with shorter, sharper sessions on the Turbo during the week. I've certainly improved my cadence and feel fitter so whether it actually works or not, I still feel fitter, hence now that the weather is better, I'm out more and riding longer.0
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skavanagh.bikeradar wrote:How'd you get on with the Etape?
Not bad and lot better than the previous two times when I had trained doing the periodisation the traditional way. I finished in about 8:20 which was down on what I had hoped but I had a horrible time on the Tourmalet due to not eating enough early on. Probably down to excitement and concentrating hard on the road as it was raining for the first few hours. Once i had eaten a lot on the tourmalet I recovered and had a decent ride up to Hautacam.
I kind of adapted to 2*20 to increase the interval to do 2*30 just dropping the intensity enough to allow me to complete them (just). A few sportives and audaxes to ensure I was used to the long rides, both physically and mentally. My long solo rides would be around 65-80 miles but usually hilly 65 mile routes.0 -
Good stuff all, I've not gone mad then.0
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skavanagh.bikeradar wrote:Good stuff all, I've not gone mad then.
Only if you were really intending to do all your training "back-to-front" - you'll need a fixed gear and some serious circus skills for that.
;-)
Cheers, Andy0 -
andrewgturnbull wrote:Hi there.
Yup - Reverse Periodisation is a common tactic for long-course triathletes (ironman). Not so useful for short course events (2hr duration) as it does blunt your speed.
Unless you're planning to win the etape with a sprint finish then it probably makes sense.
Cheers, Andy
I used to think this.
That was until 2006 when I decided to ride a 100 mile TT, the first for about 10 years.
I reduced my intensity significantly for a 5 week period and increased volume. Just before the 100, I rode a local 25 and recorded a PB and placed higher than I had done in an open event for quite a few years.
(Edited to note that I also recorded a PB in the 100!)0 -
Nice one Andrew. Made me chuckle. Although in fairness my training is a bit of a circus act - clowns mostly.0
