Winter miles.....

Garz

What works for SBezza won't necessarily work for you. Are you training for an event will? If not, then busting your balls and having to take three days (or more) off the bike isnt always the best idea :idea:

paddlemyowncanoe

peanut wrote:

before you knock core stability muscle strengthening maybe you should take the time to find out which muscles are involved and what your core muscles actually do! :roll:

I know pretty well which muscles are involved, their origins and insertions and innervation. I will admit to being a bit rusty as it was a couple of decades since I was at medical school.

It's a fad and will go away sometime soon, but not soon enough.

ut_och_cykla

My understanding of the science behind winter miles (longer unbroken sessions that are steady but not necessarily slow) is that they give increased capillary and mitochondrail density and lead to an alteration in the mix of enzymes used in energy production (thereby 'teaching' the body to burn more fat and conserve glycogen) . The important things are the amount over time (as the creation of more capillaries etc require a growth period measured in weeks & months not days or weeks) and that the evnergy system that creates lactate is not significantly stimulated as this alters the adaptations made at muscle level. As with many training issues its not a matter of A or B - more a matter of ratios between A & B - to low a level will take forever to make adaptations occur ( to little stimulus) - too high a level will also slow down adaptations (too much lactate creating systems) and the right level is probably pretty personal.
To be honest I can't believe I've just written this... I used to be very critical of winter miles type of training but after years of flogging myself, never losing weight or getting much faster on most rides I now have a coach and have backed off the effort just a little for the winter and guess what - I'm losing weight (with no alterations to food or calories burnt), realy enjoying riding (even in the rain) and feeling generally very fit. I'm convinced but its taken a big leap of faith to slow down a bit....

jibberjim

ut_och_cykla wrote:

My understanding of the science behind winter miles (longer unbroken sessions that are steady but not necessarily slow) is that they give increased capillary and mitochondrail density and lead to an alteration in the mix of enzymes used in energy production (thereby 'teaching' the body to burn more fat and conserve glycogen) .

However that doesn't work as a reason - as those same adaptations are driven by more intense aerobic intensities, indeed you probably a larger adaptation from the same load of higher intensity work (the probably because it's difficult to decide what the equivalent load is in the situation)

ut_och_cykla wrote:

that the evnergy system that creates lactate is not significantly stimulated as this alters the adaptations made at muscle level.

How? Particularly bearing in mind L2 will use the lactate energy system of course, so what you're suggesting is zone 1 riding? or walking around town intensity? Or more likely it's just a scientific justification applied to a philosophy to help convince you to do it.

That's not to say lowering intensity and doing long rides is a bad thing - if the load is the same it's likely to produce similar adaptations and if the load is higher it'll produce more. It also is a lot easier in recovery terms - you don't need to endlessly resupply glycogen which may well be something an individual does badly - often over-eating leading to weight gain etc. And many people find the mental side easier too leading them to actually complete the sessions rather than jacking it in which will again obviously lead to a better result.

There's lots of ways to train, and in the individual and well below the maximum training load someone can do the results are correlated very well with volume (time * intensity - not just time) and little else. The mix doesn't make much difference.

SBezza

freehub wrote:

Most 100+ mile rides I'm doing between 140 and 170bpm average, is in-between that a good range?

I am not sure Will, all I would say is that is is a fair bit more than me, but then again you are younger.

If you are not using these sort of rides as an endurance building exercise, or getting the body used to racing these sorts of distances, it probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I do endurance rides for many reasons, some of because I enjoy getting out on my bike and doing long rides, the fact it helps me with my racing is probably the biggest reason.

I do all my rides solo as well, as group rides are just to up and down with the pacing. At the right level I was doing 120+ miles 2 days in a row, very hard and tiring, but doable.

SBezza

One adaption that is unlikely to be driven at higher intensities is fat burning, as generally you are working too hard for it to be metabolised efficiently, if much at all.

Jim, the load might be the same, but as you are well aware different intensities create different adaptions in the body, otherwise we would all do quick Vo2Max intervals and see a good increase in threshold , or even better a few minutes of tabata a day will do wonders for all riding. Sadly this isn't the case for most. By your reconning, a rider doing a 100 mile race would do just as well on a diet of 2 hour rides, compared to training at near that distance, I highly doubt this to be honest.

As a question to those that compete, but don't do many winter miles, do you have a progressive season where you are at least consistent, but ideally getting better, or do you suffer big ups and downs in your weekly performance?

ut_och_cykla

Jibber jim - I'm no expert - I can only report what I have gleaned in talking to people who seem to know more than I do and my own experience. Mitochondria are only used for energy production in the prescence of oxygen - when oxygen at cell level is not available in sufficient quantities a differnt energy supply system is used that is less effective long term and uses a lot more glycogen. A byproduct is lactate - itself a fuel at cell level but also a limiter of performance if levels get too high for the individual.

It makes sense to me that an increase in mitochondria and capillaries is beneficial to aerobic/endurance events and that to stimulate their growth you need to load the system that makes them. It also makes sense that other kinds of training (which of course are extremely valuable but in other situations - eg harder, non-aerobic efforts) will not stimulate this process as much as your body can only do so much remodelling at a time.

I'm no way suggesting just walking around - rides of several hours staying chiefly under 80% of my max hr - are not 'easy' - but they're not punishing either.

The proof of the pudding of course will be in the spring - but I already know I can do hard intervalls and get some speed increases from other years.

jibberjim

SBezza wrote:

Jim, the load might be the same, but as you are well aware different intensities create different adaptions in the body

All aerobic intensities train pretty much the same systems - with just aerobic intensities above threshold you cannot do sufficient volume to drive adaptation it's simply impossible. So no, the load cannot be the same with just Tabata and VO2max intervals. You have to do load at or sub threshold to simply produce a decent amount of load.

SBezza wrote:

As a question to those that compete, but don't do many winter miles, do you have a progressive season where you are at least consistent, but ideally getting better, or do you suffer big ups and downs in your weekly performance?

I do very few winter miles, my power was consistently up throughout the year (and is still rising now and has done now for 2 years, although I'm extrapolating a little pre April 2009 when I first got the power meter) I see very little fluctuation in performance, and the variation I do see is strongly correlated with recent fatigue. i.e. I did a very bad ride in the national 10mile TT, but that was heavily influenced by the very hard session I did the day before and not my lack of winter miles.

jibberjim

ut_och_cykla wrote:

A byproduct is lactate - itself a fuel at cell level but also a limiter of performance if levels get too high for the individual.

Lactate is still aerobic energy supplies, it still needs all the same capillaries and mitochondria for it to be used and training at threshold drives the same adaptations - indeed weight training drives it to in untrained individuals. It seems pretty much any use of muscles drives that adaptation. My argument was never that it was a bad adaptation, just that it's not a specific adaptation from low intensity riding.

And remember I've said nothing about non-aerobic work, and I've specifically said you cannot do sufficient volumes of over-threshold work to make it meaningful.

I'll also repeat again, that you are likely to have a very successful years training if you do sufficient volume of winter training at any intensity. The big losers I see in the summer aren't those who didn't do long winter miles, or didn't do hard winter miles, but simply didn't do enough winter training.

SBezza

I do a fair amount of winter miles, in fact plenty of miles throughout the year, and no doubt my power has gone up, just by the simple fact I got faster as the year went on, and substantially faster than the year before. Unless you tried the winter miles training you will never know if you could have gone better with a stronger base.

But most important of all, is that I haven't had a really bad race (some sub optimal due to tiredness, but none due to peaks and troughs).

So it would seem that both methods are good for increasing power, also how do you know if you have done enough winter training, 4 hours a week would not be enough for me, but might be more than enough for a time starved rider.

As you say you can't do enough training at above threshold to make enough adaptions, and this will be a similar at threshold levels as well, you can do more, but the more volume you do the better the adaptions. I would also doubt whether you can get sufficient volume based on mainly high intensity, as you need longer to recover from it, if done correctly.

If your races season is going to be based around 1 hour long races, you won't need as much endurance, but for any race over an hour, I would suggest a good base of endurance work, supplemented by threshold work is the way to go.

In short do people hate riding their bikes that much, perhaps a different sport is required

incog24

jibberjim wrote:

All aerobic intensities train pretty much the same systems - with just aerobic intensities above threshold you cannot do sufficient volume to drive adaptation it's simply impossible. So no, the load cannot be the same with just Tabata and VO2max intervals. You have to do load at or sub threshold to simply produce a decent amount of load.

+1.

320DMsport

Quite interesting reading this thread.

Bezza asked about race seasons with lower mileages or lesser winter base.

I can only comment on my own experiences but 2 winters ago i followed the Black Book as i had the time to follow it the best i could, couldn't nail all the long rides it suggested but did as much as i could.

What i found following the program was i was very good at riding long and steady, i could plod till the cows come home but seem to lack real speed and when my first race came up in the March (MTB i might add) it was a total shock and my top end and anaerobic system couldn't cope.

That summer we had a baby so that was it, time crunched!

So over last winter and all this season i've averaged around 4 hours a week, sometimes 5 if im lucky and worse case 2 hours!

Through winter i did most my rides around mid to top L2 (80-85% MHR), did a power session once a week and kept 30 second intervals up throughout winter.

Any shorter rides say a hour would be at threshold or just really batter myself.

I did my first race in March again, the suffering wasn't a problem and i had the endurance for a hard 3.5 hour mtb race, i also did the Fred Whitton this year on the winter of low volume, i did about 3 4hour rides, one 70 mile sportive then did a real hilly 6hr 22 min training ride about 3 weeks before and happily rode the fred in under 8 hours mostly solo, not mega fast like but i wasn't going mad either, rode the whole course with no pushing.

After that i was back to 3 to 4 hours a week, mostly hard with intervals and some short xc races, in July i did a 10 hour MTB race solo, had no probs doing the event and came 13th but my speed was better than last year on the same event, so was my placing.

So for me i scrapped the junk miles and made everyone count, but what im saying is i raced for 10 hours endurance on 3 to 4 hours a week.

My performance has got better through the season and finished strongly.

Horses for courses maybe and maybe my previous winter of long and steady helped this year?

But i have no choice now, no time for 5 hour rides so this winter will be based on short hard sessions to do the long events again and hopefully get another entry in the FW this year......see what happens.

SBezza

320DMsport, that is very good, I am not sure how long you have been cycling for, but there could be a case of you just got better because you had another year of cycling. I know that is part of the reason I improved substantially this year compared to last year. You might have found with a strong base you could have ridden the 10 hr race even better, though one will never know.

As for the statement of you just got good at doing steady miles, I don't think this is a physical issue, more of a mental issue. I have never had this issue, with the possible exception that my 10 TT time is not as good as it could be, as I don't train for that distance.

I have never followed the black book, but I suspect it is aimed at peaking for competition around the summer, and as such provides you a decent base in the winter and then ramps up the intensity. My endurance rides are not slow anyhow.

As a side point, I have never said stop doing threshold intervals, I think they are important, but I also think doing endurance work in very important as well. I can understand those that are time crunched might not be able to do the longer rides, but they are unlikely to be doing longer events as well, otherwise they can't be truly time crunched. Races/Sportives take up more time than a 5 hour ride

What it comes down to, is that if you have trained and raced very hard for 9 months of the year, you might find you need a break from intervals, and very hard training. Sometimes you need to give the body a rest for it to really get better.

320DMsport

SBezza i've been back riding 3 years after a break of well a bloody long time!

I think your right in the terms of although i can't guarantee a regular long ride i will do them if i get chance so i have trained consitently so i suppose i have got better by regular riding.

I've done the same events over the last 3 years to keep a eye on progression.

I did the GMBC mtb race for a laugh, hadn't ridden in years bought a mtb and suffered, came 458th, 32 miles in 5hr 45.

Year after retired due to mechanical, last year came 110th and this year came 55th.

I did a local mtb which is a tough 31 miles including Garburn pass, first year was 3hr 53 mins, that winter i did the black book, loads of base felt good in my mind and thought i deserved to do well, same course same conditions did 3hr 38, last winter shorter sharper sessions with some endurance when i could, same course again this year same conditions did 3hr 18 mins with a puncture, computer was reading ride time of 3hr 10.

Now its either down to training smarter or just a case of ive ridden another year.

I am time crunched for training but can plan a day for a long race with work and family, just cant do regular riding inbetween.

I'll be aiming for the 10 hour again next year and possibly 12 hour solo champs if i don't get a entry in the FW as it is on the same day.

The first 10 hour mtb i did 3 years back i came 36th solo, next year i was 16th in class 24th overall and this i was 13th in class 19th overall out of 126, im not having a brag fest but just using my reults as examples to show progression but my training time has got shorter, forced i must admit as i love riding my bike.

I think the Black Book kind of works on not really peaking for any event but to do well throughout the year as it is easy to get the peak or taper wrong as it states in the Black Book, interestingly my friend uses Pete Read as his coach currently and his training ideas have changed alot since the Black Book as it is some 10 years old, he's got my mate doing alot of progressive base upto nearly threshold for the last hour of a long ride and advocating sprint intervals on the turbo throughout winter.

Everyone is diff though and it is a case of experimenting i think, i think the best thing i did was to do a training diary, online which is easy but to look back and think, yep went well then what did i do running upto that is a real bonus then i can adjust.

What events do you do Bezza? TT ing obviously with your pic?

Just to add i managed 12 events last year and will have done 11 by the end of this year so all those will help the fitness??

I'm crap a tt ing, tried one at Milnthorpe 10 which is 10.1 and slightly hilly only managed 27.47 on my road bike, it was an experience and harder than i thought to try and pace myself!

milese

Some interesting stuff in this thread.

paddlemyowncanoe wrote:

I'm a base miles skeptic. Plenty of club mates go for the winter miles grind and don't get any stronger, just more stuck in a rut than ever.

What part of the system is being trained? Starting from the outside in. Your bike handling? Tactical skill? Understanding your body's response to brief or extended stress? Tolerance to your position on the bike to enable race durations of x minutes/hours? Cardiac output? Respiratory capacity? Muscle mass? Muscle glycogen? Muscle cell mitochondrial density? Capillary density? Cycling economy/RER? Slow vs fast twitch?

Some of these are generally good to have and some are event specific. It sounds like you almost certainly have an excellent foundation so many factors will be pretty good and unlikely to change. Why not use your enviable time availability to work specifically those components that you don't have already? What do you need it for? Great threshold? Great 'jump' response/recover. Sprint?

You mention the time crunched approach - do you mean the Carmichael approach specifically, with periodisation and rest built into a season? You have way more hours than needed for a CTC programme. Do you have a proper powermeter? Do you know your weaknesses in power profile? Do you have a coach?

Maybe this is analytical BS which you hate and you prefer to just get out and ride? It's worth understanding your own goals and psychology though.

Thanks for this, this year I've done my first road race (Cat 4 only - 11th out of 20, but got dropped from main group quite early), and first TT (10 mile hilly - 29.33), so I'm not a great rider, but want to give it my best shot next year.

I'm probably not refined enough to know where my strengths / weaknesses are with any real confidence, and probably need to develop in all spheres.

I'd like to do some crits, road races, TT's and fair well in some century sportives next year, so thats probably all bases covered.

No power meter or coach.

I find that to get the motivation for riding the hours I need to go out with a group, which tends to be fairly stop start and hard to train with any science or specific intervals. I also do a 7 mile each way commute, which whilst it racks the miles up doesn't allow for too much focused work.

So after reading the 4 pages, I tihnk I'll try and keep hitting the 150 mile weekly target (which is achieveable but realistic enough to keep with it), whilst trying to get as much time in at and over threshold as I can.

Sound reasonable for someone in my position?

paddlemyowncanoe

Jibberjim speaks the truth. Lots of slow miles only teaches you to ride slowly.

As for the OP,

Milese wrote:

Thanks for this, this year I've done my first road race (Cat 4 only - 11th out of 20, but got dropped from main group quite early), and first TT (10 mile hilly - 29.33), so I'm not a great rider, but want to give it my best shot next year.

I'm probably not refined enough to know where my strengths / weaknesses are with any real confidence, and probably need to develop in all spheres.

I'd like to do some crits, road races, TT's and fair well in some century sportives next year, so thats probably all bases covered.

No power meter or coach.

I find that to get the motivation for riding the hours I need to go out with a group, which tends to be fairly stop start and hard to train with any science or specific intervals. I also do a 7 mile each way commute, which whilst it racks the miles up doesn't allow for too much focused work.

So after reading the 4 pages, I tihnk I'll try and keep hitting the 150 mile weekly target (which is achieveable but realistic enough to keep with it), whilst trying to get as much time in at and over threshold as I can.

Sound reasonable for someone in my position?

OK, so you've some great improvements ahead of you! Any programme will get you up from where you are right now, unless there are other (unmentioned) problems. You may want to find a club with a variety of groups so that you can progress and not be held back, and if you feel like it you can take an easy day or a harder day. And that commute is just right for an intervals workout/bit of fun gunning from the lights or taking the same hill at RPE L5 or whatever gets you going. Don't just trudge it though.

Do think about a powermeter. And good luck next season!

softlad

paddlemyowncanoe wrote:

Jibberjim speaks the truth. Lots of slow miles only teaches you to ride slowly.

I could be wrong, but I'm not even sure that 'jibberjim' has tried any form of training other than the one he discusses - so the claim that 'long slow miles only teaches you to ride slowly' has little value if you've not actually tried both methods and compared results.

'slow' is a relative term, but I find that long, steady rides at this time of year contribute much to endurance. The area I live in is very hilly, so it's always difficult to keep to L2 on any 'slow' ride (hitting L3/L4 on some climbs is inevitable, regardless of how slow you try to ride) - but I won't start adding in any specific speed work into my regime until probably the new year.

Endurance rides will contribute to your ability to finish a race strongly. There's not much point in developing a higher threshold or a race-winning sprint if you can't even get to the finish line in the lead group....

SBezza

paddlemyowncanoe wrote:

Jibberjim speaks the truth. Lots of slow miles only teaches you to ride slowly.

Absolute codswallop, as softlad says slow is relative. My slow miles might be someones fast miles.

As I have said before, long steady miles DO NOT have to be slow, you do the miles at a certain intensity and whatever the speed is, that is it. You do not train to go a certain speed.

Anyhow as softlad has said, unless you live somewhere totally devoid of hills, then you will be going into different levels on the hills, I doubt many would be able to keep to a low level on a hill. The aim of an endurance ride is have a average HR/power within the endurance zone, there will be times you go over and under that zone, that is normally unavoidable.

jibberjim

softlad wrote:

The area I live in is very hilly, so it's always difficult to keep to L2 on any 'slow' ride (hitting L3/L4 on some climbs is inevitable, regardless of how slow you try to ride) - but I won't start adding in any specific speed work into my regime until probably the new year.

But if you're working in those intensities, then you're very much doing the sort of training I've been advocating. Although I've not really been advocating any sort of training, just saying - doing nothing but very low intensity winter miles is not particularly good, mostly because there's no way you can get the time in, and for the untrained athlete there are much bigger gains to be had through intensity.

Somehow I've been represented as some sort of long ride hating guy who spends my whole time hammering out short and hard intervals. When in reality I do no formal intervals and I do many long rides - indeed I do almost all my VO2max work on long rides. I don't talk about "endurance training" or "speed work" and similar because the terms are so overloaded that no-one can agree on what they mean and people end up violently agreeing with each other. Particularly those people who do a lot of hard winter miles (ie ride for 4 hours with the HR regularly getting above zone 2 and it feeling hard) yet feel people are disagreeing with them when they're in discussions about people following the "never above zone 2" winter philosophy that others have.

softlad wrote:

Endurance rides will contribute to your ability to finish a race strongly.

So this is one area where there's real disagreement - in that there's very little physiological improvement that you get from 3 hour rides that you don't get from 1 hour rides, the only difference is the amount of adaptation you'll get - (and the cross over of where 1 hour at X and 3 hours at Y is likely very different for different folk - it depends on the nature of the limiters you have and the adaptations you need.

The biggest change is in pacing, if you never ride long and hard, it's all too easily to pace it badly, and bad pacing generally does lead to a precipitous fall off in performance. Pacing is of course a form of self regulation which your body does need to learn so you do need to do endurance rides - although likely not very many - i.e. it's easy to add endurance over the adaptations if you have to.

Long hard rides are always good, they let you accumulate lots of training benefit. I did a good one yesterday (4 hours + tea stop @ IF 0.85 with 75 minutes at and over threshold) but the most interesting thing related to this discussion was seeing the guy who does the fewest long rides but lots of threshold workouts being far and away the strongest in the last hour.

SBezza

320DMsport wrote:

What events do you do Bezza? TT ing obviously with your pic?

Mainly just TT's for me, from 10 miles up to 12 hours, but mainly the longer distances, 50 and 100 miles. I also do some cyclo cross in the winter for a bit of fun.

jibberjim

SBezza wrote:

paddlemyowncanoe wrote:

Jibberjim speaks the truth. Lots of slow miles only teaches you to ride slowly.

Absolute codswallop, as softlad says slow is relative. My slow miles might be someones fast miles.

Slow in that sentence is a measure of intensity not of speed.

SBezza wrote:

As I have said before, long steady miles DO NOT have to be slow, you do the miles at a certain intensity and whatever the speed is, that is it. You do not train to go a certain speed.

No-one is arguing against what you say, everyone is in vigourous agreement with the above.

SBezza wrote:

The aim of an endurance ride is have a average HR/power within the endurance zone, there will be times you go over and under that zone, that is normally unavoidable.

You're just agreeing with the people who are arguing against the "Black Book" style training which does advocate not going above zone 2 - for any reason including hills.

SBezza

Jim

I don't think anyone has said no going over L2 for the whole of the winter. I think it should provide the bulk of the winter training, but other intensity sessions should be done as well.

I would like to see 2 people with similar power to weight, but each that has done different winter training, ie one with more volume, and one with more intensity, and see which one performs better in a 3 hour event . I wonder which one can sustain nearer his max output near the end of this race.

Training rides should never have a tea stop, that is a social ride (Joke by the way Jim)

SBezza

Most people with equate slow with speed Jim, especially newer riders. Intensity should be referred to as low, medium, high etc. Still the statement is wrong, I am a case in point, the bulk of my training last year was endurance, but I race at a completely different speed and intensity.

jibberjim

SBezza wrote:

I don't think anyone has said no going over L2 for the whole of the winter.

Depressingly a lot of people do, a lot of the free training resources out there say exactly that - look at Peter Reid's Black Book, it says this:

While you are creating this all-important base it is essential that you do not
become involved in any high intensity effort whatsoever. This means no
sprinting, no racing with club mates and no hard circuit training in the gym.
In fact don't to see your heart rate exceed the top of Level 2 even when
climbing. To ensure this doesn't happen, I suggest you stay on flat or slightly
undulating terrain for the time being. Any high heart rate training before the
aerobic base is fully developed will simply cancel out the benefits so don't do
it!

(My emphasis) this sort of advice - which I'm pretty sure you don't agree with ! - is what many of us see when they say they want to do "winter miles" as that is the tradition.

SBezza wrote:

I would like to see 2 people with similar power to weight, but each that has done different winter training, ie one with more volume, and one with more intensity, and see which one performs better in a 3 hour event .

I'm willing to bet btw that our time in different zones for the winter will be pretty similar... I'll likely just have a little more very intense work from the group rides - but then I'm training to road race not TT so there are different needs there too. Do you log HR? It'll be an interesting experiment.

SBezza wrote:

Training rides should never have a tea stop, that is a social ride

It's not the tea-stop that makes it a social ride, it's if you have the abiltiy to talk - if you can still talk, you're not training!

softlad

jibberjim wrote:

softlad wrote:

Endurance rides will contribute to your ability to finish a race strongly.

So this is one area where there's real disagreement - in that there's very little physiological improvement that you get from 3 hour rides that you don't get from 1 hour rides.

You would be happy to line up for a 60-70 mile road race knowing that you only had about 60 minutes worth of strong riding in your legs..??

jibberjim wrote:

but the most interesting thing related to this discussion was seeing the guy who does the fewest long rides but lots of threshold workouts being far and away the strongest in the last hour.

We probably all know someone who seems to go well on next to no training, but that isn't really what this thread is about.

jibberjim

softlad wrote:

You would be happy to line up for a 60-70 mile road race knowing that you only had about 60 minutes worth of strong riding in your legs..??

I'd be happy to line up in a road race after just threshold training yes. Because I know there are no physiological adaptations that I'm getting from cycling longer that I'm not getting from cycling shorter other than the fact cycling for longer allows me to increase the volume.

softlad wrote:

jibberjim wrote:

but the most interesting thing related to this discussion was seeing the guy who does the fewest long rides but lots of threshold workouts being far and away the strongest in the last hour.

We probably all know someone who seems to go well on next to no training, but that isn't really what this thread is about.

The guy does not do no training, he does more training than me, he just doesn't do any long slow training, indeed rarely rides above 2 hours at any time. Which is exactly the point of this thread!

SBezza

jibberjim wrote:

Do you log HR? It'll be an interesting experiment.

Yes I do.

I have never really read the Black Book, so I wasn't sure what it said, but if the L2 zone is not above 75% MaxHR, I don't see anyone keeping below this on anything but the lowest incline. Is that the only riding that is prescribed in the book for winter though, or are some session harder intensities?

I agree RR and TTer's need different training methods, though some will overlap naturally.

jibberjim

SBezza wrote:

jibberjim wrote:

Do you log HR? It'll be an interesting experiment.

Yes I do.

Pop us an email address over some secure means and I'll send you my Time in HR zones for cycling - I suspect we'll see they're not too different.

SBezza wrote:

Is that the only riding that is prescribed in the book for winter though, or are some session harder intensities?

Yep, November to Jan/Feb I think nothing above zone 2... although I think the zone 2 there is 80%, so slightly higher.

SBezza

I'll send you a pm Jim

80% is the lower end of my tempo work, so although it is classed as level 2, you could easily spend the majority in 75% to 80%, and then you have more of a L3 training.

To be honest, that is one fault of a generic plan, it doesn't cater for any particular rider, and what there goals are for the following year, and as such you can only take it as a guide IMO. They will make you better I feel, but probably won't take you to your potential.

softlad

Would Peter Read have suggested this training regime because he had achieved good results with it - or do you think he just cobbled it together as a wind-up...??