Base Training vs Higher Intensities

SBezza

If the Monday is a recovery day, use it as recovery, either Z1 for 30 mins, or total rest.

The rest seems fine, a good mixture of work for the turbo. As for the weekend rides, if you can do them comfortably at a higher intensity, don't worry. I doubt many people would keep in the endurance zone on a hill . The longer you are out the lower the intensity will be, so doing a 6 hour ride for example would normally require less intensity than a 3 hour ride, you just wouldn't be able to keep up a short duration intensity over a longer duration (without completely wiping yourself out for a few days), or unless you are very fit.

One question I would ask is why the short intervals on Tuesday and Thursday, is it prep for road racing? Why not just do longer intervals especially with the cadence one (depends what speed the cadence is I suppose), I just think 5 mins low intensity with only 1 min of high speed spinning is a waste of time (time wise), better to do shorter recovery and longer speed interval I would have thought. The Thursday session likewise, long recovery for such a short all out duration.

CakeLovinBeast

SBezza wrote:

One question I would ask is why the short intervals on Tuesday and Thursday, is it prep for road racing? Why not just do longer intervals especially with the cadence one (depends what speed the cadence is I suppose), I just think 5 mins low intensity with only 1 min of high speed spinning is a waste of time (time wise), better to do shorter recovery and longer speed interval I would have thought. The Thursday session likewise, long recovery for such a short all out duration.

Kind-of a few different reasons:

Firstly, I've been a bit useless in setting the goals that I want to achieve this year. Bear in mind that I've only been riding a road bike since August last year... I started off by wanting to ride my first century ride, then I signed up for a second 100-miler a week after the first. Then I decided I'd like to ride from one to the other (Dartmoor Classic to the Northern Rock Cyclone) and do it as a charity ride - essentially 600 miles in 7 days. I set off to try and build endurance and increase my mileage.

More recently, I've decided I want to race, but done the typical newb' thing of not knowing what to do, where to do it, all the while whilst wondering if I'm good enough to even compete. I started reading more about training and different sessions, bought a turbo and started putting more hours in. Everything I've picked up (and I'm sure it's not loads) I've tried to combine into something that resembles a training plan, but it's all self-made, so I have no way of knowing if it's going to be successful or not. Every now and then I pop on here with a question or two which helps me refine it a little bit more - for example, when someone questions why I'm doing a particular session on such-and-such a day!

Things are a little simpler (in my head now): I see no reason why I can't train for racing whilst also building my endurance for the longer rides at the end of June. Sportives aren't a race, and to be honest, I'm fairly confident that I could ride them now so long as I manage to reign in my pacing. So I'm going to race - I'm going to man up on the club runs and try to hang onto the faster groups to improve myself, likewise putting in more structured turbo sessions. I've targetted a couple of events in March/April time as being late enough to improve myself (like getting down to a more realistic race weight), whilst not giving people most of a season to improve their race fitness whilst I'm doing nothing. Ultimately (in my own head) a lack of training over October-December means that I'm unlikely to produce any results this season, so I want to use it to get my feet wet and learn the skills necessary to race well, and then use that as a springboard for next season when I can hopefully be properly competitive (or at least as competitive as a 35 year-old 4th cat can be!).

Sorry for the essay! Never a short answer when I can write a story... :?

SBezza

Good luck, I am sure you will get into the swing of racing.