Black Book / Winter training Plans

Hurricane151

There will probably be a few requests like this at this time of year but I am new to racing this year and I want to make the most of the off / winter season to have a good go next season. Does anyone have and good winter training plans or a copy Pete Read'd Black Book? (been searching for a copy on line but can't find one)

There is qite a bit of information on line about training but I am really after a plan broken down into days and weeks tht I can follow as best I can with the time I have available.

Any ideas or links would be appreciated.

Cleat Eastwood

Thou hast PM.

Hurricane151

cheers, got a copy. now to see if it's any good. anybody followed it and had success?

Herbsman

yes i won

Cookie91

Could someone Pm me a version of this plan please? Or something simaler?

fluided

Can I have a copy aswell

cheers

bramstoker

Same plz

bianchirider

same please

RococoTapes

Yeah go on then, send one this way. Cheers!

twotyred

Its old fashioned now and from memory its the usual long slow rides followed by increasing intensity in the spring. Doesn't mean to say it won't work but even Pete Read may have moved on from that now. These days lots of people still keep some intensity in their training during winter.

SBezza

Just remember it is a generic plan, and although will bring on improvements, it may need tweaking for your ultimate goals. I followed it quite successfully until I got a coach, but the fundementals are all there.

disgruntledgoat

Hurricane151 wrote:

There will probably be a few requests like this at this time of year but I am new to racing this year and I want to make the most of the off / winter season to have a good go next season. Does anyone have and good winter training plans or a copy Pete Read'd Black Book? (been searching for a copy on line but can't find one)

There is qite a bit of information on line about training but I am really after a plan broken down into days and weeks tht I can follow as best I can with the time I have available.

Any ideas or links would be appreciated.

PM'd you

Cookie91

Thank you, i must say it a fairly good little read. Over 10 years old perhaps, but have we evolved much over 10 years? From what i understand the more up to date research on extremely specific intervals and crazy complex plans are designed and aimed at top athletes where they are separated by minor differences.

flat stick

any chance i could have a copy please

Charlyfarly

Me too, if poss?

jamienorton

Would be interested in having a read of this to.

ben16v

pleeease!

jibberjim

Cookie91 wrote:

Thank you, i must say it a fairly good little read. Over 10 years old perhaps, but have we evolved much over 10 years? From what i understand the more up to date research on extremely specific intervals and crazy complex plans are designed and aimed at top athletes where they are separated by minor differences.

Well the scientific justification for why he advises things has certainly been proved wrong (for example the baby mitochondria dieing) but of course most successful coaching is not backed by the right science justification anyway.

"complex plans and specific intervals" are certainly garbage to, but the research for those is not all about top athletes, top athletes are almost never studied, it's the unfit or the slightly fit who are studied. You certainly do not need complex plans, indeed simpler ones are probably better (alternating threshold and VO2max efforts every day is a great plan for almost everyone) The problem with simple is - they can't be sold so no-one promotes them, and most people have a huge attraction to the complicated and a belief in a single "secret" workout that will do great things. When the reality is, all that really matters is consistency and sufficient overload.

Toks

jibberjim wrote:

You certainly do not need complex plans, indeed simpler ones are probably better (alternating threshold and VO2max efforts every day is a great plan for almost everyone) The problem with simple is - they can't be sold so no-one promotes them, and most people have a huge attraction to the complicated and a belief in a single "secret" workout that will do great things. When the reality is, all that really matters is consistency and sufficient overload.

Tom Dean

jibberjim wrote:

(alternating threshold and VO2max efforts every day is a great plan for almost everyone)

Blimey! I must be one of the minority who need a rest now and then

SBezza

Tom Dean wrote:

jibberjim wrote:

(alternating threshold and VO2max efforts every day is a great plan for almost everyone)

Blimey! I must be one of the minority who need a rest now and then

Do them properly and you probably wouldn't be able to do them on a daily basis without ending up as needing more than just casual rest. I certainly wouldn't get enough load if I did these daily

Getting fitter requires a more rounded approach really, and to be honest the black book achieves this. When you start getting to a higher level or doing more specific cycling disiplines you then need to look at a less generic plan, but as a starting point the black book is ideal.

okgo

How high a level are we talking?

Jim did pretty well off the back of his suggestions in terms of numbers...

SBezza

Well a Vo2Max session will give you around the 80TSS mark, and a 2 x 20 threshold session around the 90-95 TSS mark, you would need to do these day in and day out to keep CTL around the 80-90 mark, and this is what I would normally expect a low of the season to be with racing getting in the way of building up CTL.

By all means don't drop these sessions, but to do them at the expense of other sessions that can help with building up your fitness and endurance is a bit silly IME. I know people that have done this and ended up being overtrained and ill before the racing season even starts.

A person doing pretty well, might not be the same as doing the very best they could achieve , I know Jim was (I know the baby has interferred with training for a while LOL) a pretty handy racer, but with a more rounded approach he might have been even better, you will never know.

okgo

I think the last thing he'd describe himself as was a handy racer haha!

SBezza

I think he wasn't too bad, just not lucky either LOL

Sorry Jim.

okgo

Slightly off topic, but kind of not.

How important is it to measure CTL, TSS etc etc?

I use a power, but only really for testing, and then pacing in events etc (oh and willy waving, if applicable), but I don't really ride on anything more than that, I'll measure miles etc, and certainly can tell when my legs feel terrible and vice versa.

Should I look into it, or is it a case of knowing my body quite well, and riding to feel in that respect?

ETA Jim is a strong rider, but yes, his results were not fitting of his ability, I think that is for sure!

SBezza

Well monitoring your CTL gives you a clue as to what loading you are putting your body under over a prolonged period. If for say you were struggling to recover from training, and you weren't sure why, then looking at the rate on increase of CTL could give you warnings of overtraining etc. It is useful in tracking periods of when you purposely peaked and what sort of CTL you had coming into that peak.

I think you have to know your body well training wise, and my training is never set around creating a specific CTL range for example. As normal my training is tailored around my A events, but looking at the PMC and the corresponding CTL around that time can be great infomation for my coach ( I won't presume to know it all, that is why I have a coach).

I measure power in virtually all rides, though I don't really use it for pacing as such (it is used to make sure I don't go too hard in a race), I am pretty attuned to what effort I can sustain for any given duration.

Jim could go into more detail, I think he has spent alot more time with PMC and probably has a greater understanding of it.

jibberjim

I've not needed a rest day in training in years, in fact in pretty much all the time I've been tracking it. I've certainly had occasion when going out to ride I've felt poor and changed the idea of the ride to something easier, but I've still ridden (and in IF terms I pretty much never ride lower than 0.8 for under 3-4 hours). In that time I've had a few month periods where I've trained every day because life never got in the way.

One thing I've always done is ensure that I don't really do efforts more than 3times my CTL - I don't understand the "got back from ride flaked out on the sofa all afternoon" description from the weekend warrior doing massive rides that they need to recover from, I always could carry on doing lots of stuff on every training day. I may well recover better than others of course.

In any case I would say you should be able to have both subjective (am I tired?) and objective (have I failed to hit a regular power target) to decide if you need a rest rather than simply scheduling them.

Since life really got in the way by virtue of Otter, and my training riding has dropped from 6-7 times a week to 2-3 times (there's the 60-90minutes commuting on top of that) everything has fallen and I'm considerably worse, no matter how I mix up those sessions. (Although of course there could be other reasons with Testosterone changes with a newborn etc.)

My experience is that CTL is everything until you come remotely close to your potential (not your level, although obviously if you're competing at a high level it's likely you're close to your potential) The composition will only matter once you're close to that potential and you need to drive the adaptations which remain, however no generic plan will know what your limits are so you need to spend a lot of time exactly researching what it is you need to do.

You do need some specificity of course, just saying CTL is useless if you're getting it simply from riding slowly at 0.5 IF and your events are road racing, but in general as long as your IF is high enough (so threshold and VO2max workouts) CTL is pretty much everything.

As SBezza says just doing "classic" threshold and VO2max workouts - as opposed to fitting them into a longer rides where you're also doing more slower riding - will only get you an 80odd CTL - However an 80 odd CTL is plenty to do 2/3 road races and 50mile TT's I've found I can do around 3 times my CTL in a single TSS effort and be able to finish strongly - ie put out as high a proportion of my few minute power at the end of a 2.5 hour road race as I can in a 60 minute one. A longer race would of course leave me struggling with that CTL, and the only way to get a higher CTL is with more slower riding - just over the hour of work near threshold appears to be all I can do in a day - I can do slightly more with split days but that's not very realistic.

For me, the difference between the 6-7 days a week workouts and the 2-3 I have now is an FTP around 320 vs 340 and a 5 minute of nearer 400 vs 450 before - I suspect I actually would've been higher now as I do not think I was completely at my limit. As you can see my 5 minute has actually been hurt more, that's mainly because more of my training has become lower intensity as I've continued my long weekend ride, but obviously have to do it at a lower intensity (3 times CTL for a single ride remember!) So it's to be expected. The repeatability of the efforts are also more impacted than the headline number, so while 340-320 or 450-400 doesn't sound that bad, it's a big difference in terms of being dropped or not on a club run.

Okgo, you should absolutely track your CTL and all your training, the only way you can find out what actually works well for you is by keeping a really good record of your training. While it may not matter now as you have lots of overhead so everything works, it will matter when you're banging your head against the limits.

okgo

Cheers for that Jim.

I'll buy WKO+ but don't blame me when I bombard you with questions, I'm not as technically minded as some, so it might take a while to work out what is going on!

Not sure on me having lots of overhead though, suppose its hard to know when you are nearly there though. Steve seems to think vo2 is at its max after 6 months training or so, which could indicate that 460 for 5 is as good as I'll see.

Tom Dean

okgo wrote:

I use a power, but only really for testing, and then pacing in events etc

Even if this is all you want to do with the PM, you will be able to do it most effectively by recording all your training and racing data. Have you got 'Training and Racing with a Power Meter'?

okgo

I do have the book yes.

I do record all my training, and I've got a rudimentary knowledge of GoldenCheetah, so I know roughly what I can do for the various periods of time that I would want to pace for, 60 mins, 20 mins, 5 mins etc. But thus far I've not tracked any of the other bits mentioned above.