Maintain or increase sessions per week

nammynake

I have been building my fitness for a couple of months now with my main focus this year being the Marmotte sportive in July. I have been doing a hilly weekend ride getting up to 80 miles the last couple of weeks. I have also been doing two turbo sessions per week using the 2x20 format (I usually increase my heart rate from 80 to 85 of Max during each 20m block).

I seem to be making reasonable progress. My only measure of this is using Strava segments and average speed over routes I do often. I did a hilly solo ride of 75 miles yesterday with 6000ft of climbing and averaged 15.8mph moving. I am also improving my hill segment times.

Should I maybe be doing 3 turbo sessions per week? Intervals? What about recovery rides? I know weight is an important factor on alpine climbs but I'm down to 63kg (5'8") so don't have much left to shed really. Basically I don't want my fitness to plateau but continue to improve by July.

Here's the route from yesterday. Just missed out on a top ten spot on the evil Greenhow hill out of Pateley Bridge, for those familiar with it!

http://app.strava.com/activities/48570070

TakeTurns

Well done. Your training seems to be going well.

The first question I'd ask is, how long have you been sticking to the particular regime for. If it's about 2 months, then you can increase your training load by 10-20%. Reason why I ask how long is to figure how well your body has become accustomed to the training. If you were fairly new to the regime then increasing the quantity would compromise the quality as you won't be feeling strong enough for the rides/efforts. This would then limit how hard you can push which would result in wasted training time.

nammynake

Approx 6 weeks. I did decent mileage last year but this tailed off over the winter. Based on feel I reckon I could fit a third turbo session in. The other alternative is to do a mid-week ride now the evenings are lighter.

SBezza

I would try and cycle more often as that is where fitness will continue to be gained, only riding 3 days of the week will mean whatever fitness you gained during the 3 days you were riding, is most almost all lost in the 4 days not riding. I would try and ride more frequently, but still allow yourself days off to recover. Training seems to be working, but don't measure road rides by speed ideally, there are too many variables that could alter that average speed

NUFCrichard

SBezza wrote:

only riding 3 days of the week will mean whatever fitness you gained during the 3 days you were riding, is most almost all lost in the 4 days not riding.

Absolute rubbish. If that were the case why would people taper there training? They would just lose all of their fitness after about 48h off the bike!

Alex_Simmons/RST

NUFCrichard wrote:

SBezza wrote:

only riding 3 days of the week will mean whatever fitness you gained during the 3 days you were riding, is most almost all lost in the 4 days not riding.

Absolute rubbish. If that were the case why would people taper there training? They would just lose all of their fitness after about 48h off the bike!

It's hardly rubbish, it's pretty normal, and is a principle known as reversibility.

Most people probably shouldn't taper their training (not that 48 hours is a taper in any case). A large majority simply don't train hard enough to warrant a taper, and indeed may well lose fitness by doing so. Tapers really only should be considered as a means to trade off some hard won fitness for a little extra freshness, as that may enable improved performance. But one has to work hard to need it, and eventually too much fitness will be traded away by constantly freshening up.

Frequency matters in training, so if a rider can move from 3 to 4-5 rides per week, they will most definitely benefit from doing so.

When training stagnates in terms of what one does and how much one does, then eventually fitness will not improve.

SBezza

NUFCrichard wrote:

SBezza wrote:

only riding 3 days of the week will mean whatever fitness you gained during the 3 days you were riding, is most almost all lost in the 4 days not riding.

Absolute rubbish. If that were the case why would people taper there training? They would just lose all of their fitness after about 48h off the bike!

As Alex has said it isn't rubbish, get a powermeter and use GC or WKO and you will clearly see that if you did 5 to 6 training sessions a week, fitness would go up a fair amount, only do 3 and you will see that the fitness gains you make in one session are almost wiped out by the rest days. You will still get fitter than doing nothing, but the gains will be slow at best.

When you taper your training (and I would only do this a couple of times a year for important events), yes you lose fitness, but in the process you gain freshness, and it is balancing these 2 which if you get it right means you go into an event at the best you can. Those that taper frequently also lose alot of fitness hence why tapering shouldn't really be a habital practise.

Those that do taper normally have trained pretty hard and consistant for a long period and any drop off in fitness is very minimal. If you don't train that much the drop off will be more severe with each rest day you take.

Tom Butcher

The interesting question here is whether you can best increase training load by training harder or longer on existing training days and improve - or whether you need/should add another training day. I reckon the OP could probably do a bit of both - make at least one of the turbo sessions harder by increasing the intensity and add in maybe an outside ride.

Is there any group riding in the mix - remember the Marmotte is a mass participation ride and you can gain a lot by being comfortable riding with others - follow wheels, share the work, being able to follow some pretty good riders on descents in order to keep in a group or whatever. What's your descending like - that might be worth practicing.

The other thing is 2*20s can be done outside if you can find a suitable stretch of road - now the weather is better I reckon that's a better option for most people and there isn't the same problem with overheating - try it anyway.

Setarkos

To return to the original question:
For the marmotte, I would try to focus on 3-4h rides, do the first hour at endurance pace, then do a few longer intervals (they don't have to be super steady as on a turbo), eg. 3x15min at your climbing pace (doesn't matter if it's flat) then ride another hour at endurance pace (endurance pace should not feel to easy) and towards the end of the ride throw in another 30-40min steady interval at whatever you think you can still push for that duration.
Since your talking about hill segments, I fear that given that your not in the alps you do shorter harder intervals than you should for an alpine sportive...

In terms of training volume, I would increase volume if at all possible (do 4-5 rides a week in blocks ie. 2 day on 2 days off rather than 1/1/1/1, ideally 2/1/3/1) - if you start feeling your legs throw in an easier week every 4 weeks or so.
3-4 weeks before the Marmotte I would trade volume for intensity, do a few hill reps for about 10-14 days and then use the remainder of the time before the Marmotte to get fresh. Do ride for 90-120min the day before!

63kg is totally fine - 1kg will only save you about 3min at the same power so don't force anything.

All this is quite general and you will have to decide a great deal on how you're feeling. It is very hard to give advice without knowing you and having any data.