Riding to heart rate - base

mr_poll

Looking to put some structured training program together for the winter - my mate swears by the Cyclists Training Bible (by Joe Friel), I will admit I am not all the way through it yet but I understand the basics and having seen my mates training and results I am seriously considering following it however I have one concern which I wondered if fellow BR formunites could help with.

Following the base and build phases seems a very strict way to train especially around heart rate zones - I regularly commute and have the ability to get out most weekends however I also like my social rides with my club and friends where I wont be able to control my HR. Also given the winter cold/ice/snow I will be on my turbo and "enjoy" a few sufferfest vids to relieve the boredom which again arent kind on holding a HR. So given these factors should I -

1 - Follow the training bible and ride to HR it will be lonely but worth it
2 - Scrap the HR zones and find something that works for you get the miles and turbo sessions in and enjoy your riding
3 - Mix both - the HR training will help and you will be fine ignoring the HR on a Sunday with your club

Dippydog3

you have it with 3.

JayKosta

You could certainly construct a 'structured training program' that leaves time for social riding on 'recovery days'.
An important personal consideration is your balance between 'structured training program' and social riding. Decide what is most important to you and your goals, and then allocate your time and energy accordingly.

Jay Kosta
Endwell NY USA

daxplusplus

JayKosta wrote:

Decide what is most important to you and your goals, and then allocate your time and energy accordingly.

This. Only you can decide what's more important.

For reference, I started following Friel as of last year and actually the base mile part is the easiest time to accommodate your social, Sunday ride. It's when things start picking up ready for racing that the Sunday ride becomes more of a liability.

During the Winter I found the speed\effort of the Sunday ride quite reasonable - and could actually use it constructively as part of my training plan by adding a section before and after it to make the total ride up to 100 miles. Did some of my easiest centuries ever that way (and looking forward to it again this year).

mr_poll

Thanks this helps - I know I have read in other "training by HR plans" that during the endurance building phases that you will ruin everything by undertaking activity that puts you into higher zones which I know will happen if I go out with my group at the club. Admittedly Friel doesn't say this but his plan is very prescriptive.

Just looking to but a plan together as feel I have stagnated over the past 12+ months (the first couple of years of just riding has hit its level) and don't want to fill my winter with junk miles. The intermediate/advanced plans on the BC website look good but as I say my mate has improved using Friel so trying to work out what is best.

Gixermark

what sort of hours does the training bible 'need' per week ? or is there beg/int/adv options ?

its interesting in that most folk that follow a plan are split between short intense stuff (with endurance runs thrown in) vs longer zone 1/2 stuff mostly (with a bit of Z3) but with the longer plans... generally winter is Z1/2 only (majority)

BenderRodriguez

As has been noted, Friel is a big believer in traditional aerobic endurance 'base' building in the off-season (and cross-training…) with a focus on 'level 2' work whilst avoiding higher-intensity stuff. Given this, going 'into the red' on group rides would run counter to Friel's approach. The again, so would doing 'suffer-fest' work outs on the turbo!

That said, your mention of 'the winter cold/ice/snow' does highlight one shortcoming with the idea that winter should be all about low-level base building. That is, there is no point saying that you are going to spend months doing 'base' training at a relatively low intensity - which means you really need to log some hours if you are going to create a training stress that is big enough to promote adaptation - if the weather is so bad that you can't get out on the road for more than a few hours per week.

Given this I would suggest taking a 'middle ground' approach, mixing longer miles on the road being with higher-quality but still predominantly aerobic work on the turbo. I don't think that we need to be as prescriptive as Friel about just doing 'level 2' type rides, and I would argue that a wide range of intensities, ranging from long miles to '20s' on the turbo, can be thought of as being 'aerobic base building'. However, If we are aiming to build 'aerobic base', going any harder than MLSS probably should be avoided as much as you reasonably can.

One further problem is that you will probably stop progressing if you follow the same routine month in and month out. What I would do is look to build in a few 'blocks' of training where you break away from your usual 'mixed' routine and give your body some different stresses to adapt to, in turn giving your body a chance to recover from the stresses of those efforts that you are taking a break from.

For example, after following your 'mixed' programme for a couple of months, why not try a 'block' of quality, 'reverse periodisation' work on the turbo or the track, avoiding long miles - which if you are really hammering yourself with higher intensity stuff you will be too tired to benefit from in any case. Then perhaps do another block of mixed training, followed up by a block of true 'base' work, really getting in the steady miles (hopefully at a time when the weather should be improving enough to allow this) whilst avoiding going 'into the red'. Such variety should help to stave off boredom and staleness and also force your body to adapt to a greater degree due to it being overloaded with a variety of different training stresses.

As ever, YMMV.

BeaconRuth

mr_poll wrote:

Thanks this helps - I know I have read in other "training by HR plans" that during the endurance building phases that you will ruin everything by undertaking activity that puts you into higher zones which I know will happen if I go out with my group at the club. Admittedly Friel doesn't say this but his plan is very prescriptive.

FWIW I think this is a rather silly, simplistic view. Riding harder won't ruin anything. But it might tire you out when getting more tired than is necessary isn't in your interests.

If you were really really really seriously focused on being the best you could be then you wouldn't ride harder than was absolutely necessary at any time (because you'll already be packing in the hardest training you can manage into all the training time you have available). The more serious you are, the more you'll sacrifice any social riding where the pace is out of your control. But it doesn't sound to me like you should ban yourself from club rides.

I used to find that the trick was to have friends who wanted the same thing from their rides, and who had similar levels of fitness. Maybe that's more easily said than done though. ;-)

Ruth

BenderRodriguez

BeaconRuth wrote:

If you were really really really seriously focused on being the best you could be then you wouldn't ride harder than was absolutely necessary at any time (because you'll already be packing in the hardest training you can manage into all the training time you have available).

It sounds here as if you are saying ride hard as you can for as long as you can all the time. Clearly, that is not possible, nor it is necessary to go so hard to promote adaptation. For example, I could go out today and do over 200km in under 8 hours with over 4000m of climbing, riding the climbs close to MLSS, but that would be right on the limits of my ability and would take days, maybe a week, to recover from. Thankfully, it is not really necessary to approach training as though one was Milo of Croton and it is still possible to promote adaptation by doing rides that are much 'easier', in one way or an other, than you are ultimately capable of.

A more sensible way to look at things is to think in terms of 'Just how much work can I do in a week in and week out without ending up in a state of deep fatigue'. Naturally, on a daily basis this will involve riding 'easier' than one ultimately could, but what really matters is improving one's sustainable workload. This pretty much equates to the 'Chronic Training Load' (CTL) calculated by power meter users.

Naturally, one's maximum sustainable work load can be achieved via a wide range of efforts with the 'Training stress score' of a '2 x 20' being petty much the same as doing a more extended 'sweetspot' or an even longer endurance ride. The key point here is that each different type of training stress will bring about different adaptations, so doing long, 'steady' rides will bring about adaptations that will not be derived to the same degree from short, harder efforts.

I know that some argue that this is not the case and that working on power at your MLSS 'threshold' is pretty much the be all and end all of training, but I have certainly not found this to be the case. For example, even when my power at MLSS was higher than it has been for years due to a winter spend riding the track, my endurance on multi-hour mountainous rides was still not much different to what it had been previously and only really improved when I got back into doing multi-hour mountainous rides. Plenty of other 'experts' also believe in the value of 'Long steady distance' work. For example, here is one interesting take on this that I came across recently:

http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/03/ ... ing_318783

So, bottom line is that you can benefit from doing long 'steady' rides and if you are looking to maximise the benefit to be had from 'getting in the miles', then it follows that you should probably avoid going 'into the red', if only because the fatigue that this generates will reduce the number of miles that you can do before fatigue sets in and increase the length of the recovery time needed, so that you will need to take further 'rest / recovery' days when you could be out building more 'base'. You can always add to your CTL with other types of effort later on and, as I suggested earlier, this variety in the type of training load will help prevent staleness and habituation.

Another important point is that going really hard is psychologically stressful, and if you are to be 'fresh' enough to give it 100% in the season when riding events, it might well be a good idea to conserve that mental strength until it is needed in your races, and to avoid becoming just another 'winter warrior'.

BeaconRuth

BenderRodriguez wrote:

BeaconRuth wrote:

If you were really really really seriously focused on being the best you could be then you wouldn't ride harder than was absolutely necessary at any time

It sounds here as if you are saying ride hard as you can for as long as you can all the time.

??

For example, I could go out today and do over 200km in under 8 hours with over 4000m of climbing, riding the climbs close to MLSS, but that would be right on the limits of my ability and would take days, maybe a week, to recover from.

So you would have to rest and then you wouldn't be filling all the training time you have.

Ruth

BenderRodriguez

BenderRodriguez wrote:

It sounds here as if you are saying ride hard as you can for as long as you can all the time.

BeaconRuth wrote:

??

You missed out this bit...

BeaconRuth wrote:

because you'll already be packing in the hardest training you can manage into all the training time you have available

Perhaps I just misread what you were trying to say?

BenderRodriguez wrote:

For example, I could go out today and do over 200km in under 8 hours with over 4000m of climbing, riding the climbs close to MLSS, but that would be right on the limits of my ability and would take days, maybe a week, to recover from.

BeaconRuth wrote:

So you would have to rest and then you wouldn't be filling all the training time you have.

Oh, I have the time available, I would just be too tired to make use of it.

BenderRodriguez

Anyhow, back to the topic.

Another oft-quoted benefit of doing long 'base' rides is that they help develop the ability to preferentially burn fat as a fuel. Not so important perhaps if all you do are '10s' and '25s', but for those who do Alpine 'sportives' and so on, any gain here is bound to be worth having. This Is what Michael Hutchinson had to say on this in his book 'Faster'.

---

At a perfectly consistent moderate pace, the longer you ride for the greater proportion of energy comes from fats. This was established in 1934 in one of the all time classic exercise physiology experiments. It involved monitoring carbohydrates and fat use over a six-hour exercise period. Initially 20% of the energy was from fat. Over the course of six hours of continuous cycling at exactly the same intensity it increased to 80%.

Unfortunately this clawback doesn't help as much as you would hope. Fat use goes up, yes, but mainly because a lot of the carbohydrates store has been used. The bottom line is that the proportion of carbohydrate being used at any point is related to how much is available. When the hammer goes down in the last couple of hours of a long race there is still every chance that the carbohydrate tank will be empty.

In the end despite the vast reservoir of fat available to all of us, it's still carbohydrate that is the key.

…As blood glucose levels fall you recede back to an increasing reliance on the slow burning fat. The 'bangs' only come when you try to ignore this, and completely over-commit to an unsustainable pace. It's not a coincidence that big bangs rarely happen to people training on their own - part of this scenario is normally other stronger riders, pushing you beyond what you can really do. I'd say falling for it is a rookie error if it wasn't for the fact I did exactly the same thing in the next 12-hour I rode.

It certainly doesn't help that even the process that metabolises fat to release energy is powered by carbohydrates: fat burn in a carbohydrate flame. Your body can make glucose from protein, and when you get to the furthest edge of carbohydrate exhaustion it will do more and more of this to keep the fact flame burning. This is bad enough in the race but if you dig yourself a hole like this in training is a disaster, since you be tearing down the very muscle that you're supposed to be nurturing.

All of this rests on the basic metabolic injustice that while you can convert carbohydrate into fat, and protein into fat, and even protein into carbohydrate, you can't convert fat into carbohydrate.

The sole item of good carbohydrate news is that you can put it back fairly easily. Its availability is very closely related to it intake - and experience rider keeps it coming, in a nice constant stream. You can absorb about 60 - 80 g of carbohydrates and hour. Sadly this number isn't amenable to being trained, it's pretty much fixed and it's more or less universal

…It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winning physiologist to spot that if you can find a way to use more fat, you'll use less carbohydrates. Endurance training increases the amount of fat used at any given sub-maximal that level - in fact it can more than double it.

This is why professional bike riders spend their winters packing in the long rides. Five, six, seven hours of grinding, tapping, rolling or trundling, depending on the outlook of the ride in question. Usually done from home even by the stars because the off-season is really the only chance an elite rider gets to stay in one place for more than a few nights, and to see their family. For riders based in northern Europe that often means being on a bike for almost all the hours of winter daylight. The long rides shift the rider firmly into the zone where fat burning is the main fuel source, and the muscles and enzymes adapt to it

It's easy to assume that the long rides aren't necessary - it's not all that hard to get a lot of the aerobic adaptations in the oxygen moving system from relatively short training sessions. But if you a pro who has to race for five or six hours a day why they still, very traditionally, garden grind out the miles, their answer is simply that this is how they stop themselves from falling apart at the end of a long events.

This doesn't mean that people like me haven't gone looking for shortcuts. I'm particularly keen to find one for two reasons I've never been great at the fat burning game and these days, as I retreat from full-time riding, I just don't have the time to spare. The idea of the fasted ride is an old one - get up skip breakfast, put plain water in your bottle, and crank out three or four hours. You try to do it at a place that doesn't involve bonking, but if you are a powerful rider with a high-energy turnover, you'll fail quite a lot of the time. This does help with the fat burning adaptation because, as with the pros long rides, you're in fat burning territory for quite a long time. The problem is that you're quite probably in protein-burning, eating-your-own-legs territory as well. The same dangers apply to all the alternative strategy of stringing together several days of long rides and little carbohydrate.

The current attempt to square this circle is to fuel the three or - four - hour ride using a mix of protein and a small amount of carbohydrate, and maybe some coconut oil in attempt to keep yourself in an anabolic state (building muscle) rather than a catabolic one (tearing it down) while keeping carbohydrate availability low. The protein hopefully means that even if your body starts to demand significant amounts of that as a fuel, at least it's not using muscle. The carbohydrate and the coconut oil should stave off the bonk-royale. It's not a pleasant session you feel like you're hovering on the edge of the abyss for most of it. At least it seems to sort of work, if the lab scores are anything to go by, but it is not as good as the proper long stuff.

colinsmith123

mr_poll wrote:

Looking to put some structured training program together for the winter - my mate swears by the Cyclists Training Bible (by Joe Friel), I will admit I am not all the way through it yet but I understand the basics and having seen my mates training and results I am seriously considering following it however I have one concern which I wondered if fellow BR formunites could help with.

Following the base and build phases seems a very strict way to train especially around heart rate zones - I regularly commute and have the ability to get out most weekends however I also like my social rides with my club and friends where I wont be able to control my HR. Also given the winter cold/ice/snow I will be on my turbo and "enjoy" a few sufferfest vids to relieve the boredom which again arent kind on holding a HR. So given these factors should I -

1 - Follow the training bible and ride to HR it will be lonely but worth it
2 - Scrap the HR zones and find something that works for you get the miles and turbo sessions in and enjoy your riding
3 - Mix both - the HR training will help and you will be fine ignoring the HR on a Sunday with your club

OP, you start off by saying you are looking to put some structured training together this winter. I am going to state the bleeding obvious here. To improve fitness, you need adaption to occur, for adaption to occur you need to train a little bit harder than the last time (discretely), and in order to know how to train harder (discretely) requires a structured training plan. Be it 8 weeks; 13 weeks or a year. I don't think you can be selective about a structured training plan; structure or no structure.Not some structure... I might be wrong.

Peridiodisation can be summarised by three terms; base / build & peak. The base, or another word, foundation on which you build, before finishing off at the peak. Periodisation is like a pyramid, the Ancient Egyptians knew a thing a two about building pyramids,a good solid foundation, then build it to a peak. The pyramids have been around a long time and the analogy with periodisation as a means of training works.

The 3 points raised..

1 - Follow the training bible and ride to HR it will be lonely but worth it.
Follow your training plan that you created from the training bible. To add, I think if I found cycling / training a lonely experience, I would question whether what I doing is worth it. That's not to say training is always enjoyable, often it is not. But being SMART is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

2 - Scrap the HR zones and find something that works for you get the miles and turbo sessions in and enjoy your riding.
Why scrap the HR zones, when you've already found something that works for you; the training plan you created from the training bible. If by scrapping HR, you really mean find another way of training, consider using http://www.trainerroad.com/how-it-works this winter and adapt the TR endurance training plan in to your year training plan. But HR will still be in there as a whole new can of worms gets opened up and it becomes a little more complicated. VI; Pw/Hr & EF to name but a few

3 - Mix both - the HR training will help and you will be fine ignoring the HR on a Sunday with your club.
Staying in Z2 should not be taken too far out of context. I'm sure somewhere in Joe's book or in his blog he says something a long the lines of, 'pushing your HR into Z4 to get over a climb for a short period of time a few times on a ride is not an issue. Pushing into Z4 / Z5 repeatedly each and every time you go out on your bike will not bring about the right adaptions.' When you are out on the club run tell riders what you are doing and why. They don't have to do ease off, but should respect what you are doing. So on the climbs ease off, if the pace picks up towards the end, practice riding economically.

There are those who say that Joe Friel's training methods are out of date. They may well be the case. But what Joe's books do, is provide a structured training programme far better than anything else for £15.00

Focus on developing a good base in the coming months as per your plan, allow your body to adapt, only doing sufficient training to allow those adaptions to occur, as Joe Friel, BeaconRuth have stated.

Providing you pretty much stick to your training plan, in 6-8 weeks time what will happen is you will be out on your bike and you'll realise your training plan is working. Have faith, be patient and I promise this will happen. You'll then owe your mate (who swears by the Cyclists Training Bible) a pint, because he is right.


Edit. tidied up grammar.

daxplusplus

BenderRodriguez wrote:

.. This Is what Michael Hutchinson had to say on this in his book 'Faster' ..

Thanks for sharing the info - some very helpful bits of info in that clip from the book.

mr_poll

Thanks all, this has been really helpful. BenderRod your comments especially. Colin sorry bad grammar from me I do mean a specific plan which I will stick to rather than just some plans.

My issue is trying to find something that fits in with me rather than me fitting with it - work, family etc take up time. Also I don't race and have no intention of doing so, sportive-wise I have done the ones I wanted to do and am not itching to target them again. I just want to be a better fitter rider than I have been. One thing that I have noticed is the British Cycling's training plans (which i get free with my basic membership) seems very close to some of Friel's idea's but are less prescriptive, there is a lot more in Friel's book that I am going to draw upon but think the BC plans may be the right thing for me, unless someone pops up here and says that is the wrong way to go.

daxplusplus

Sorry can't help myself (and you may be going to do this anyway) but I think you will have to choose some aspect of your riding performance as a target .. just "get better" is too vague a goal.

BTW It's one of the ways that makes racing such a good way to improve - it's so goal orientated and pretty measurable. So even if you don't want to race it's a good idea to do it just so that you improve .. if you see what I mean.

BenderRodriguez

Hi again,

I think that if you are not looking to maximise your performance for a target event or races, then you really should not get too hung up about slavishly following a specific programme, most of which are in any case designed to bring a rider to form for specific targets, rather than promoting year-round general health and fitness. (And if achieving good all-round fitness is the ultimate goal, then doing some form of cross-training, such as running, is also a good idea. Far too many cyclists are such 'one trick ponies' as a result of doing nothing but riding a bike that having to run for a train will leave them with sore legs for days!)

I would think that the BC plans would fit your needs pretty well, but I would also take note of the following 'rules':

1) Do what you enjoy! If you enjoy getting in the miles, but hate the turbo, then don't hammer yourself on the turbo just because you think you have to, and visa -versa. On the other hand if you do enjoy it, do it!

2) Match your intensity to the time you have available. Essentially you should finish each session knowing that you have been on the bike, and are in need of rest and recovery, but are not totally wasted. Naturally, the less time you have, the harder you need to go in order to get a significant training effect.

3) Try to think in terms of your long-term workload. If you can train most days, ensure that you train at an intensity and duration that is sustainable. (There is nothing wrong with occasionaly wasting yourself if you know you will have to take a break for a couple of days, perhaps due to work commitments. Do be aware though that if you really hammer yourself, your immune system will be suppressed until you have started to recover.)

4) Listen to your body. If you still feel wasted and are due to do another session, turn it into a short recovery ride instead. Conversely, if you are progressing and recovering well, don't be afraid to push yourself a little more. Remember, it your body that will ultimately decide how far and how fast you progress, not the 'progression' written into some pre-written programme.

5) Give your body some variety in your routine so that you don't become habituated to the sort of efforts you are making and don't become bored or stale.

6) Again, don't let your 'training' get in the way of enjoying your bike riding. Doing training that you don't really enjoy is for those who are paid to do so or have a specific target that they are motivated to achieve. Ignore this and you probably won't ever become a better bike rider as you will get sick of it and jack it all in!

Just taking note of these few guidelines will take you a long way towards maximising your potential.

BenderRodriguez

DaxPlusPlus wrote:

Sorry can't help myself (and you may be going to do this anyway) but I think you will have to choose some aspect of your riding performance as a target .. just "get better" is too vague a goal.

BTW It's one of the ways that makes racing such a good way to improve - it's so goal orientated and pretty measurable. So even if you don't want to race it's a good idea to do it just so that you improve .. if you see what I mean.

I would agree, even if your goal is simply kicking the arse of your club-mates. Just don't become another 'winter warrior' in the process!

daxplusplus

BenderRodriguez wrote:

.. if your goal is simply kicking the arse of your club-mates. ..

BenderRodriguez

P.s Another couple of points. Whist our society does tend to make something of a fetish of 'work', there is a lot more to enhancing performance than training. It is almost as important to try to live a stress-free lifestyle and to adopt a laid-back approach to life. This is because one only gets stronger during the recovery phase, and if one is stressed out the parasympathetic nervous system never really functions to the optimum as, physiologically speaking, you always have 'your foot on the gas' to some degree.

Another very obvious point, and one that 90% of the punters I have seen in a typical UK 'sportive' seemed to have missed, is that hauling excess body fat around will seriously hamper your performance. Unfortunately, going by my own experience at least, the only way to achieve an athletically low body fat percentage (i.e. under 10% ) is to avoid all 'treats' and to spend most of the time feeling really hungry! As Tyler Hamilton notes in his book, for many pros managing one's hunger and maintaining a low body weight is harder than the actual training!