4 months to train

sebdangerfield

For the next four months I'll have time to train three nights a week and twice at weekends It'll be mostly on a Wattbike during the week (never used one before), and outside at weekends with access to hills. My aim's all round improvement with a focus on hills anywhere from a minute to 40. And possibly trying a race or two. Not v.specific I know.

I've been riding for just over a year. Never done any structured training but had a couple of months of close to 1000k a month with plenty climbing was fine with that and improved a fair bit. According to Strava my best non wind assisted efforts are around 290watts for 15 minutes to 270 for 30 minutes. On not too steep hills - 5-6%. I tend to ride out of the saddle a lot on anything over 4% with fairly low cadence (I think 70ish but don't record it). For shorter efforts I'm about 350w for four minutes (also according to Strava).

68kg and reckon I could get down to 66kg without too much trouble and 64kg if I really tried. Late thirties.

So far my general plan is to start two nights during the week (Tue, Wed) with various intervals and some low cadence high gear stuff, and move that up to three if two's okay. Then a harder longer ride on Saturday with some hills and an easier longer ride on Sunday. Hopefully going to join a club for at least one of the weekend rides.

Any thoughts appreciated. Particularly interested in whether plan sounds vaguely sensible, any what not to dos, realistic expectations of improvement... or others experiences of improvements on starting training, places to get good interval work outs, how much I should be doing fitness wise before thinking about entering a race.

Thanks in advance

imposter2.0

Enter a race now - and then you will know how much more you will need to do.

DeVlaeminck

For your weight I think those numbers look ballpark to be racing already - obviously there is a lot more to racing than watts but I'd definitely be joining a club and/or joining in with some local hard training rides to see how you get on.

DeVlaeminck

Whereabouts are you, someone may be able to suggest some decent training groups.

Tiesetrotter

Go onto British Cycling and use their training plans, you can download them onto the free version of Training Peaks. Although I find the paid for TP worth it with the British Cycling discount. I'd go with the two-month pre-season plan and then move onto the in-season plan.

I find it just doable in terms of pushing yourself, but it ain't easy at all. The improvement for me since I have used it is always marked though. You need to do an FTP test, although with the numbers you are talking about you could just go with 280w which at 66kg will be a pretty handy 4w a kilo.

Links are:
For your training zones: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/membe ... lculator-0
For the pre-season plan: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/zuvvi ... season.pdf

jimmurray

With access to a Wattbike you could do a lot worse than signing up with Traineroad and following one of their sweet spot base plans initially. Join a club for the weekend ride/s to help with the endurance and to learn group riding skills.

Alejandrosdog

DeVlaeminck wrote:

For your weight I think those numbers look ballpark to be racing already - obviously there is a lot more to racing than watts but I'd definitely be joining a club and/or joining in with some local hard training rides to see how you get on.

with those numbers he could ride away from 4ths on a flat course and compete with most domestic riders on any uk climbs

sebdangerfield

Thanks for the replies folks, much appreciated. Bit of a delay getting started

I was all set to take people's advice and enter a race, but I had one go on the watt bike and, well, er..... rather humbling!

Struggling to hold 300 watts much more than a minute and even 200 watts didn't feel great. I guess Strava was being extra nice to me.... Not sure why as my entered weight and bike weight are a bit light if anything, and I stand a lot so I guess it's probably underestimating my drag....

Anyway, any plans of racing now put off. Will join a club and see if I can keep.

Darius_Jedburgh

Dangerfield???
Not related to Stuart of that ilk are we?
If so why are you asking on here?
Can't be too many cycling Dangerfields around, can there?

sebdangerfield

Haha! Afraid not, no. Not my real name - character from a book I was reading when I was trying to think of a user name.

Alejandrosdog

SebDangerfield wrote:

Thanks for the replies folks, much appreciated. Bit of a delay getting started

I was all set to take people's advice and enter a race, but I had one go on the watt bike and, well, er..... rather humbling!

Struggling to hold 300 watts much more than a minute and even 200 watts didn't feel great. I guess Strava was being extra nice to me.... Not sure why as my entered weight and bike weight are a bit light if anything, and I stand a lot so I guess it's probably underestimating my drag....

Anyway, any plans of racing now put off. Will join a club and see if I can keep.

Before racing join a proper road club and learn how to ride in a group. that way you stand less chance of causing carnage in a race.

kingstonian

Was just about to post that Strava wattage estimates are dubious to say the least.....and then read your post re being on a Wattbike.

Definitely suggest getting a few rides with a local club - it will benefit both your group riding skills plus will also help you to gauge where you are now with where you want to be.

OnTheRopes

Alejandrosdog wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

For your weight I think those numbers look ballpark to be racing already - obviously there is a lot more to racing than watts but I'd definitely be joining a club and/or joining in with some local hard training rides to see how you get on.

with those numbers he could ride away from 4ths on a flat course and compete with most domestic riders on any uk climbs

The numbers are pretty good but let's not get carried away it is not easy to ride away on a flat course and as for competing with most domestic riders on any uk climb, that is nonsense, have you seen the numbers some good domestic riders put out?
On top of all that a big part of road racing is tactical and being able to read the race, there are plenty of people who can churn out big numbers who never get a result.

BeaconRuth

SebDangerfield wrote:

I was all set to take people's advice and enter a race, but I had one go on the watt bike and, well, er..... rather humbling!

You'll be getting a much better idea of your ability from the Wattbike, but as others have said, you need real-world experience rather than trying to assess your ability with a powermeter, Wattbike, or whatever, indoors.

Anyway, any plans of racing now put off. Will join a club and see if I can keep.

IMO it's not a good idea to even start thinking about road racing until you've spent some time mixing with experienced club riders. There's so much more to road racing than being able to put out a high power. So definitely join a club with a strong racing contingent, go out on training rides with them, do chaingangs, reliability rides, talk to those who race, see how you get on trying to keep up with them and then sprinting for the '30' signs. Do all these things before entering a race, because if you're not comfortable doing all these things with experienced riders you'll be wasting your time in a road race.