In the past few weeks, I’ve been able to go out on my bike 5-6 times a week. Training has become an instinctive part of the day. Only when I’m really busy with teaching do I take a rest day. A few notes on recent weeks training.
- An easy ride at level 2 (65-70%) heart rate, feels as good as a rest day. It’s a strange thing, but your legs can feel less tired after an hour’s riding, than they do before you start.
- The main thing is I’m really enjoying cycling at the moment. The good weather helps. But, I feel fortunate to be able to go out for 2 hours a day.
- With regard to training, I aim for either – hard training or recovery.
- Hard training is either
- A race
- Threshold training – usually 2 hours at 85% (an effort below race pace – comfortably hard and fast) These sessions are really fun. I think some have referred to this type of riding as being in ‘the sweet spot’ – hard enough to make improvements in fitness, but not too hard they burn you out and take a lot of recovery.
- Intervals above race pace. I’ve only done 2 -3 of these training sessions. They involve several hard efforts up hills which take 4-5 minutes. This is most fun type of training. But, the main goal is still working on a base endurance and threshold level.
- With more miles in the legs, I’m aiming more for 50 mile time trials.
- I’d like to do 100 miles time trial, but ironically with all the training and racing, it never feels like there is time to do a long 100 mile ride.
- 10 days ago, I went out on Wednesday morning, the plan was to so high intensity hill intervals. But, when I got on bike, I didn’t feel fast. My heart rate was low, and it was an effort to increase the pace. On the first climb, my heart rate peaked at 176 (which is well below max). My time for that climb was nearly a minute slower than my best. After first few climbs, I started to get warmed up, and I did better on later climbs, but I change type of training. I didn’t aim for usual top of the range sprint up hills, but more of a high level threshold training. I didn’t particularly feel tired or over-trained. Maybe it was just because it was cold and early in the morning. I think for early morning races, I need a warm up of two hours.
- This week, I attempted exactly same ride, except it was warm and later in the day. I actually had more miles in the legs so I wasn’t more rested. On the first climb, it seemed easy to race at up the climb. My heart rate reached 189 on the first and second climb. That is quite close to my maximum. The time was 45 seconds quicker than the previous week. For some reason this week it was easy to train, but last wednesday it wasn’t
What does this mean?
- Sometimes, your body just isn’t ready to give the same effort as it at other times, and it’s hard to know why.
- I perform much better later in the day, than on cold early morning.
- If you’re really struggling to get into usual high intensity effort levels, it’s better to re-evaluate training session. Rather than high intensity intervals, it can become a threshold or endurance ride. The real secret of intervals is to do them when fresh and do them harder than ever before. There’s not too much to be gained by going through the motions, when your body can’t respond.
The forecast is for 21 degrees, which means no more racing in leg warmers. Will it be the electric razor, the epilator or messy strips of wax? The great dilemmas of being a racing cyclist.
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