A few weeks ago I wrote about one of those hard rides where everything seems hard work, slow legs, permanent headwind, relieved to get home – The opposite of a float day.
By stark contrast, last week was that rare combination of good weather and good form, where every ride felt reasonably good. Because the weather was so appealing, I went out for 6 days in a row, primarily because the weather was inviting and May is a great time for the Oxfordshire countryside. I had two really hard rides of 100km plus with many hill intervals, but also four steady rides. Often I find these ‘steady’ / recovery rides a bit boring. But, last week I found them quite enjoyable. I was concentrating on improving the efficiency of the riding action. Minimising any upper body movement, trying to keep a very smooth fluid stroke. It was good to have this focus for a recovery ride. It feels like you are still improving your cycling, whilst enabling recovery. It felt more purposeful than a vague ‘recovery ride’
After a very hard interval session on Friday, I had two days before the Monday race. I didn’t want to ride hard because of the race, but I wanted to cycle because it was the weekend and the weather was so good. I did a steady 3 hours Sat, and 2 hours Sun. I worried this might be a bit too much before a race. But, on Monday, the legs felt very good. I think doing a steady 2 hours the day before a race is better than doing nothing. By chance, I ended up doing over 600km in one week. I think that might be close to a record weekly mileage. I never set out to do 600km, it just happened because I wanted to ride the bike. If I had done less, I don’t think I would have gone any faster in the race, I don’t know.
After the Buxton race on Mon, I took a day off on Tues. On Wed, I had a vague idea of doing 50 miles like a time trial. After 3 miles, I was just riding level 3 (about 80% HR). After 15 miles, I was riding level 2 (about 70% HR). By the end, I was riding level 1! It was one of those days, when the vague training targets just wasn’t going to happen.
It reminded me of a few things.
- if you want to train really hard, you have to be very motivated and clear what you are doing. If you have a ‘vague’ notion of riding really fast for 50 miles, it’s easy to keep knocking off the pace and before you know it, you’re going along at 15mph rather than 25mph.
- If you ride hard, then have a day off the bike, the legs are definitely less responsive the next day. It’s like the rest day sends them to sleep, and it’s hard work waking them up. If you have a race, then a rest day, the first day back, you might be better off having a steady ride. This is why in the grand tours, riders can do three hours on the ‘rest day’. The three hours of steady riding, prevents the body from shutting down and going into recovery mode.
- After a really hard race like Buxton, it’s probably counter-intuitive to expect to have really hard training after only one day rest. I wasn’t fatigued, but didn’t have the zip or mental eagerness.
The week before I had a week off, due to cold. The first ride back was
Rough training plan from last week:
- week before no riding – cold
- Sun – 39 mile Little Mountain time trial.
- Mon – rest
- Tues – 50 km recovery ride
- Wed – 130 km hilly ride to Wycombe on my time trial bike. Quite a few hills at full pace made it a tough training ride, averaging about 32 km/h for four hours, with over 1,000 metres of climbing
- Thurs – 50km steady recovery ride
- Fri- 100 km with intervals to Chipping Norton. Seven * 1 minute, then five *3-5 minute intervals. This was really tough. You start off with short intense intervals, then do longer 4-5 minute efforts. It’s based on the pyramid training intervals. You’re supposed to keep going and do more intervals. But, after 3 hours I was popped. It was still a good ride.
- Sat – 100 km steady ride
- Sun – 60 km steady ride
- Mon – Buxton race
- Tues – day off
- Wed – 80km started off hard, finished off easy.
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