Spring is here! The first races of the
season are always a little tougher, simply because you haven’t
gotten into the race rhythm yet. Spring races are always fun,
challenging, and aggressive. All the cyclists who pushed themselves
throughout the winter are eager to show off the hard work and
hard-won fitness. If you are one of those few, spring races are lots
of fun and filled with success. If you’re a little behind on your
fitness or planning on peaking in the summer, then spring races are a
little tougher to handle.
The spring has always been my favorite
time for training, because I get to start doing some of the things
I’m actually good at and really enjoy about riding. Those of
you following a training plan have probably been working on endurance
(Level 2), sweet spot (sub-threshold), threshold (Level 4), and
training your weaknesses. Most of you are going to be doing a
variety of races over the next couple of months. Most of them won't
be “A” races, but you still want to do well in each one, so
you’re preparing for long, hilly road races; windy, wet time
trials; and maybe an early season crit. You may even be doing them
all in one weekend in a stage race.
In order to train for these random
abuses, you need all your training zones ready to be worked. Now
is the time to start putting it all together, focusing on your
strengths, and practicing your sprints. This month’s article is
full of workouts for you, to make sure you’re performing at your
best. These workouts will help you keep the sword sharpened, or
maybe just get it sharp in the first place so you’re competitive.
These four workouts will make you
faster and help you ride with more endurance and overall fitness:
1. Hill work: doing hills of various
lengths with a sprint at the top of one section to simulate an uphill
finish.
2. Time trial: get used to FTP in the
aero position, working on form and getting the back, hips, and
hamstrings accustomed to being aero while working.
3. Kitchen sink: putting it all
together and ending with sprints.
4. Team ride: with faster people,
learning to suffer and be economical.
For hill work it’s important to be
able to sustain your power through the hill and on different length
hills. On shorter and steeper hills, the highest absolute power you
produce (500w, 650w, 700w, etc.) will be most important. The longer
the hill, the more your power-to-weight (watts-per-kilogram) ratio
becomes a part of the equation, and the higher your w/kg is, the
better you excel on the climbs. Keeping this in mind, let’s focus
on shorter hills in this workout, as you’ll excel in longer hills
as the result of specific FTP work.
Hill Repeat Workout
Warm-up: It’s important to get
in a solid warm-up before your hill repeats, so if possible, ride for
30 minutes to an hour before you get to your favorite hill. The hill
should be approximately 1 minute long; a little shorter or longer is
fine, but nothing over 2 minutes, since that will become too aerobic.
One trick I’ve found helpful for these is a visualization while
doing the efforts: in your mind’s eye, picture yourself attacking
out of the peloton on the hill and winning the KOM points at the top
of the hill with your final sprint.
Main Set: Do 10 repeats total
(build to 20) of a 1-minute hill. (If you don’t have a hill
suitable and want to do it on a longer hill, no problem; just make a
landmark at about the one-minute distance so you have a goal for each
effort.) Glance at your power meter three or four times on the way
up to make sure you’re between 130% and 175% of your FTP, with a
goal of averaging around 140%. If you have incredible anaerobic
capacity, your numbers might be higher. You know you’re doing it
right when your legs start to burn after 20 seconds and you have to
suffer like crazy to keep the wattage up. Hammer all the way, then
get out of the saddle and sprint in the last 30 meters.
Completely BLOW at the crest of the
hill or at the 1-minute mark. REST plenty (3-4 minutes) between each
one. As you get more and more tired toward the last repeats, you’ll
have to lengthen your recoveries, which is perfectly acceptable.
After you’ve completed all the repeats, ride home at your tempo and
sweet spot paces to get in some solid aerobic work.
Cool-down: 10-15 minutes easy
riding.
When you get home, your job becomes
recovery and analysis of your hills with your downloaded power meter
data. What you’re looking for is how much and how quickly you
fatigued from effort to effort. Figure 1 below is a comparison of
ten hill repeats. This athlete’s wattage drops from 437 to 418 by
the tenth one, which is only a 5% drop in power. What this means is
that he could have done more efforts. When you have a 10% drop in
power, that’s when it’s time to go home and call it a day. Have
a look at your data and find your power drop; that will help you
determine how many intervals to do in the next session.
The next workout you should incorporate
into your training regime is the “Time Trial Sim.” This
simulation of a time trial is a great opportunity to work on your Vo2
max energy system and get comfortable in that TT position while at
full gas, while also building your confidence in time trials. If you
have a TT bike, use it, but if you don’t, it’s fine to go Eddy
Merckx style. The goal is to put you into a simulated time trial so
you can learn how to focus, develop a rhythm, and push your wattage
in the Vo2 Max zone(106-120% of FTP).
Time Trial Sim Workout
Warm-up: This is another workout
for which your warm-up is important; riding at least 30 minutes is
highly recommended. Within the last 10 minutes of your warm-up,
complete
(5) 1-minute fast pedaling efforts with
your cadence over 110rpm and rest for 1 minute between each at 80rpm.
Don’t worry about your wattage; keep the watts relatively low and
focus on the cadence.
Main Set: Get psyched and ready
for some time trial efforts! Do 6 x 6 minutes, starting out hard
with your wattage at 120% of FTP for the first minute, dropping your
watts to 110% of FTP for the next 4 minutes, and in the final minute
pushing your wattage back to 120% of FTP and finishing strong. Rest
for 6 minutes between each effort. The beauty of these efforts is
that they are miniature time trials, designed to contain the same
emotions, intensity, and focus that a longer time trial would have.
Make sure to do these at a “self-selected” cadence, which is
whatever cadence feels best to you. Really focus on using your
gluteal muscles and staying as low as possible with the upper body.
The best time trialists work on their flexibility; if you can’t
touch your toes easily, you need to start stretching! Finish the
ride with 20 minutes of tempo at 80-90% of FTP.
Cool-down: 15 minutes at your
endurance pace (56-75% of FTP).
Remember, the more you practice
something, the better you’ll get at it. To become a good time
trialist, you’ll need to do a bunch of time trial sims. When you
analyze your power file, look for how your power dropped over the
intervals, but you’ll also want to learn how well you adhered to
your pacing strategy. Learning to time trial well is accomplished by
proper pacing strategy and adherence to that strategy.
The “Kitchen Sink” is my absolute
favorite workout and great for everyone. All your energy systems are
worked, you get to go for a big ride, and you come home with that
wonderful feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that only
cyclists know. The goal of this workout is to address all the
different energy systems needed for successful racing. I also want
you to come home fatigued and tired, having pushed yourself a little
harder and farther than before.
Kitchen Sink Workout
Warm-up: 30 minutes at endurance
pace (56-76% of your FTP).
Main set: After you’re warmed
up, do 2 x 20 minutes at or just a hair below threshold (93-100% of
FTP). It's hard, and you’ll have to push to maintain it. Rest for
10 minutes between each at endurance pace. Next, ride at your
endurance pace for 30 minutes and then do 6 sprints, 3 in the small
ring for 75m (starting from a slow speed and spinning the gear at
140rpm by the end of the sprint) and 3 in the big ring for 250m
(starting from 20mph and getting the 53:13 turning over, but
resisting the desire to go into your hardest gear). Ride at
endurance pace for 5 minutes between each.
After completing your sprints, cruise
for 30 minutes at endurance pace and then do 5 hill repeats of
various hills and lengths along your route, each at your Vo2 max pace
(110-120% of FTP), with good solid rests at endurance pace for 5-10
minutes between each. Again, these are done along the way in the
ride. If you don’t have any hills, it’s fine to do these as
attacks into the wind or pretending you’re attacking on the flats.
Your final hard effort is another 30
minutes at endurance pace. While riding at endurance pace, add in
some bursts (little 8-second ones) every 5 minutes or so to simulate
the constant movement of a peloton.
Stop at a store with an hour to go and
get your favorite caffeinated, sugary drink. You’ll want a little
boost before the final push home. Finish with 45 minutes of sweet
spot (88-93% of FTP) on the ride home. Push it and try to ramp up
your pace as you get closer and closer to home. You should finish
tired, but feeling satisfied.
Cool-down: 5-10 minutes with a
recovery drink and STRETCHING.
When you analyze your power file after
this workout, the first thing you should look for is your training
stress score. Did you score over 280 TSS? If not, you didn’t go
long enough. If you’re closer to the 300-320 TSS range, announce
it on Facebook and I’ll “like” it.
In all seriousness, the goal is to create some big stress, so a solid
TSS will confirm that.
The second thing to look at is your
normalized power for the last 45 minutes. This will give you another
confirmation of your endurance. If you were struggling way below
your sweet spot and had nothing left, you know where you need to
spend some more time. If you were solidly in your sweet spot,
mission accomplished.
Your final mission this spring is to do
some group riding. Group rides can be great opportunities to get in
some guaranteed intensity when you don’t feel like training or when
you’re too fatigued to push yourself but still have more to give.
When you do these group rides, approach them with two different
mentalities and strategies. For one of the rides, attack with
reckless abandon. Don’t attack so much that you get dropped, of
course, but come close! Your attitude should be one of pushing
yourself to the limit and really digging deep in order to just get in
the work.
The next time you do the group ride, do
the exact opposite and try to be as absolutely economical as
possible. That means sitting in, riding on wheels, NOT pedaling,
saving energy, staying out of the wind and away from the front (until
the split comes), and making sure when you do have to ride hard you
can easily make the move. Group rides are perfect places for you to
learn economy through energy conservation.
When you analyze your power file after
your ride, it’s important to count exactly how many attacks you
were able to do before nearly getting dropped. Look at the time each
attack lasted and memorize the wattages you averaged in the attacks
for later use in races. For the “conservation” group ride, look
at your cadence distribution chart and see how much time you spent
not pedaling, because that is a great indicator of your ability to
conserve energy.
These four workouts each address
different areas of fitness that are needed for those spring races.
You might be really challenged by them and therefore get a great
boost of fitness from the accomplishment of each. If you’re
already super fit and peaking for the spring races, these workouts
will only help you more to push yourself to the next level and ensure
success. Plan these into your weekly schedule. You might even do
all four of them in the same week, but I wouldn’t recommend it
every week. Another plan might be to do the hill repeats two times
in one week if you know you really need help improving your anaerobic
capacity. Use your best judgment and make sure to give each of them
your best. When you crack that 300 TSS for the Kitchen Sink workout,
send me a message on Facebook or Twitter, and I’ll be sure to
“like” it!
Hunter has a monthly power
newsletter you can subscribe to so that you’ll quickly learn the
ins and outs of power training and gain some great insights into the
best riders in the world. Hunter Allen is a USA Cycling Level 1
coach and former professional cyclist. He is the co-author of
Training and Racing with a Power Meter,
co-developer of TrainingPeaks WKO+ Software, and CEO and founder of
Peaks Coaching Group. He has online training programs available at
www.TrainingPeaks.com/hunter.
You can contact Hunter directly through
www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com
and follow him on Twitter at “Hunterpeaks.”
