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Originally Posted by tsvaughn Hi all! Great training forum.
This year, I've incorporated some elements from "Maximum Performance for Cyclists" by Michael J. Ross, M.D. into my usual Morris program. A lot of things from Ross made sense to me, but his High Intensity Training (HIT) was too much for me and left me overtrained. I'm going back to my regular Morris program for "short" intervals.
One of the Ross' most intriguing concepts was limiting "long" intervals to 4-5 minutes since I hate the long Morris-style 8-12m intervals. Ross cites two European studies as basis for this claim, but neither of them appears cycling specific. Ross explains that you want to maximally exercise your type IIa muscle fibers when doing long intervals, but that these fibers will be exhausted by 4-5 m efforts and further work will only delay recover. I can certainly attest to this, as recovery during last year’s long interval phase was very difficult for me.
So what will I be missing by following Ross’ long interval prescription? I suspect there is some real mental training value in doing longer interval times, but what about the physical benefits? |
I have done nothing but 4 to 5 minute intervals with rest periods of 2 min and eventually 1 min at 80 to 85% of critical power (est velocity at vo2max), and I have seen solid improvements in my time trials at 30+ minutes. I know I can maintain a higher workload with the 5 min maximum, I usually do 8 reps to total 40 minutes of workload at 80%CP. It is easier on the mind for me to do shorter work intervals, and the research seems plausible about the 5 min limit. The important part is to get your critical power test accurately, the first year I started with poor CP tests and was way above the actual CP power. This year I start all ramp test at 100 to 150 watts, and by the time I get to 330 and above I'm ready to quit.
03-22.-2007
Long interval times and Ross book 
Long interval times and Ross book
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