How far on 8 hours a week?

grahamspringett

Accepted wisdom says that to reach something like a high level in cycling, you need to do more hours. I recall a thread somewhere on this forum which listed hours per week against category, with higher categories requiring more hours.

Why is this?

If I am seeing improvements doing the old favourites of 2x20s and 5x5s, what is it physiologically that would prevent further progress? Surely as I raise my power levels to reflect higher FTP results, the workload remains consistent and stimulates further improvement?

I've just read an extensive interview with Greg Lemond where he says that even a top rider need not do dozens of hours a week, and that Chris Boardman only did 11 hours a week in preparation for the hour record.

So what's to stop me winning the Tour de France, or at least local road races against the big boys, on my limited working-dad training schedule? 10 hours in a week for me would be a big week!

robkit

it's a great question well posed. i look forward to seeing the wisdom on this because one often hears of elite riders "getting by" on something like 8 or 10 hours.

__________________
I am my favorite rider.

ctgt

I'd say beween 250 and 300 km

__________________
HSCoach2 on other cycling forums

daveryanwyoming

You can do an awful lot on 10 well structured hours per week. Not so much if you just go out and ride without a plan or tag along on random rides with friends doing whatever appeals to them on a given day. But if you target specific systems and use your time well you can race well at least in the amateur ranks and masters with limited time.

Assuming your workouts are well structured to develop a strong aerobic core and then you build on that base with workouts targeting specific weaknesses and demands of your events you can build a lot of fitness without a lot of hours. Your biggest problem will probably relate to building a deep enough training base or high enough CTL in powerspeak to deal with longer events, stage races, periods of frequent racing and having enough excess base to allow tapers before important events. That might influence your choice of races or at least how often you race this season.

You can easily rack up 600 TSS per week in 10 hours on a diet of steady SST work, but if and when you transition to high end short interval work, sprint workouts, training races, etc it can be tough to hold that kind of load without increasing hours. 600 TSS per week is only a CTL of ~85 TSS/day if you sustain it for long enough. You should be able to race moderately long events and even some weekend stage races on that base but you won't have a whole lot to spare for tapers and if starts to fall during frequent racing or periods of high end training you'll run out of base quick.

Anyway, it's certainly possible and if that's all you can spare for training then work with what you've got. Just think about holding pretty close to a structured training plan and make the most out of those hours. You probably won't do much if any L2 work or below and should choose training routes that don't take a lot of time to get clear of town or have a lot of low intensity riding before you get going. I'd also suggest avoiding the local group rides most of the time as they tend not to be the best use of limited training time. If they tend to be typical hammerfests then go out from time to time when you want to focus on L6 work and some group sprinting but take a look at your power files to make sure they're really giving you what you want.

Good luck and let us know how your season goes,
-Dave

bubsy

As I have read in a few threads here and elsewhere it's not how hard you can go but how long you can go hard for, a single stage in the TDF can be up to 6 hours then you have to turn around rack up another 4-6 hours for days on end with one days rest a week for three weeks so in roughly 3 days you have doubled your weekly training hours and you still would have 3 days of racing left before a days rest, l'm sure there are plenty of riders in my local area that could give the gc contenders a run for there money in a single stage of there choice, but would more than likely have burnt most of there matches and barly if at all make the cut off time for the next stage even if there 8 hours a week was as productive as could be for 12 months without illness or injury, there maybe 1 or 2 genetic freaks that could finish the tour on 8 hours a week but l doubt it, the intensity of those stages is @ the highest level in the Pro tour.

l have reduced my training time by half this last 3 months and only plan on doing 3 races this year instead of racing every weekend for the sake of racing then showing up for my target events fatiged or over/under trained.
Training will be 5-8hours week but all L4 work untill 4/5 weeks out then throw in some longer L3 & L5 and plan on finishing in the top 10 or better for my catagory in each event but if l up my training hours to 10-15 reguardless of intensity l start feeling fatiged, in my case that extra 5-8 hours is better spent with my feet up destressing from 50hours a week of manual labour and deadlines which the pro's most likely don't have to deal with. As most of those in the know have mentioned it is a trade off between less hours higher intensity or more hours less intensity, if you have the time for both and time for PLENTY of rest and the right genetics then who knows just maybe

doctorSpoc

basically you aren't doing 250km road races at 40km/hr ave speed every three days or grand tour or are a junior who is building towards that... so you can get by on 8hrs... i'd really say 10hrs a week... in season anyway... you might be able to do 1 day with the big boys but would just not last even a couple of weeks racing as they do... if 2x20 is good what do you think 4x20 will do?

i'm looking at LeMond's book right now and he has a listing of example training loads in-season.. 15year old racer, 10-13hrs/wk.. 16yr old, 12-16hrs/wk...17yr old 14-18hrs/wk... 18yr old 17-22... 19yr old 18-24hrs/wk... 20yr old 20-25hrs/wk... pro 20-26hrs. he has a world class 15yr old doing more hours than you...

patrick_

The book by Greg Lemond is almost 20 years old now, he has changed his opinion on training a bit in the mean time.

The 600 TSS suggested are certainly doable, let's check a theoretic upper limit:
-L4 only
-rest periods off the bike
-no warmup/cooldown
-2* 30 min intervals per day, 3 per weekend day
-intervals done at 103% FTP during the week, at 100% on weekends
results in 830TSS/wk, a CTL of 118.

The 11 hours/wk of Boardman certainly seem enough to reach peak CTL.

BullGod

I read this week in a Dutch cycling magazine an article by a top trainer who said that typically, an elite amateur is racing at 85% of his top potential form at a random time, due to fatigue from the duration / intensity of his training and racing.

He also said that a typical lower cat / recreational rider is riding at 85% of his potential due to lower training volume.

The elite rider will hit his best form after a few easy days or some rest, but the lower level rider will have to train to achieve his optimum fitness.

I know which one I would rather have!

I am an elite cat rider, and i am constantly in a cycle of gradual training overload, followed by rest. I try and get total weekly durations over a 4 week block of, for example, 18, 20, 26 then 8 - so you take yourself to being totally shagged, and then recover - then repeat. With timing of races it isn't always easy to stick to a schedule, but if you try and work the rest / easy days into the schedule before important / tough races it works well.

Previosu years I have had to work full time, and have trained lower duration / higher intensity - this year was my first experiment with a massive LSD base over the winter. Apart from a handful of training races, and a classic in Belgium I have only done one L4 training session and one SST since end of season 2007. No L5 yet and not a single sprint in training.

Sure - the first races were strange, but I am feeling / noticing that a massive base of around 320 hours of L2 has given me the engine to rapidly improve the intensity that I can generate when it is required, the duration that I can sustain that intensity for, and reduce the time required to recover from that effort afterwards, plus increasing the ability to repeat it many times.

I believe that the massive amount of riding i have completed pre season has improved the ability of my body to deliver blood and oxygen to my leg muscles - I have seen considerable vascularization (almost brusing around veins), my resting HR dropped 6 beats, my body fat % is reduced, and my muscle mass is bigger. The downsides have been 3 x feverish colds in 3 months, mouth ulcers and hugely increased spending on food!

I did not notice such improvements when training only SST and L4 in the preseason.

The proof of the pudding will be if I continue to improve as the season develops with my new training, as in previous years, sure, in March I have been ready to go hard, and not surprised by intensity, but last year I noticed little or no improvement from March to september - only an increase in fatigue and frustration. now I feel that each weekend I am going faster, and going further.

Right now I am saying that this justifies for me a 20hr week average for upper level racing.

Alex Simmons

3 months solid of 8hrs/week at an IF>1. I don't think that qualifies as a theoretical limit, let alone a practical one.

If you could manage an average IF of 0.9 over the week, then 8hrs x 100 x (0.9)^2 = 648 TSS or a CTL after 2-3 months without a break of about 90.

__________________
http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/
http://www.cyclecoach.com/

doctorSpoc

fact remains that "the big boys" training which include long days... and i've seen Greg LeMond RECENTLY quoted as say the yes 6hr training days are a waste you can do the same thing in 4-5hrs... but just working on raising FTP is a real mistake for these guys because it ignores the reality of their seasons which include many intense, long days back to back.. so their training allows them to deal with that as well.. sure on a reduced training load you can pull off a good one day performance but what happens on the 3rd or 4th day when you need to do the same thing again? the reduced training load doesn't serve you wel.
for instance in the winter on half my summer training load i can after pull off numbers pretty similar to what i can do in the summer but put me in a stage race or long road race on that training load and i'd get blown away.. FTP isn't everything... and other than a few prologues, how did Boarman do in the actual racing out on the road? pretty bad on the road in a real race... that should tell you something. being able to pull off a single effort in perfect conditon with lots of rest etc does not a road racer make.

bubsy - training is good and all and you are right about limiting racing to acheive your goals... what you say will work, but racing is fun.. don't lose sight of having fun.

the training plan above... that's a joke right... wasn't sure.... would get no results.. and the person would likely quit the sport after a couple of months..

frenchyge

Others have mentioned the reasons that conventional wisdom has placed a greater emphasis on volume for higher level riders, so I won't rehash.

8-10 hours of *effective* training per week is definitely enough to get to the point where your genetics, talent, and racing saavy will begin to show, and that'll be a big part of the answer of how high a working dad can go. Some riders can go quite high on fewer hours per week, while others will struggle to advance despite working more.

Actually, I'd put ~5-6 hrs/wk as the lower limit where simply not having enough time on the bike is preventing one from competing successfully and being able to move up. That's not to say that'll be sufficient to allow one to reach their own potential peak in terms of performance, but remember that advancing through the racing levels is not just about individual potential -- it's about racing ability and results.

That said, the higher you go, the more the others are probably training. You can neutralize that advantage through superior genetics, better tactics, or by climbing further toward your own physiological potential. Until you've maxed out all three, you'll never know how high you can go.

Spunout

And contrarily, we keep going back to it! For standing the test of time, fundamentals in this book of training overload, resting, long-term progression to a tour rider are very solid.

It is not a book on how to do a 1 hour TT.

doctorSpoc

this is a total tangent but... as i was looking at the world hour records i happened to notice the IHPVC hour records (recumbents with full fairing, tear drop coverings)

1hr record - Sam Whittingham (Vancouver, BC)- 87.7km/hr... holy crap!!!
flying 200m 130km/hr
flying 1000 128km/hr

...this is unreal!

Squint

I've been training ~12 hrs/week and haven't gotten sick in the past two seasons. I do almost no L1/2 and all SST and above. I think I could maintain my current fitness on 8 hrs/wk but building would require more.