netscriber said:
Hi warren.
I have been doing a lot of L2 work especially because I came back from the couch. I have started a couple of threads realted to a plateau and hae been struggling for the past 2 months to get faster. After talking to a lot of people the suggestions were to cut down some L2 time and put in some additional L4,5 efforts. The question is how do I really determine how much of L2 work is productive and how much is too much? My goal is to be race ready for Cat5 by next year. The peak I am targetting is for a 65 mile race in April 2007.
Thanks in advance.
First, I would suggest you race this year several times, just to learn a lot more about what areas you need to work on most. Even if you get dropped after 1/3 of the race you'll learn a lot.
I'm not sure how you're measuring progress or what "not getting faster" means exactly. There are many worthwhile goals or measures for you to be thinking about for this year and speed isn't the only one.
I do what you'd call L3 efforts pretty much 11 months a year. During my one month off season (October) I just do easy riding. L3 does a lot of the same things for you that L2 does, and some things better. If you spend all your time just doing L2 you'll get better at L2, but you could be improving 3-5+ different aspects of your fitness instead of just one.
After a month (November) that includes SFR, L3, L2, I will start doing some efforts (in December) that would be what you'd call low L4. I really don't plan in much L2 after December. Maybe one 3 hour easy ride with some sprints in the ride, every 10 days or so, but most of my L2 comes during warmups and cool downs and between blocks of intervals. Also on some active recovery ride days. Since you're coming from the couch you'd probably want to keep about two L2 rides each week until April or so. There are some good things that happen once you're able to do 3 hour rides at L2 with a few hill efforts at L3 to low L4, and maybe 2-3 little 10" sprints in a smallish gear like 53x17.
So... by April or so (or whenever your 5th month of the season is) you'd want to be doing one session with some L5 that's not so hard that you couldn't do more if you had to, a session or two that includes some 10-15' efforts in the low L4 to hi L4, and then try to fit in L3 several times a week, often as part of your warmup for the harder stuff. If you can get out for a 2 hour mostly L2/L3 ride during the week and a 3 hour L2/L3 ride on the weekend that's good for you too.
I like to have the workload in progression almost every week. So maybe you do the L3 as 3x10' one week and the next week it's 3x12', then 3x14', or 4x10'. Just try to add to the total time for the easier intervals like L2, L3, and low L4 almost every week until you're doing something like 45-60' of L3/low L4 in a session. do some on hills if you can. For the harder intervals you might add minutes every few weeks or so but you'll be looking to improve how fast (increase watts?) every 2-3 weeks or so.
For the L5 you might start with something like 2 x 3', just to get a feel for the intensity, then next week try 3x3'. Work up to about 3 x 5' and after that you just try to ride faster during those intervals. Once every 7-10 days is enough L5 for you. Maybe you could do your L5 as 30"/30" on/off every other time, alternating with the other format.
At your stage of progress you don't want to ride until you're very tired/exhausted more than once a week or so, and that should probably be a fun ride like a group ride, or when trying to reach a certain goal like 50 miles in 3 hours or riding all the way to some town and back, etc.. Maybe even less often than once a week or so. You just want to see steady progress and feeling real good once or twice each week or so. It shouldn't feel like a grind. You don't need that much effort just yet. Once you have a more solid foundation (late this year?) you can beat yourself up pretty good and still be ready for more 3 days later.
You want to see progress in at least two areas every week or two. If not, and you're tired, take some rest. If you're not tired and there's little to no progress, look to add something new to your interval efforts or modify what you're already doing.
It's supposed to be fun.