Building Training Volume, Intensity

[stowy]

Hey Guys,

I've been reading a bit and learning a fair bit about training on here. I have a few questions.

1 - where is the best place to buy coggan's book on power training? I need to read it i think.

2 - My girlfriend and I love riding and sometimes I think we ride too much with too little quality, as we are both competing this year and want to get the best out of ourselves. We both did quite a lot of hours last year, and on a good week of weather we'd probably ride 15-17hrs, looking like this:

Mon - off
Tues - L4 efforts, eg 3x20min
Wed - longer L2/L3 ride - 3.5hrs
Thurs - Bunch ride, 1.5-2hrs, include L4-L5 work.
Fri - easy 1.5hrs / off
Sat - 3-3.5hrs L1-L3
Sun - 3.5hrs L1-L3/L4

Lately I've been getting a little tired in the legs and unable to do any work over L3. I think i need to structure my training a bit more. I noticed alot of talk about CTL, and L1/L4 balance, etc. How would you guys go about structuring your week? My main focus is to build L4 work to raise my FTP, but we are entering race season so it is good to have some L5/L6 stuff in there to prepare for races which are on every couple of weeks from now on.

Should I cut some volume eg on Wed and throw in more intensity? Will i get more benefit for less hours doing that?

My girlfriend has much less training history, around 2- 3 years to my 7 years, so i come back from hard sessions much more easily than her, so should she have more recovery days than me? Obviously she tends to work harder generally if we ride together or in bunches too.

Open to suggestions.

Cheers

Stowy

 

[gman0482]

Hey Stowy,

To answer your 1st question, I just ordered my 2nd edition of 'Training and Racing with a Power Meter' from Amazon.com, or you can get it at peakscoachinggroup.com.

For the 2nd question, I'll let someone more experienced like Dave answer it, but 15-17 hours per week is some serious work my friend. You might want to check out this thread that I found very helpful: http://www.cyclingforums.com/forum/thread/483336/frequency-vs-duration-question

Good luck,
-Greg

 

[rbarker76]

Quote: 2 - My girlfriend and I love riding and sometimes I think we ride too much with too little quality, as we are both competing this year and want to get the best out of ourselves. We both did quite a lot of hours last year, and on a good week of weather we'd probably ride 15-17hrs, looking like this:
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)] [/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Mon - off[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Tues - L4 efforts, eg 3x20min[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Wed - longer L2/L3 ride - 3.5hrs[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Thurs - Bunch ride, 1.5-2hrs, include L4-L5 work.[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Fri - easy 1.5hrs / off[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Sat - 3-3.5hrs L1-L3[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]Sun - 3.5hrs L1-L3/L4[/COLOR]




It's hard to be specific without more details about your specific workouts. For example when you say Sat-3-3.5 hrs L1-L3, how much time at L3 and how much time at L1? So I am going to make some assumptions that your training is very polarized between L1 and more mid to high L4.
If this is in fact the case I think you need to find your "sweet spot". With a volume of 15-17hrs a week you have a oppurtunity to build a strong CTL base and FTP. Quantify your training however you want using the training levels, or just riding at a strong and steady pace for the duration you have to find a balance that keeps your training load increasing at a sustainable rate. It's a balance you are constatly adjusting based on life, fatigue, stress, etc. As you get more and more fit you must increase the relative intensity to continue to make gains. Doing this creates more stress and strain per workout and you will find yourself needing to recover more to continue to create enough stress per workout to keep adapting. Thus, CTL will tend to stagnate. As you add more intensity specific to your events and recover more CTL will start to fall, TSB will rise and you will begin to peak. Some allow a deeper CTL drop to allow TSB to rise very high for a short time to hit a strong peak for short events or a few events close together, others feather the CTL/ATL/TSB balance to not reach as high of a peak but to try and sustain what peak they have a bit longer. Either way eventually you must go back to building CTL again and repeating the process.
As for the specific balance, that is what experienced coaches can really help with. I am still trying to learn what works for me. Sometimes you got to push through fatigue and dig a really deep hole, at other times you need to rest. I would advise you to take some rest and when your legs come back to approach your training balance in a not so polarized fashion if your key events are still far off. Again, this is to ass-u-me that is what you are doing with your weekly balance based on what I *think* is going on from your post.



Quote:
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)]My girlfriend has much less training history, around 2- 3 years to my 7 years, so i come back from hard sessions much more easily than her, so should she have more recovery days than me? Obviously she tends to work harder generally if we ride together or in bunches too.[/COLOR]
[COLOR= rgb(24, 24, 24)] [/COLOR]


If your are investing 15hrs+ a week in training and can spend a good portion of that with your significant other, keep doing it!!! Maybe change your ride loops from wherever you start so she can get back sooner and you can continue riding some time by yourself to get in some more duration. Keep her bike maintained for her and maybe she can have the blender fired up for that much needed recovery shake when you get back./img/vbsmilies/smilies/biggrin.gif