Originally Posted by bgoetz .
I am/was very observant as to how I felt throughout different parts of the season and tried to compare that along with results, making mental notes as to things I would have or could do differently. IMO, I think the dedication, or in my case extreme dedication to any type of plan that makes some logical sense is going to yield good results. You can have the best plan in the world, but if you are not dedicated to it you won't see results. To me any type of prescribed training regimen is difficult to follow to a tee, so while my regimen was structured it could be and was frequently modified as I learned new things about training and about myself. Not only did this yield a better regimen, but it added variety and a sense of excitement to try new things and observe the results.
This year the overall goal may be slightly different because until this season I had never raced, and while I was a strong cyclist, I was certainly not a strong racer. So my training was structured to get the biggest gains in strength, stamina, and endurance in the shortest time period possible (i.e. lots of hard intervals starting clear back in January). This made me a very strong cyclist in the early season, but left me real tired mid-season, as I knew it would, so at that point I backed off a bit, regrouped, and made another hard push to the end of this season. I am not saying that I will not be in this position mid-season next year, I have not really looked that far ahead at my planned races, so I may be. But I will have a much better idea of how to control my overall form, so I hope to more effectively be able to target races.
Also, instead of spending so much time in the early season trying to focus on intervals, I plan to do more LSD on the trainer and really build a solid training base before I go into the hard intervals. This is something that I could not do last year because I felt that I would be better served spending every moment that I could getting stronger and gaining stamina. This year I plan to keep as much of that as I can over the fall/early winter, so going into January I will certainly be much stronger than I was at the same time last year.
So did I have the best plan or for that matter even have a plan, no, what I did do is picked a direction and went as hard as I could. This year will be different, because I am different, my goals may be different, and I have and will continue to learn new things that I will apply to my training. At the end of the day, when I am on the start line, whether I could have or should have done something different never crosses my mind, I have done all that I can do to prepare myself and that is all that matters.
Overall I see a lot of good elements to your observations. And from my perspective this is a good point of view.
The end results really are all that matters. No one can have the absolute best plan because there are too many variables in months of training, but each that strives to compete can look at the season ahead, pick a path (hopefully with some evidence based knowledge) and go forward in faith for that plan. I imagine even Bruyneel looks that the team, develops a plan for the coming race season and
hopes that the plan will be a success. But even Bruyneel cannot say for certain that his plan would be the absolute best plan. But he has a lot of past experience to rest on. Even for him the variables change with individuals so that he has a macro plan (physiology and experience) and has to work out the micro details that can change along the way based on the reaction to the stimulus and outside stresses and obstacles. It could even be travel or financial logistics that impact the details. But bottom line it starts with a person riding a bike and then from there the rest of the plans start to take shape. It takes shape on his many years of coaching and observing successes and failures.
When I competed I did not have this sophisticated software for my activity, but I did keep a detailed hand written daily log of training, nutrition, emotions and various stresses. It is nice to be able to look back in order to help going forward and for those that do not have a history to look back it is to either pick a path that appears to have worked for others and attempt to establish a plan going forward or hire a coach. As you stated you picked a path to go forward (Macro) and sometimes make adjustment along the way due to variables, obstacles or digression (Micro). Through this one begins to learn what works and what doesn't work. This never implies that the "perfect plan" will be found, but what matters is improvement or not.
This is a much better avenue than those who are just
winging it because it is then too difficult to look back and say what works and what does not.
The approach you are taking is a good approach that does not have to be proven to anyone nor explained to anyone and you do not have to be swayed by anyone on this forum with the type of results you had this year. No doubt you will continue to learn and tweak your path as you go. There will be successes and failures, but I can say for myself that in my years of competing I never took a step backwards because I chose the wrong path. Each year I went up another notch. Each year my training just got that much better because I was very observant. I was surrounded by world class athletes and I listened to advice. Sometimes I applied that advice and many times I did not.
I shared an apartment with two females and we all trained with weights (macro) we were different in the small details (micro), but each of us were successful in competition. One became an IFBB pro, the other became a world class powerlifter and a world class weightlifter and I qualified for the NPC nationals. We each picked a path of going forward in our season, but what I see that was common to each of us was we looked back to our history to help plan the future season. We each picked a path, dedicated everything to that path, made small tweaks along the way and progressed another step forward. Meanwhile each of us were well aware of science based training. That part was always the key foundation to the plan.
In endurance sport guys like Lydiard found a way to fine tune the path of raising one's threshold. In his paper he said the old school method would work, but it just takes longer. He picked a path, had faith in that path, dedicated himself to that path, observed that path and ultimately found success. But still no one can say as an absolute that it is the best path, but there have been a lot of successes on that path. I feel from what I read from Coggan that I can trust what he says concerning training in a macro sense.
Ultimately I really like your ending statement because that is exactly how I felt each season I competed even though each season I did improve my training a little more because of experience. At times I wished I had all that experience at the start that I had when I retired from competition, but all of this is a journey for the althete. The experience, both in the hard knocks along with the successes make good memories. Cycling for me is a new journey. I love both the hard knocks and the successes. It is what makes me different than those who start something with good intention and just give up along the way. There are more people that start and quit than those who continue on despite the hard knocks.
Great comment
I have done all that I can do to prepare myself and that is all that matters
