which interval?

[leanman]

no races yesterday so my young very tallented trainig partner and i did a hard 3.5 hour ride consisting of a few fast short sprints, a few longer 15 minute hard sections, pulling hard into the wind for mile stretches... kinda like a fartlek workout. a bit of everything. his new bride who is a very good athlete/bike racer came out, but a bit later than expected. she was to motorpace us on a 4 mile stretch, but by the time she got there we were about toast. so we got in our hard 3.5 hours and then did an ez hour with her.

our conversation led to her saying with all her hard group rides and the way her riding has been going she's ready for some intervals to bump up her fitness. i told her to start with the 20 minute hard interval for a month then go into the hard 4 minute intervals. she basically said in a nice way, no, that the 20 minutes interval is way slower than race pace and that the 4 minute interval was also slower than the crit race pace. so she basically has her mind made up to do all out 1 minute efforts with full recovery. do as many as she can. then she said she'll do these a few days later, but not going all out, but mayeb 90% which she said will be still harder than the 4 minute effort, but she'll take shorter rests..

didnt know what to say as her husband kinda agreed with her.

he and i only get together for the long weekend rides when there are no races. i do not know how he approaches his interval training. maybe he does the same as she was suggesting...

any thoughts on this??

i always do, and thought you go in steps.. big base. long 20 minute intervals, hard shorter 4 minute intervals then the last phase the super hard minute intervals..
shes not peaking just says she wants to eliminate slower than race intervals.. shes got tons of base miles..

maybe i'm too old school??? is this the new way, or is this a bad way??.

she basically said she wants to train as fast as the races will be, and keep this training up till she feels shes slowing down, then take a week of ez riding off, then repeta the hard 1 minute intervals..

comments.

thanks

 

[CalicoCat]

Originally Posted by leanman .

no races yesterday so my young very tallented trainig partner and i did a hard 3.5 hour ride consisting of a few fast short sprints, a few longer 15 minute hard sections, pulling hard into the wind for mile stretches... kinda like a fartlek workout. a bit of everything. his new bride who is a very good athlete/bike racer came out, but a bit later than expected. she was to motorpace us on a 4 mile stretch, but by the time she got there we were about toast. so we got in our hard 3.5 hours and then did an ez hour with her.

our conversation led to her saying with all her hard group rides and the way her riding has been going she's ready for some intervals to bump up her fitness. i told her to start with the 20 minute hard interval for a month then go into the hard 4 minute intervals. she basically said in a nice way, no, that the 20 minutes interval is way slower than race pace and that the 4 minute interval was also slower than the crit race pace. so she basically has her mind made up to do all out 1 minute efforts with full recovery. do as many as she can. then she said she'll do these a few days later, but not going all out, but mayeb 90% which she said will be still harder than the 4 minute effort, but she'll take shorter rests..

didnt know what to say as her husband kinda agreed with her.

he and i only get together for the long weekend rides when there are no races. i do not know how he approaches his interval training. maybe he does the same as she was suggesting...

any thoughts on this??

i always do, and thought you go in steps.. big base. long 20 minute intervals, hard shorter 4 minute intervals then the last phase the super hard minute intervals..
shes not peaking just says she wants to eliminate slower than race intervals.. shes got tons of base miles..

maybe i'm too old school??? is this the new way, or is this a bad way??.

she basically said she wants to train as fast as the races will be, and keep this training up till she feels shes slowing down, then take a week of ez riding off, then repeta the hard 1 minute intervals..

comments.

thanks

It sounds like she is "in-season" and lot's of VO2 work, similar to what she has planned, is the meat and potatoes of my in-season training as well. She's got the base, which likely means that she's also got the aerobic motor. However, to do well in crit racing, she's gotta train herself to go hard for a short period, recover, and go hard again - it's all about responding to the accelerations . . .

 

[An old Guy]

I think it is more important that one embraces a training plan rather than just accepting what others think is best.

Let her do what she wants and see if she improves.

 

[tonyzackery]

If all she races are crits, she might be able to get away with what she does consider her apparently vast base.
If she's having success with her protocol, who am I to argue?
My races aren't a succession of 1min spurts, so I don't train that way. If they were, then I might consider this protocol.
If she's closely replicating the expected efforts of her races, then I'd say she's on the right track. Regardless, I wouldn't eliminate my threshold intervals (10-20mins) as that's definitely bread-and-butter/foundation of race fitness...to each his/her own though...

 

[leanman]

yea, i just gave her my opinion, which is kinda old school i guess. not sure of new training ways. her husband trains his own way too. not really too big on intervals, but just hammering group rides, and doing a ton of pulling. guy rides a 52:00 40k . good in rr crits and tt. so i just gave her my opinion.

thinking about it, the 1 minute all out effort would seem to really get the legs stronger and quicker than the 20 minute and 4 minute intervasl..over the years, i do the base. then a few months of the 20 minute interval, then its a month of the 4 minute intervals replacing the 20 minute interval.then the season... i only once did a workout of 1 minute intervals as the season was going on and the races and recovery rides were what i did weekly.. i do remembering the pain in the 1 minute interval. so maybe what she said would be worth trying..

maybe do these on a tuesday. as many as i can get. all out. rest till i'm ready to go again.plenty of recovery so each effort is max.. then maybe thursday do these at 80-90% with shorts rest. again doing as many as possible.

i do road races crits and tt. i'm a cat 2 and at 56, whats there to loose?i'm never going to make pro and i do this to stay fit and for the enjoyment of trying to get better and keep up with the young stars.. maybe new training ways will help me. why not try.most of my races are 30-110 miles

maybe with all my base i'll try these 2 time a week and see what happens with my fitness
i do remeber reading cycle sport and palo batteni said he did a ton of hard 30 second on and 30 seconds off.. on his trainer. and they race 120 miles+.. of course he does lots other training, but he did say this was a staple of his training.

thanks for opinions..

...

 

[tonyzackery]

I'm a crit guy, and an occasional flat road race. As such, when I do my L6 (1min) intervals, never do I allow full rest as you're never fully rested before another attack goes off. Now if I was a kilo racer on the track, then full rest would make sense (to me, at least)...ymmv.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Originally Posted by tonyzackery .

If all she races are crits, she might be able to get away with what she does consider her apparently vast base.
If she's having success with her protocol, who am I to argue?
My races aren't a succession of 1min spurts, so I don't train that way. If they were, then I might consider this protocol.
If she's closely replicating the expected efforts of her races, then I'd say she's on the right track. Regardless, I wouldn't eliminate my threshold intervals (10-20mins) as that's definitely bread-and-butter/foundation of race fitness...to each his/her own though...

+1, if their approaches are working for them then don't fix it if it aint broke...

But IME the hard interval only and only train above race pace approach only works for folks that already have sufficient aerobic fitness and power relative to their peers. The husband laying down 52 minute 40K time trials seems to fall into that category and if the wife is consistently there over the hills and through the hard sections and can ride with breaks or chases then she's probably doing exactly what she needs by training the short high end stuff and not spending more time on her existing strengths. But for everyone in that position there are a dozen or more riders that struggle to hang when the pace gets hot, get gapped or dropped on climbs, have to rely on others to bring them to the line because rolling away with a break, bridging or driving the pace near the end just aren't options for them if they lack the sustainable power to go hard for extended periods. For many of those folks weekly L4 work, even though it may be below race pace during fast and flat events, is still important.

In addition to raw staying power, the ability to break away and or bridge, or the ability to drive the pace and have more control over your own destiny, your ability to repeatedly and frequently knock out high power anaerobic bursts is capped by your sustainable power for the duration. IOW, if your races demand bursts of say 30 seconds to 500+ watts and that's a struggle in training even when rested then pure L6 work is going to be necessary. But for many racers one or a few efforts like that are fine but the wheels fall off when their races demand many such efforts in quick succession and with limited recovery. As Tony points out recovery interval is a big part of the equation for crits and points races or other events with frequent high intensity bursts but in the end if you can do a handful of these efforts but then you hit the wall it's almost certainly sustainable power that's holding you back and worth some of your training time. So even if it's the 30 second to one minute bursts that push you over redline in a race the limiter is still very often sustainable power and FTP even though you're not riding sustained iso-power efforts as you might while targeting those systems in training.

IOW, riding below race pace during sustained SST/L4 training is still very important for those who's FTP isn't already on par with their competition even if it's the mid to late race L6 efforts that they're currently struggling with.

-Dave