Winter "Training Camp"



hammonjj

New Member
Aug 21, 2007
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Now that school is out for the semester, I've decided to jump start my fitness by doing an informal training camp next week. Due to winter break, my time is limitless. My CTL is in the low 40s at the moment,so I'm thinking of logging big miles with maybe some long tempo intervals and a little LT. Probably looking at 25 hours for the week. What do you guy think would be best? I'm mostly taking a stab in the dark. Most of the training info out there seems to be for the more casual racer with virtually nothing about how to plan a "training camp". My background: I'm currently on the high end of Cat 3 and I have a training volume 13-18 hours a week during the spring/summer. I'm racing for the University of Colorado "A" Team with hopes of making the team for Collegiate Nationals, so commitment is a non-issue. Thanks for the help!!
 
A CTL in the low 40s implies you're riding somewhere around 6 hours per week and haven't put much more time than that on the bike for the last couple of months. That's not necessarily a problem but if you really plan to bump that up to 25 hours all at once the planning is simple, ride as much as you can, refuel as well as you can both on and off the bike and manage your intensity so you can get through the week.

Since you're trying to kickstart your winter training and you seem to be chasing volume for the big loading week I wouldn't plan on any full Threshold days or really even any structured intervals of any kind. Ride a lot, ride high endurance and or Tempo when you can, look after nutrition, hydration and off the bike recovery between rides and get a big dose of training. Then plan to back way off and recover from this big training dose before starting up on a more sustainable and steadily ramped plan.

Personally I wouldn't attempt such a big training load on so little base and instead target something like a doubling of your current training load as the big week and still plan some recovery time from that shock to the system before getting back on a sustainable and ramped workload.

-Dave
 
In my defense, while I have only been getting around 6 hours a week on the bike, I have been doing a fair amount of weight and cross training. In total, I've been training around 10 hours a week.

Does that change anything?
 
Originally Posted by hammonjj .

In my defense, while I have only been getting around 6 hours a week on the bike, I have been doing a fair amount of weight and cross training. In total, I've been training around 10 hours a week.

Does that change anything?

Perhaps, but the exact hours wasn't really the point of my post. Basically even a short big burst of training shouldn't be too far above your typical weekly training load, how far depends on you and how well you recover which includes things like any other obligations you might have as the holidays approach, how much sleep you'll be able to get, etc. But the further you go above your recent weekly load the lower the intensity should be especially if the point is to kickstart your winter build cycle.

So from a planning standpoint it still comes down to get on the bike a lot, don't go after short hard interval work (or probably any interval work at all) and focus on Endurance/Tempo pace riding for sustained sections when you can. Whether you target 12, 16, 20 or 25 hours depends on how well you handle the load and how well you recover but either way it doesn't take much planning to start a build cycle.

If the camp was in the spring with important racing on the horizon and after building a solid training base it might be a different discussion but to get started on your build from a CTL of 40 and with the goal of riding a lot of hours I wouldn't over think or over plan it and I'd stick with the basics and just ride.

-Dave
 
Some great posts there Dave.
Another thing to look out for is Tendonitis, if you havnt been doing much bike wise before, it can give you some real greif and put you off the bike for 2 weeks.
I'd recommend just starting out with 15 hour weeks, then start to build up to 25 hours. Two weeks should be long enough to strengthen your tendons in my opinion.
Take a lot of food out with you when you start the big rides to prevent "The Knock" which is a killer, and as much fluid as you can to prevent it.
Get heaps of sleep and stay motivated!

Good luck.