during the off season, what would your workouts be? I’m trying to switch focus from long course to short, and want to develop as much speed and power as possible during my bike sessions. I’m thinking one 2-3 hour aerobic ride and one shorter, harder session (intervals/sprints, etc.)
What kind of ride would you put together as the staple of your speed/strength development for off season training, assuming you have very limited access to hills?
In the offseason, I would maintain both rides should be in the 2-3 hour range. One ride you could do big gear sets. To ride fast for short course requires a large aerobic engine. 40k is still an aerobic race, you will just be working at a higher % of your lactate turnpoint than say a 112 mile race. So aerobic rides, with hihg end aerobic work (ie not long and slow,) will still need to be a focus.
You can never ride enough hills IMO.
I like one shorter workout…around 1 1/2 hours, done as 2x20 threshold or something like that…and one long ride…3-4 hours…if you can only do two workouts. I like a minimum 3 rides in the winter…the third being a 2-3 hour ride with some form work (spin-ups, single-leg, handling drills, etc.) at the beginning and end and some big gear work in the middle.
What Brian said regarding the structure of the two rides. However, I strongly recommend you find the time for a 3rd ride, if only for 1hr or so. I’m speaking from experience here. I took a loooonnnnnggg layoff after IMCDA and came back to riding. I was making great progress on 3 rides per week. My “long” ride was only about 2.5-3hrs but with a long 45-60’ TT effort at the end. The other two where shorter but similar. I could feel myself getting stronger every week. Then, for reasons of laziness, I cut back to two rides per week and really felt myself stagnate.
In short, two per week just isn’t enough frequency and I’d say you are getting into “you’re wasting your time” territory.
3 rides per week as:
1-2 x FT interval session, ie, 3-5 x 8-20’ (2-3’) @ FT, 60-90’ total session time. In fact, the length of the session is completely unimportant.
1 x “Long” ride of 2-3+hrs. Read my long bike guidance here: http://www.cruciblefitness.com/etips/LongBike.htm
You appear to be a very time constrained athlete and so must trade volume for intensity. My contention, however, is that you still need to maintain a minimum frequency of 3 per week.
My thoughts on the Off-Season: http://www.cruciblefitness.com/etips/LimiterSeason.htm
I have several off-season training plans to help you.
Regards,
There is a really good online book of trainer interval sets on this site:
The program is designed to be done 2x/week for an hour/session. I would not stick with this and forego a longer ride on the weekend, but so far this winter, I am doing these sets.
From an offline Q:
You appear to be a very typical AG athlete, nothing unusual here. My quick notes for you: You mention that running beats you up and consequently you limit your running. You’ve done the right thing by addressing your form through clinics. However, I strongly recommend you do your best to build yourself up to 4-5 runs per week. At this time of year, no regard for distance, pace, etc, simply shoot for high frequency running within the constraints of your body. You didn’t mention your body composition but small changes can make a big difference, particularly in older guys. For example, if you were carrying around an extra 20-25lbs, I would work with you to drop 10-20 of that and “just run,” don’t worry about anything sexy. Of course, within this high frequency running guidance it sounds like your prone to injury nature is, in effect, your running coach. I’m working with a couple similar guys right now and we let their knees tell us when/how long to run. You mentioned your ability to ride long but slow. My guidance is simple: if you want to ride faster, you must ride faster. It’s very simple and there is no easy way. It means hard, uncomfortable, but rewarding work. If you only have 3-4hrs of riding available each week through the off-season and you do typical IM training (Easy to Steady riding) you will remain very good at going relatively slow. I can’t stress enough how you must trade volume for intensity, keeping the frequency. I have decided to not include strength training in the plans. I have my own views regarding strength training and endurance sports (ie, not very valulable) and, additionally, I don’t feel comfortable prescribing high frequency running AND high intensity cycling AND weight lifting in a generic plan used by people I don’t know very well. I prefer to explain my position and offer resources. However, your age does merit some strength training. You can probably see where I’m getting at here, a big “depends on the situation” and so not suitable for a generic training plan.
My off-season plans are built around this paradigm of high frequency running and cycling intensity. The combination of these two may not be exactly right for you, but the price is right at $79-99. I give a great deal of support via my message boards to help you modify the plans to suit you.
Alternatively I offer a personalized training plan tier of service. You can read about the pricing, details and process here: http://www.cruciblefitness.com/coaching/TrainingPlans/personal.htm Many athletes have found this to be a good combination of value and customization.
Regards,
I hesitate to disagree with Rich, but I think two rides/week isn’t “wasting time”… certainly it’s not optimal, but you can get improvement even with just 2/week.
Personally I use 4x10min at max effort, or 2x20 similar, for the one weekday workout. On weekends if I get to go riding, 3 hours with a good stiff climb (3000ft over 15mi, some 12% grades). I can maintain fitness with nothing more than the weekday ride, any increase requires the second ride or preferably more. If you don’t have good hills around, do a couple (3-4) of 20min hard efforts in the 3 hours - warmup, 20min steady/20 hard, etc. Intensity is the only way to save a low-volume training program…
Dual,
Due to life circumstances, I have done 2 a week training rides since our 1st child was born 6 years ago (I’m 45). I do one flat out 40-70 mile time trial + one 1 hour ride that includes intervals. I think you can be successful doing that. During that time I have done 4 IMs and have won my age group numerous times at shorter races. I may not be as good as I could be if I had more time, but i believe you can optimize what you can do in those 2 rides.
Best Wishes,
I have done in the past exactly what you described. One longer ride on the weekend and a harder, shorter ride during the week. You willl improve for a couple months thinking you are on a great performance improvement curve and then you will plateau and stop improving. Any workouts that set out to improve you non-aerobic system with benefit you for 6-8 weeks and that is all. You can stay sharp if you continue them, but you just won’t get any faster or at very best make incremental improvements.
I did not break through my past performances until I committed to more aerobic volume. If you only have two rides then I would take desert dude’s advice and make them both 2-3 hours long and ride at least 50 percent of them at your aerobic threshhold. That is a recipe that will allow you to continue to improve for years, not a few weeks. I was faster at all distances once I stopped crushing myself with weekly speedwork and applied myself to increasing my volume. A little speed at the end of a long cycle will tune your top-end when combined with some racing, but the rest of the time it just increases your recovery time when you could be doing more volume.
Chad
Gotta love how well people listen/read; when you ask for advice on one long ride and one short ride per week, most people give you advice for something different than that. Obviously there is a reason that you are asking that question about that parameter!
I am an FOP AG’r that is time challenged (and with a life outside tri 
and have been working on the “basic week” a la Gordo. Actually towards the basic week, since I have a busy schedule and family and sometimes just can’t get the time in. I have transistioned to a 2x/wk ride pretty well, @ 6-11 hours per week total for all 3 sports. Not sure your age, but there is a whole lot more benefit to rest between exercise than people give it credit for, so you really don’t lose anything with 2 days of rest between efforts. I have been doing one 1-1.5hr hard ride (Tuesdays basically big gear) and one 2.5-3 hour steady long ride (Saturdays) per week the last few weeks and I can tell you that it is working fine. They are done on a trainer (so I can read business mag or work while I do it) and hope the the idea trainers are more effective training is true. Yes, it is the off season and I will ramp up with at least another ride and lengthen my long ride later in the Winter. But for now, it is just fine. The key is to be consistent and do it week after week; the basic week.