When it comes to cycling, is the philosophy the same as running in the sense that getting the miles in is #1, and doing a long ride at an easier pace is more important than going hard and reducing the amount of mileage you can do?
Put another way, if 30km/h is a pace you can hold for 30-40km, and you are doing a long ride(70km +), is it better to ride at 30 as far as you can? Or ride a little slower to keep steady the whole distance and get the 70+ km in?
(hopefully that makes sense)
Well let me start by saying cycling is my worst event in triathlon, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
Pace wise I think you should be riding steady on long rides, but training wise I don’t think milage is number 1. You could cycle forever if you really wanted to. I mean my friend cycles cross country each summer, covering 100+ miles a day on average, but is not blazing fast. You have to draw the line and find your oun personal balence between milage and intensity that makes you improve in the fastest and most effecient way. This may different for everyone.
Hi Bluefan,
It depends on your goals, your previous history in the sport, and the rest of your training. If you can say a bit more, we can offer some better advice.
OK, well it’s my second season of tri. Barely ran last year because injuries kept popping up, but was able to do a fair bit of cycling. Have only done 2 tris due to the injuries. Here is what sums me up. I can do 50K fairly well, and if pushed I could probably hold close to 30 km/hr. Going longer though, I slow down. If I am training for a half, do I want to long, long rides a little easier? Or do I want to try to hammer as much as I can.
I know that swimming slow teaches you to swim slow, whereas in running, even junk miles have benefit. I guess is getting the miles in on the bike the most important thing? Or getting miles in but at a somewhat suffering pace more important? Do I not get benefit out of being out nearly 3 hours for a 70k ride(my longest to date, and dog tired the last 15.)?
Bluefan75,
I don’t know if this will answer your question or not, but a very common mistake people make is to train and train and train at, say, 20 mph. Then they don’t understand why, on race day, they can’t go 24 mph. If you haven’t trained yourself to go 24 mph, you’re not going to do it on race day. Okay, so maybe your race wheels and stuff will get you another mph or so. The point is, don’t do all your training at a set speed. There’s a growing school of folks who believe the best thing you can do to get fast is train your body to maximize the power it can sustain for 20 minutes. Whatever amount of time your race takes, what your body will be able to sustain will be some function of what it can do over that 20 minutes. (For an hour-long race, for example, you might be able to sustain 95% of your 20 minute maximum power. For a two-hour race, maybe it’s 90% … etc.)
That’s not saying you only train for 20 minutes. That says you build your training program so that, when you give yourself periodic tests to see what kind of power/speed you can do for 20 minutes, you’re constantly improving that measure.
I believe most folks who adhere to this actually find they’re doing fewer hours on the bike, but more intervals and higher intensity. But they’re also finding that, when they have an event that requires them to go long, they can.
This is very simplistic. If you want to read up on it and get into the nitty gritty, go to www.biketechreview.com.
(Man … I dread posting this. I’ve tried to really simplify the 20MP concept and I just know I’m gonna get killed by the PhD set for my effort. Oh well … here goes.)
.
psycholist is right on. I come from a running background to tris and started my bike training the same. Lots of miles helped at first, but once I could cover set distance (24-56 miles lets say, IM is another animal altogether), speed training became more important. I learned this by eventually getting into road racing and being forced to ride much faster for short bursts than my comfort zone. My tris after that were much faster. Now, I purposefully do 20 mins or so very hard, fast to keep that speed feeling in the legs, then execute on race day. The distance is not much of a factor any longer. Now, if only I could do this for an IM and then run well …
does this same ideology apply to running as well?
and could this be how some have great results by “racing their way to fitness”?
Lots of miles helped at first, but once I could cover set distance (24-56 miles lets say, IM is another animal altogether), speed training became more important.
how does this apply to IM?
are you doing less volume, but higher intensity, yet performing better for 100+ mile rides?
Ok, I’m a poor swimmer, a weak biker, and a slow runner…So bear that in mind when reading the following.
I find the value of long slow rides to be in conditioning my neck, shoulders, and, umm, saddle area at least as much as my legs.
Kitty - that’s just it. This training philosophy doesn’t apply to IM training. Much like marathon training, you can’t very well run a hard 20+ miler very often and get any training done. An IM distance is absurd and training for it is lots of LSD mostly, but some speed if you want any decent time. You can train for up to a 1/2 IM hard as you want since you can cover the distance in training, even hard, without much deleterious effects.
Like a marathon, you hope to have the miles under your belt, same as an IM, then just execute on race day. What makes it hard, is that you really only get 1 (2 at the most unless you are Joe Bonness) attempts per year, so experimenting takes some serious time! Hard to know just how hard you can go and still finish the damn thing. There is no “bonk” in a 5K, even if stone cold drunk the night before. You can fake through an OLY tri as well. Starts to get pretty tough for a 1/2 IM and near impossible for a marathon or IM though.
My answer would be: both. Just know what you are doing at a time.
I ride either long, or hard. Nothing in between.
Long will be 150km to 200k. I don´t creep these… 28km/h to 32 km/h …depending on the phase of season.
Short will be 1 hour in my lunch break. I ride up a pass or do a time-trial. Not all out, but pretty hard.
I also favor hills / mountains over flat. After 18 seasons cycling for me has more to do with strength and power then with base endurance… that comes along the way.
Regarding “at race pace”: I have never been able to ride as hard in training as in racing. My best used to be 38 km/h in IM and around 40 km/h in olympic. There is no way I can come close to that in training.
Axel
Well put. Look at the “elbow” on a Power vs Time graph where the curve begins to level… this is by far the most important data point on the graph because it sets up all the other points further out. They don’t always correlate the same way, but the turning point dictates more of where the points fall than any other section of the graph.
Edit: for clarity
gotchya, thanks for elaborating.
*most folks who adhere to this actually find they’re doing fewer hours on the bike *
where’s the fun in that?
otherwise, yes, i’m guessing you’re right on this.
it also seems to me that you have to be riding hard outdoors in order to get the max out of your available training. otherwise you’ll give up any gains you made going up the hill by riding the brakes excessively going down.
that said, for the neck/back/taint factors another poster mentioned, it seems to me that for anything HIM or longer, you should have some training rides that are longer than your race.
-charles
does this same ideology apply to running as well?
Kittycat,
You’re askin’ the wrong guy. I had to do about a 75 yard run out of transition to where I was aloud to hop aboard my bike at a tri where I was part of a relay 2 weeks ago. That’s the longest run I’ve done in 5 years. A teenage driver with a cell phone ended my running “career” … not like there ever was one.
Still, I’d be surprised if similar principles wouldn’t apply.
.
does this same ideology apply to running as well?
I’d say no, since both cycling and swimming are low/no impact activities, and the forces involved are pretty small. You can get away with lots of intensity in those two. You can’t in running, as the forces are much greater and the chance of injury is correspondingly high. Only when you have a huge base (gained by more is MORE, of course) can you do the intensity.
I think the point of the whole 20MP thing is to do a lot of training around your 60MP point: 93-105% of that? The training response will be to raise your 60MP (your functional threshold), which forms the basis for all but the very short intervals. A mistake some make is to train their 20MP, which might tend to emphasize their anaerobic contribution at the expense of their aerobic parts (the stuff you want). Goal is to do 30-60 minutes of near 60MP per session, in blocks of 15-30 minutes, maybe twice a week, and gradually increase the power (like 5W) every other week.
An old net-hero of mine, who once did the California State TT championships twice in one day (Senior and 35+) and did under 51 on the first and under 52 on the second an hour apart, said something like “ride 18mph or 28mph, not between”. Either go easy, or go at race pace.
The answer is not silly at all…you need both. You need to get in base miles and train with some LSD. The problem is, if that’s all you do, that’s all you’ll be able to do. For me, and I train for cycling races too, I ride one LSD ride every week on the weekend, anywhere between 60-100 miles, usually in a group ride/paceline and usually at a sustainable pace (Zone 2-3/4). During the week I do two weekday rides, one of which is only about 18 miles and very hilly, and I will work on seated and standing climbing, usually in a pyramid, hill repeats and attacking at the tops, etc. The other ride is about 24 miles, and I use it to go as hard as I can (all zone 4-5/Friel’s), sometimes I ride one of my road bikes and will work on sprinting (Pick a road sign), and lead out techniques, and other days I will ride the TT bike and just work on position and keep trying to INCREASE my LT. As I am new to tri’s, I don’t know if this applies to running. But you have to do interval style training to increase your LT and power output, only then will you see an increase in your race speeds.
If you’re training for a half your first priority has to be being able to do 90 km. That’s where your long slow distance stuff comes in. When you know how have that base under you that’s when you start adding in more race pace or tempo or intervals. So in the end IMO it is like running, get your base then add intensity. As others have said though, on the bike you can do much bigger volume and more intensity than you can running. If your new at this, remember your base will be a work in progress for a long time.
re: injuries - it took me a long time to figure it out, along with $$$, but I had some cycling related tendonitis that only caused pain when running. Like you, I was able to do a lot of cycling and not much running.
To answer your question, you want the 56 miles and 5+ hr HIM to feel like a cake-walk, and the best way to do that is to ride LONG… You don’t need to ride long & slow, nothing wrong with riding long & hard. If I do a HIM later this year, I’ll want to be regularly hitting 80 mile long rides, plus the local “world championships” roadie ride (intense 30 miles).