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Thu, 11 Aug 2005

Training for the NSW Masters Championships - 22:20

Bruce Graham asked me to contribute some of my thoughts on training. Bruce did a comprehensive article that can be found in the pdf version of the July Spoke Torque


I was to follow up with how I prepared and raced in the NSW Masters Championships


Well, due to the crash I had with the other unfortunate souls I had to pull out of that race, I'm now frantically trying to recover and get ready for the Coota Classic 120km Handicap Race


I could not ride for about ten days. This was quite frustrating and bad for my waistline. When I finally got back on the bike I could hardly turn the 42 x 18 I had put on my single speed bike for recovery purposes. My Doc had advised light exercise would help in clearing some for the left over inflammation, but he did emphasis light work
1 Week of easy spinning for 1 hour a day at 90-100rpm
So, after a week got some strength back and was able to effectively spin to the extent I felt quite under geared.
Then 1 week of easy endurance rides, 2-3 maybe even four hours. Definitely no big gears. Definitely taking it easy on the hills. Luckily I have a bike with a triple crankset. I did some rides with mates, but made sure not to get sucked into going too hard.
Then, 1 more week of long endurance rides, I've been doing 100-150km, but very easy. I treat it like a tour, just have fun. That has been quite hard because it has rained and snowed this last week. Not an idyllic time to make a comeback
Next week I shall cut out the real long rides, no need anymore as I will have strength back and endurance stays. I'll maybe do one long ride a month. The bad bit is when the long rides cut out the horrible, hard intense rides cut in. Some may choose to do hill repeats. I've chosen to do sprints and intervals with Neil.
Tuesday we do sprint intervals, 5 of them trying to out sprint each other to a finish line. Then we roll for a few minutes and do it again. On Thursdays we do intervals. I have quite a different approach as I cannot get my head (and body around doing a 10 minute plus interval at 95% plus effort. My plan is to do 5 x 2 minute intervals at 98% effort with rest in between. Somehow it works better for me. Neil manages to do the whole 10 minutes in one huge go.
Another interval set I do is 5 x 30 seconds, with 30 seconds rest. I works like this, sprint at 100% for 30 seconds, stop, die, time 30 seconds and do 100% for 30 seconds again until you've done a set of five. Spin easily for 5 minutes or more (full recovery is good) and do five times thirty again. I'm doing four sets
I think the major thing with all this is that this intense work is only 15% of the total work I'm doing. The good thing is that if I do this 15% properly then the rest of the training I do can be nice cruisey training. Real easy, in fact anything in that hard, but not real hard zone will bring my performance down. That hard but not super hard zone feels like you are making a gain, but most likely you are not working quite hard enough, but working too hard to get full recovery. I downward spiral over time. So I have to make sure full recovery is attained between each super hard session. It gives the body time to recover and the mind time to get on with handling the hard sessions.

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