Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Training, all mixxed up
I've been trying some new things with my indoor trainer season this year. (the indoor trainer season started earlier than normal due to my shoulder injury) For the last week or so I've had a rough time completing my workouts at the prescribed wattage output. Then today after another workout in which I was unable to meet the correct power I set out to figure out why. Then I found it was a very simple problem with my math. When I was figuring out the power output for my steady state intervals I figured out my workout range 10 watts too high. Now 10 watts isn't much but it changes the workout completely. Hopefully now things can get back on track. I was just working too hard during the intervals and not allowing myself enough time to recover before the next hard set.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Rethinking winter training
I guess it's not winter yet but since I hurt my shoulder I've been advised to stay inside and ride on the trainer (and I have for the last month).
Now, if you know me and talk to me then it is inevitable that the subject of "bikes" comes up often. I often talk about bikes and about the fact that I spend alot of time riding and training. Yet it seems like even though I talk with friends often about training theory all of the time I rarely ever talk with them about specific intervals they do, when they do them and how long they rest between them. I haven't had many of these particular conversations until lately with Dirty Mike. Once I started my winter training early this year he asked me "What workouts do you do on the trainer?" I told him about the one workout I do everyday, all winter, for the last 3 seasons. Then he asked "Why? I've never heard of anyone doing anything like that."
"Because I read about it in an article about it once. I think it was in Bicycling Magazine," I said.
Then I started my quest to find out where I had read it and why I did it. I reread much of what I have read in the past and some new things. I even bought Carmichael's new book. What I found was what I had thought originally. I was essentially doing steady state intervals at lactate threshold-LT (as described in just about everything Carmichael writes) which are effective for raising LT but not much good for increasing max power. I found that even though this method of training was pretty good for increasing TT power it probably isn't ideal. So now the difficult part begins. What should I be doing instead?
Now, if you know me and talk to me then it is inevitable that the subject of "bikes" comes up often. I often talk about bikes and about the fact that I spend alot of time riding and training. Yet it seems like even though I talk with friends often about training theory all of the time I rarely ever talk with them about specific intervals they do, when they do them and how long they rest between them. I haven't had many of these particular conversations until lately with Dirty Mike. Once I started my winter training early this year he asked me "What workouts do you do on the trainer?" I told him about the one workout I do everyday, all winter, for the last 3 seasons. Then he asked "Why? I've never heard of anyone doing anything like that."
"Because I read about it in an article about it once. I think it was in Bicycling Magazine," I said.
Then I started my quest to find out where I had read it and why I did it. I reread much of what I have read in the past and some new things. I even bought Carmichael's new book. What I found was what I had thought originally. I was essentially doing steady state intervals at lactate threshold-LT (as described in just about everything Carmichael writes) which are effective for raising LT but not much good for increasing max power. I found that even though this method of training was pretty good for increasing TT power it probably isn't ideal. So now the difficult part begins. What should I be doing instead?
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