^ what kind of activities or training or nutrition or pacing do you think will help? (legit curious since you have needed out pretty hard on this stuff.
The training plan from my coach seems to be targeting the kind of efforts I need to do during races - threshold and sub-threshold efforts with some rest in between. My plan is mostly made up of the following:
- Easy endurance riding, conversation pace, ~10-12hrs per week
- VO2 Max intervals, very very hard breathing pace, 15-20min per week
- Sub-threshold intervals, hard for 30min x2-3, 60-90min per week
- Movement and core work, 30-60min per week
I think the intervals are where the fitness is increased. The easy endurance riding locks that in and trains me to recover from the harder efforts. But as you can see, it's not that much hard riding, only about 15% of my time on the bike.
As for pacing - I wish I could reduce the pace for the 1st half of races to be fresher for the 2nd half. But in cycling, riding with faster riders is so beneficial that it's definitely better to destroy yourself a little in the beginning. That way you get to draft faster riders and don't get blocked on narrow trails. You never want to be the strongest rider in the group you are riding with. You end up doing more work and helping others, as the expense of your own race. I was definitely blocked a bunch in AZ and it prob cost me at least 10min. That's what I get for taking too long to warm-up and having to line up too far back.
My nutrition is 90% of the way there. I ate 90g carbs per hour. Rumors are that TourDeFrance riders eat 100-140g per hour, depending on effort and body weight. I do think I need to improve my breakfast though. My oatmeal did not go down well before this last race.
back from two days at american supercamp. god damn it’s a lot easier with less of me to move around and being fitter. i am not that sore and i did pretty well. i am happy.
i am psyched about doing a track day soon.
That's pretty awesome. It's great that your results are obvious with your fun activities. It's probably great motivation to keep going.
My proportions for training above are pretty common in endurance sports - 85% base pace, 15% hard. It works well when your training is many hours per week. And it's almost required because any more hard effort could cause burnout. Given how much you walk a week, you may be able to adopt something similar. Maybe try to sprinkle in some harder efforts - hills, "sprints", etc - to keep your body a little stressed and building fitness. Staying a little stressed is how we push past the plateaus that always happen eventually.
a bit about my race, here's some data showing where it fell apart compared to Keegan the winner. The final column is the important part, minutes lost per mile. While I had some energy left for the end, I really need to work on the part just before that so that I don't sacrifice so much time. That pace I had for the first half of the race - ~0.8min lost per mile - would have achieved my stretch goal of 6:30hrs.
Dion!
