Getting a bit confused as to which way to go to achieve my goals for next year. My aim is to do a series of long distance rides, the longest most likely in mid June. I’ve had a read through a few posts and there doesn’t seem to be a general consensus on which way to proceed.
The main ride would be a 600km ride split over a 42 hour time limit with most likely a 400km a week or two before that, so I’m thinking TL will be an important factor, having read a few posts it seems athlete type should be along the lines of Climber or GC Specialist (although most of my long distance rides come in at Sprint Time Triallist for their focus), so the question I have is should I set a TED and then switch to Continuous after that? Or would it be better to maybe do a Continuous block first and then use TED once I get to around 120 days from my ride? Or is there another way that an confused soul like myself hasn’t thought of?
I’ve deliberately dropped my TL for the last couple of months as I’ve been doing work in the gym, but I would like to start training properly back on the bike next week or the week after, so any advice on how best to set myself up would be very much appreciated.
Would select GC specialist and go with CI.
Set a target of improving TL. Into 4 stars would be the minimum but rather 85 or higher than the minimum 4 star of 75.
Would also go for continuous, and climber for when you want to do some high intensity, though not sure I’d plan for high intensity the whole time between now and your event… I’d probably choose an endurance focus for most of the training (sprint time trialist is fine if that’s what your events suggest), and do a block or two of higher intensity climber focus between now and your event to mix it up and get the gains that HIT brings (e.g. if / when you feel like endurance is no longer leading to improvement)
Not really. I am on TL of 66 and have nearly filled 3 stars.
Therefore 75 TL goes to 4 stars and starts filling them in.
So I was suggesting a minimum of 4 stars (or at least being on the way to filling them )
It’s worth noting that Pre-base works almost exactly like continuous improvement in that it will try to build your training load at the rate you specify whilst keeping the ratio between Peak/High and Low Strain at the correct level for the athlete type, so if you set an event date to greater than 120 days you’ll be following a continuous program until the start date.
Personally, I’d do that so that you can have a bit of high intensity in your training for a couple of months to keep things fun and then switch to base at the right time so that you can build your load without fear of burning out either mentally or physically.
It may be worth trying to build enough load for the 400km ride by setting that as your target date and then have a good taper after that to that you can build form as that’s what’ll get you through a very long event.
Juggling the improvement rate can be difficult and needs a bit of time to get right. Just remember that the rate you choose is absolute and indicates the increase in training load you will get over a single week, no matter what your current load. A week of extreme will take you from 50 to 57 or from 150 to 157! I would argue that one of those is a much bigger step up!
If you’re only doing low-intensity riding, then it’s expected that you’ll lose High & Peak fitness (HIE & PP, repsectively). You’re trading a loss in your HIE & PP for an increase in low-intensity fitness (e.g. your Threshold Power). We do this since your HIE & PP can be trained in a relatively shorter amount of time - those aspects of your fitness aren’t added until later in the training program (late Build & Peak phases).
You can always manually select a HIIT workout once or twice per week during the base period to maintain some level of HIIT into your base training. This is how I anticipate I’ll train over the winter months.