The Cyclist's Training Bible

Highlights

• Aerobic capacity, also called “VO2max,” is a measure of how much oxygen you are capable of using when riding at a maximal effort for a few minutes. The more oxygen you can process to produce energy, the greater your aerobic capacity.

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• Anaerobic threshold (sometimes called “lactate threshold,” although physiologically these are not exactly the same thing) is the percentage of your aerobic capacity that you are capable of sustaining for a long time, such as 40 to 70 minutes. The higher the percentage, the greater your anaerobic threshold fitness.

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• Economy is tied to all metrics of performance in that it has to do with how much energy you waste while riding. Economy is largely determined by your physical structure, but it also includes your pedaling style, position on the bike, and bike-handling skills. The less energy you waste, the better your economy.

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• Throughout this book, I’ll describe training in terms of duration, not distance. Time is the more critical element in training and racing. Your body reacts to how long you maintain a high intensity, not to how many miles or kilometers you cover.

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• I should also point out, however, that if you are in the first two or three years of training for bike racing, a power meter isn’t all that important. In year one, you are primarily focused on changing your lifestyle and building a strong base, so your primary goal is to get out the door and ride often. Frequency is therefore the key to your progression at this stage. For the intermediate cyclist in years two and three of racing, the common key to continued success is increasing the duration of rides. That builds aerobic endurance and takes a couple of years to accomplish. The experienced athlete’s focus, however, must be on intensity. If training frequency and duration are still not well established, then the advanced rider will not make progress.

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• For the typically experienced high-performance rider, volume accounts for roughly 40 percent of race-day fitness while intensity is the reason for the remaining 60 percent.

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• Dose has to do with how relatively hard a workout is in terms of either duration or intensity. A hard workout is “high dose,” and an easy one is “low dose.” A high-dose workout could be a very long ride, a highly intense session such as intervals or a group ride, or some combination of both long duration and high intensity. On the other hand, a low-dose workout is typically of short duration and low intensity. Density is a measure of how closely spaced the high-dose workouts are. High-density training means that your hardest workouts are very close to each other—perhaps separated by only one day or even done on back-to-back days. In contrast, low-density training would mean there are several low-dose days between the hardest sessions.

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• Then you multiply each zone’s weight by the time spent in that zone in minutes. Add up the resulting numbers, and you have the workout’s score. Table 3.1 provides an example of how a workout may be scored using this system.

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• Keeping track of your training load week after week through such a scoring system gives you a good idea of how fit you are becoming. If you are able to progressively overload your body over time, you can deduce that supercompensation is under way and you are becoming more fit.

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• Fatigue changes more rapidly than fitness when resting. So while a pre-race taper will shed a lot of fatigue quickly, fitness will be lost very slowly. If done right, on race day you will feel as if you gained fitness, even though that feeling is actually the result of having less fatigue. In other words, you’ll be on form.

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• there are only three workout components you can manipulate to produce fitness: frequency, duration, and intensity.

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• At AeT, the body removes the lactate-associated acid flooding the muscles as quickly as it enters them. But at 4 mmol/L and higher, the acid, comprised of hydrogen ions and other chemicals, begins to accumulate in the blood and so restricts muscle contraction. The body can’t remove all of the acid unless you slow down considerably. That’s why you start to suffer and can only maintain this level of intensity for a limited amount of time. An athlete in exceptionally good physical condition can maintain an intensity at AnT for roughly an hour—with a lot of suffering—whereas AeT can be sustained for several hours without agony.

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• In fact, I suggest that your distribution of training intensity should be just the opposite. Most of your training time should be at a very low intensity. Over the course of a season, the total time you spend at or below your AeT should be around 70 to 80 percent. The remaining 20 to 30 percent should be above the AeT, with a sizable chunk of that above the AnT.

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• The single biggest mistake in training is to make easy workouts moderately hard (between AeT and AnT), thus decreasing recovery. You need lots and lots of easy riding if you are to perform at a high level. I know that seems contradictory, but it works.

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• Figure 4.2 illustrates this suggested intensity distribution, which is often referred to as “polarized training.”

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• If you search the Internet, you will find many formulas that rely on personal data such as age, gender, and perhaps other variables to determine your maximum heart rate. Once you have that number, you’re often told to take a percentage of it and call that your AnT or some other name that refers to the upper threshold. The most common of these formulas for finding max heart rate is 220 minus age. There are some others, but you should steer clear of all of them because they are unlikely to work.

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• Upload your heart rate monitor to your favorite software and find your average heart rate for the 20-minute test. Subtract 5 percent, and you have a good estimate of your functional threshold heart rate.

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• Once you determine your FTHR, use Table 4.2 to compute your training zones. You can use this table regardless of whether you used the 20- or 30-minute field test to determine FTHR.

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• The aerobic threshold is the lower of the two, with a Rating of Perceived Exertion typically around 3 to 4 on a 0 to 10 scale. Lactate production, a common way of measuring intensity in the lab, is low when riding at the aerobic threshold (as compared to the anaerobic threshold). An aerobically fit rider should be capable of continuously riding at this lower intensity for several hours. At this intensity, the body is capable of removing lactate as quickly as it’s produced. It is a valuable intensity level for training, as it increases aerobic endurance fitness.

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• At anaerobic threshold, a rider can typically ride for around 45 minutes to just over an hour, depending on endurance fitness. The Rating of Perceived Exertion here is typically around 7, as lactate is produced faster than it can be removed by the body. That creates an increasingly acidic environment for the muscles and makes it difficult to maintain the effort for a long duration.

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• When rear derailleurs were introduced in the early 20th century, the Tour de France banned them. It preferred to see racers change gears by dismounting at the start of a climb and reversing the rear wheel, which had a single gear of a different size on each side.

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• Shooting for the stars with the hope of making it to the moon does not motivate because down deep the athlete knows the goal is unachievable.

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• Regardless of whether you are a world-class rider preparing for a Grand Tour or an accomplished rider who mostly does local criteriums, there are only three physical metrics of endurance fitness that must be developed through training. That’s it. Only three. They are aerobic capacity, anaerobic threshold, and economy.

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• Also referred to as “VO2max,” aerobic capacity is your physiological proficiency for using the oxygen you inhale to produce energy. It’s your maximal volume of oxygen. The more oxygen your body is capable of processing, the more energy it produces and the greater your power output becomes.

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• Your VO2max starts with your heart. Changes in aerobic capacity largely have to do with how much oxygen-carrying blood your heart pumps to your working muscles with every beat. This per-beat measurement is called “stroke volume” and has a lot to do with how great your aerobic capacity is. One purpose of training is to increase your stroke volume.

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• Besides stroke volume, there are other physiological contributors to aerobic capacity such as aerobic enzymes found in the muscles, blood vessel diameter and ability to dilate, blood volume, and hematocrit, or red blood cell count. All of these have to do with delivering massive amounts of oxygen to your muscles when you put the pedal to the metal.

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• Basic abilities Aerobic endurance Muscular force Speed skills Advanced abilities Muscular endurance Anaerobic endurance Sprint power

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• Aerobic endurance. Aerobic endurance is the ability to keep going for a very long time at a low to moderate intensity. It is improved by doing long, somewhat easy, and very steady workouts in zone 2—below RPE 5

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• Aerobic endurance training is the single most important of the six abilities for a cyclist because as an endurance athlete, you must first of all be aerobically fit. Poor aerobic endurance is a game-stopper.

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• For novice riders (and even some intermediates), the basic abilities are the typical limiters. Athletes new to the sport should focus their training on them. There is no need to devote much time to the advanced abilities until the basic ones are well established, and establishing them may take one to three years of basic training. For experienced athletes who have devoted several years to improving aerobic endurance, muscular force, and speed skills, the common limiters are the advanced abilities—muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, and sprint power.

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• This chapter also introduced the six abilities that we will look at in terms of workouts for the remainder of the book: aerobic endurance, muscular force, speed skills, muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, and sprint power. The first three are the basic abilities. These will likely be the focus of your early season training, and you’ll return to them at various times during the race season.

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• The concept of periodization in sport has its roots in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a state secret during the early decades of the Cold War and was used only by Eastern European countries.

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• The starting point for any training methodology is its underlying philosophy. As a coach, the philosophy I have used for many years is rather simple: The closer you are to your race, the more your training must be like the race.

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• Besides those over 50, novice and intermediate athletes may also need shorter mesocycles, as their capacities for recovery may not yet be fully developed. Building recovery ability typically takes three years or so, so novices and intermediates should use the “over age 50 or slow recovery” column.

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• You should complete MS before starting the hard bike training sessions of the base 3 period. This is a critical admonition that is often violated by riders. Trying to do very demanding workouts in the weight room and on the bike concurrently will result in excessive fatigue and poor training in both categories.

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• The best time to test is after a rest and recovery break, every third or fourth week of the base and build periods.

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• You now have all of your workout types recorded in Table 8.1. In doing this, you have considered when you will do group rides, weight lifting, breakthrough workouts, recovery rides, and days off from training.

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• The BT workouts you see in Table 8.2 vary by period and may be very long rides at low intensity, long rides at a moderate intensity, and high-intensity training such as intervals. The exact type of BT workouts you decide to do depends on your strengths, limiters, periodization model, and the seasonal period.

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