Clifton CC

Just ride as hard as you can for the duration of the time you have available, plus throw in a few sprints for good measure. Take it easier for a couple of months at the end of the year or if you're a bit tired. Simple.

tomf - I agree with everything you say. I seemed to be failing to get my basic point across so was sticking with that

PaulB - you can do better than that. 'As fast as possible for the time available' - over a week? Over a month? Over one ride?

Phil - see, I knew you'd get one in the end.

I work on CTL rather than TSS/wk myself. I find it easier to graph changes over time as it applies a smoothing to the trend.

Yes! Made it to page 5. But judging by the acronym- and jargon-count, it may be time to adjourn to the Training forum...

Arthur - knew I would too, but was interested to see how helpful just working more methodically with a HRM could be (answer:- very helpful). There's always a danger with using a power meter of sinking in a sea of numbers. Hopefully a couple of years of using a training plan and HRM have taught me to combine using the numbers with being aware of how I feel. By the end of next season I'll know!

Tom:- there's probably ample info around to kick off a "Training plans:- discuss" thread to liven up the Training forum, but I'd quite like Brian's response to the recent stuff on here too...

Arthur, I was intrigued by the Power Priesthood so I had a look at the explanation of TSS and Performance Manager.

If I got it right, they are using a single metric (the TSS - something like Watts^4*Time) normalised to certain personal values, to measure cumulative Training stress and so give an indication of how fatigued you are. But because it is a single metric it doesn't distinguish between fatigue due to buckets of endurance work versus rather less high speed work.

So it can't tell you if you've got the mix of endurance vs. speed wrong for a given target, just how heavy the overall load is at this point. It might tell you that if you want to fit in that 4hr ride each week, you need to ease off on the sprints; but it won't tell you that it's time to ease off on the sprints because you are losing aerobic condition.

If that's right, don't you need a pretty good idea of a training plan already before you start using it? Or do they have some other 'balance' metric which tells you how anaerobic you are getting (looking at the site the average Intensity Factor per ride would be a start)?

I guess I'm wondering where the whole PM/WKO+ fits into a training regime.

Tom (going for page 6...)

A truly fascinating discussion...

My feeling though is at times, when young potential really good riders ask us oldies for advice we should keep it simple! I won't mention names but when I tried pushing Friel onto someone they said "I got bored after reading 100 pages of Harry Potter" - they've no chance with Friel or much of the content on this thread. I agree with the suggestion that there is a place for it, and we all should use the training forum more.

Question: How should I train over winter?
Answer: Ride bike as much as you can and enjoy it. Push hard if you feel like it, go easy if you feel like it.

Tom - of course a single number doesn't replace a training plan. Within that plan you still ahve to decide when you want to work on say sprinting, when to concentrate on endurance etc.

What it does do is provide a way of measuring total training load over time, ensuring that this goes up at a nice gentle rate and can be sustained over time. It's just another tool (though a very powerful one).

The other thing to say is that that fourth power factor really matters. Doing small amounts of threshold work or above really starts to rack up the training load. In itself that leads to constraints on how you plan your training.

MichaelCarter wrote:

Question: How should I train over winter?
Answer: Ride bike as much as you can and enjoy it. Push hard if you feel like it, go easy if you feel like it.

Don't know what most of the convo is about, its too complex for me :p.

This bit I understand, I'm trying to slow my speed down now, 1mph at a time, then I'll adjust to cycling around at slower speed I rekon.

This discussion has disolved into about four people swapping jargon!
Its makes me wonder if this website is really the place for training advice?
Considering this post never even started life as a training related question look at the varied responses it has stirred. Anyone tuning in to get something from it will now be more confused than they were before, or lost the will to live?

However my big question for those sharing their wisdom is what you personally are going to be doing with this fitness you will be gaining from the scientific training regimes you are on? Will you be frantically posting off entry forms for Elite road races next year? or sticking with something a bit more comfortable like the TLI's or the club TT series?
Sorry if this comes across as a bit disparaging but I'm struggling with the whole concept of training on your own when you are going to be road racing in a bunch? I always think success on the road is about economy of effort and its not necessarily the strongest rider who wins but the one who makes (or follows) the right move at the right time? How do you scientifically train for that?

We should be cultivating the idea that you get stuck in and enter the best & hardest races you can - there's nothing more satisfying than surviving a race in a top quality field - that is the best training you can do - for your mind & body! Kit Gilham entered an Elite race as his first event - as did Mattt Shipley - when he was 16 and look what they achieved in a short time. We should all look to set our sights higher.

Sorry Phil - waiting to get a year older so that everyone comes down to your level doesn't quite do this.

Sorry too for moving away from the topic of winter traing and asking questions rather than giving answers but I ain't qualified to give traing advice either - just experienced in pinning a number on me back!

Ooooh! Ouch!

Well... had been sharing questions and ideas, since - as a relative newbie to all this - I'm short on wisdom. I'm also short on natural talent (certainly in comparison with you, Paul) and available weekend time, which is why I train largely alone and largely methodically. You're quite right about needing the nous to follow the right move in races, but if you don't have the legs to follow it (or start it) then you might as well stick to the club run.

I'm all for stretching yourself. I got blown out the back of the same elite race in which Kit started his race career - as did others in the club. So I think there's room for both "surviving in a quality field" and also having some fun in races against others who have more limited time and more limited talent but who still give it 100% when they get out there. Call me lazy, but..

paulM wrote:This discussion has disolved into about four people swapping jargon!

Correct!

... my big question for those sharing their wisdom is what you personally are going to be doing with this fitness you will be gaining from the scientific training regimes you are on?

Big question, straight answer: entering some open TTs (hoping to get a good 25 in), racing the TLIs, and, since I realised they don't start until nearly May and I'm impatient to race again, I was going to find out about BCF races and a good way to get started. Sounds like you have some advice...

Paul, it's good to be disparaged now and then, and you're right that you can disappear up your own padded behind by obsessing over the sports science and forgetting what you are training for. But I think you're being unfair to attack the ambition of the contributors. You want people to get stuck in and enter the hardest races they can; like Phil, I'm interested in sport science because I want to race as well as I can and I have limited time to train. There's no disagreement there that I can see. It just happened that we were discussing physiology, not event selection.

On *that*, I'm ready to be guided. I posted elsewhere in favour of coaching at the club, and also mentioned the idea of a racing captain, who could, among other things, encourage newcomers and drum up entries for worthwhile races. I joined the club this spring and I was keen to compete, but it wasn't at all clear how to get started. So I posted on this forum and got a practical and encouraging response from Phil. TLIs may be 'comfortable' but it seemed like a good place to start. I'm sure I even saw you at the Milby round...it didn't feel comfortable to me

Now, if you'd been the racing captain, I could have asked you instead, and you'd have told me to enter the regional champs, and I probably would have done it. You're a few months too late for me, but maybe not for next year's crop of recruits... and when they get a taste for racing and start asking for training advice, I hope the club will be able to help with that too.

One question - are you saying you *don't* train on your own for road races?

tom

Seems like this thread should be 'It's getting Hot' !

There's an old saying 'I have seen farther by standing on the shoulders of giants' which surely applies here.

re shoulders of giants.
This is often miss-understood, including by the royal mint (its on some £1 coins). As far as I know the quote is originally attributed to Isaac Newton who by all accounts was a rather unpleasant man. His rival in science at the time was John Hook who was less than 5 feet tall. Newton was thought, therefore, to be having a swipe at Hook; standing on the shoulders of giants.... but not my rival.

Wasn't it Albert 'The Rocket' Einstein, disqualified from the Zurich-Geneva clasic in 1905 for exploiting relativistic effects to shorten the course, who said "If I've ridden faster than others, it is because I sucked the wheels of giants?"