Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Comeback

Thoughts


Over the last month I have allowed my personal cycling life take second stage to numerous other items.  Honestly, I am not happy about this at all.  After numerous texts, Facebook messages and other social media inquiries, I am planning my Comeback.  This Blog will be the first step.  I am using it as a means of social intimidation basically making myself accountable to you, the readers.  

Each Sunday I am going to post what my next week’s workouts are and how I did last week.  The biggest problem with self-coached athletes is that they (we in my case) are not held accountable to anyone but ourselves.  This is a recipe for failure.  I can write some of the best plans to get athletes anywhere they want to go in our discipline, I have a fantastic one sitting in my inbox, but without execution, it simply is a plan, nothing more.

Looking at the race schedule I have identified two races that I want to be prepared for, the McDonald's Criterium in my hometown of Huntington WV, and Tour of Washington County in Hagerstown MD.  Both races are pretty close calendar wise, but it’s not like I have taken months off, just slacking since Jeff Cup.

Strategy


The first race is the McDonalds Crit in Huntington WV.  This is a very simple crit, with four turns in a downtown area, fairly fast.


Power Profile - McD Crit 6/11

Building a plan for Criteriums

As seen in the chart above, fitness for criteriums is very focused.  The unfortunate part of the chart above is where the power numbers lay.  Zone 1, active recovery, well do not need to train for that part.  Zone 6, anaerobic capacity, well that means suffering and a lot of it.  

This means that the workouts over the next month will be focused in on VO2Max efforts, shorter lactic acid, and sprints.

The VO2Max Efforts will be between 3 and 5 minutes, while the higher Anaerobic Capacity efforts will be closer to one minute.  

For the VO2Max, I will employ a combination or 3 to 5 minute efforts, with equal amounts of rest between.  As my fitness increases I will slowly decrease the rest intervals and increase the intensity of the rest intervals.  These efforts will be high on the normal suffer scale but mid-range on the Sufferlandian scale.

Now the AC effort are a completely different beast.  This is where the suffering will max out.  The Anaerobic Capacity workouts will call upon my anaerobic glycolysis system.  This is the one that mainly used for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  This 121 to 150% of your LT (Allen and Coggan 2010).

This means lots of 1 x 1 min intervals, when I say lots, I am talking 60 per week lots.   The method of 1 x 1 that works the best for me is Sufferfest Revolver and Sufferfest A Very Dark Place on the CompuTrainer, no cheating there.  This will not be easy, but will be necessary for success.  I will have to watch my ATL to ensure that it does not climb more than 7 TSS per week, to ensure that I am not over reaching  (Coggan 2013).

The last area that I will focus in on are my sprinting efforts.  This will help develop the Creatine Phosphate system.  This system is used for those all out 5-15 second sprint effort.  I will have to do a ton of these around Hains Point to build muscle and the coordination to execute.  This will not be nearly as painful as the AC efforts but will require absolute all out efforts.

So that is the basic plan.  I will post each ride on Strava and TrainingPeaks for your amusement.  Time for three solid weeks of pain, Sufferlandrian style.


Works Cited

Allen, Hunter, and Andrew Coggan. Training and Racing with a Power Meter. Boulder: Velopress, 2010.
Coggan, Andrew R. The scientific inspiration for the Performance Manager. 5 4, 2013. http://www.peaksware.com/articles/cycling/the-science-of-the-performance-manager.aspx.