Turbo Session 11th Jan – Lactate Threshold

Well done to all those that completed the session on the 11th Jan. For those wishing to repeat it or for those who didn't attend it here are the details of what we did:

Easy warm up for 10 mins
Cadence ramp, 1 min intervals of increasing cadence, 100/105/110/115/120+ with 30 second recovery between each interval.
Single leg drill
3 x 1 min of each leg with 30 second recovery

Main set
5 mins in a reasonably hard gear followed by 5 mins 1 gear harder.

Aiming for a gear that takes us just past Lactate Threshold (LTH). For most of us the is around 85% of max heart rate. It's usually between 80 and 90% of MHR but without undergoing blood tests it's hard to be certain so we used the 85% average. I had mine measured some years ago at 145BPM with a max of 171 so 85% is about right for me.

5 mins recovery

Repeat 5/5/4 as above

You see the affects of cumulative loading on my heart rate data below. The first set between 22 and 32 mins I just crossed my LTH. The second set between 36 and 46 mins my heart rate was higher for the same work and the recovery less.

3 mins in the gear that we finished the last 5 min interval in
1 min recovery
Repeat the 3 + 1 in the same gear.

You can see from the graph between 50 and 58 mins that this made me cross my LTH twice. Repeated crossing of LTH and then going below it is a method to increase LTH which is very beneficial for being able to work harder for longer in time trials.

2 mins in 1 gear harder than the last set
1 min recovery

Repeat 2 + 1

1 mins in 1 gear harder than the last set
1 min recovery

Repeat 1 + 1, use the biggest gear you can power through at a cedence of 90+

These last 4 sets are anaerobic intervals and will get the body used to working with that system.

Hope that set is useful to you.

Barry

Winter Base Training – Week 2

Firstly, congratulations to all for a stunning turnout on Saturday. 30 riders for one endurance ride must be a club record. We’ll see if it was new year’s resolutions, the good weather or a strong intent to make it a good season over the coming weeks. I hope that everybody enjoyed the ride and got the right training benefit. Well done to those in the group that managed to keep a double pace line running from Alderholt. There was some good club riding there and we’ll aim to repeat that where road conditions permit. Thanks also to Konnor and Richard for looking after other members and ensuring that everybody got round.

If we continue to get such large numbers we will split the group into smaller sections so that do not cause a major obstacle to other road users.

This Saturday (14th) we will start the ride from one of our other start points. This is the car park at Ashurst station. I believe it is still free to park there, if anybody from that part of the forest can confirm in the comments field of the blog I’d be grateful.
The route will be a bit longer that the first ride (45 miles) and a little hillier. We will still aim to keep the pace steady as it’s very early in the base phase of our training plan.

The Test Valley route is as follows:

Ashurst, Woodlands, Hill Street, Kents Oak, Timsbury, Kings Somborne, Little Somborne, Stockbridge, Houghton, Mottisfont, Kents Oak, Wellow, Furzley, Bartley, Ashurst.

We will leave at 0900 sharp, please be there and ready by 0850 for ride briefing. We should return to Ashurst around 1200 punctures permitting. As ever, please check your bike over this week and ensure that your tyres are in good condition and suitable for winter riding. The road around Mottisfont can get a bit muddy.


Regards
Barry
barry.wootten@gmail.com

Turbo Session 4th Jan – Progressive Intervals

For those of you who were at the session and may wish to repeat it or for those who are looking to do sessions on their own at home here are the details of the club turbo session form the 4th Jan:

Easy warm up for around 10 mins. Cadence 90 RPM, easy gear.

Cadence pyramid
1 min 105 RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM
1 min 110 RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM
1 min 115 RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM
1 min 120+ RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM
1 min 115 RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM
1 min 110 RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM
1 min 105 RPM, 30 seconds easy spin at 90 RPM

Main Set
7 x 4 minute intervals with 2 min 30 recovery
Each interval one gear harder than the previous
You can vary the intervals / recovery and number of intervals to suit your needs.
10 minutes easy spin to recover.
The screen dump below is the output from my heart monitor from that session

From 0-10 minutes easy pedalling
From 10 to 20 minutes the cadence pyramid
From 20 minutes to 1 hr 10 you can see the 7 x 4 minute intervals. Each one progressively harder and consequently a higher heart rate and less recovery as the session progresses.
The gearing one my bike and the resistance on my turbo suited this session well. I was able to start in the large ring on the 3rd largest sprocket and change to finish on the smallest sprocket on the last interval. Your gearing and resistance may well differ so work out your gear ratios so that you know when changing form the small ring to the large what sprocket changes are required.

Hope this helps your winter training.
Barry

Winter Base Training – Week 1

Winter Base Training – Week 1

Weather permitting Saturday 7th Jan will be the first week of the clubs winter base training. The ride will be on a well practiced ride known as Vic’s Route.
We’ll depart from the Station House at Holmsley at 0900 sharp http://newforesttearooms.co.uk/. In the event of a strong possibility of black ice or any other weather that makes it dangerous to ride I will post a message on the email e—group and the training blog. So please check your mail and the blog site http://nfcc-training.blogspot.com/ before leaving home. The route will be around 37 miles and we will aim to keep the average pace to around 15MPH, so assuming no punctures or mechanical incidents we should return around 1130. For those wanting to go a bit longer there is always the option to top and tail the ride with the journey from home. I’ll be leaving Brockenhurst at 0825 from the usual meeting point so that I’ll be at the tea rooms got 0845 for anybody that wants to ride down together.
The pace might feel slow to some of you that have been out on the Saturday rides but don’t worry about that. It is the right thing to be doing this time of year and the gradual build up of pace and distance over the next 3 months will pay dividends in the long run. If in doubt please read the previous post about Long Steady Distance.
We will aim to include a couple of intervals at a slightly increased pace and subject to traffic practice some through and off drills and keeping a double pace line.
Please ensure that you’ve prepared your bike as well as possible for the group rides. We all get punctures and suffer the odd mechanical problem but you fellow club members will appreciate these being minimised as nobody wants to stop unnecessarily on a winter’s day. So please give your tyres a check before Saturday, remove any stones that may have got embedded, check that they are in good condition and the right type of tyres for winter riding. Also ensure that you have two spare tubes, levers, multi-tool and a pump. All bikes should have front and rear lights as we can easily get caught out in poor visibility. A bit of hi-vis gear is also a good idea. Lastly, wear club jackets if you can, we want to create a good impression of NFCC and cyclists in general. If we ride well and display our colours we will help that image for our club and our sport.

“Vics Route”
Holmsley Tea Rooms,
Burley,
Ringwood,
Moyles
Court,
Fordingbridge,
Ringwood,
Hurn,
Sopley,
Burley

I look forward to seeing a strong turnout from the Saturday regulars and getting re-acquainted with those that I’ve not seen since last winter’s base training. Any questions please email me or leave a comment.
Regards
Barry
barry.wootten@gmail.com

Winter Turbo Sessions - The Basics

Winter Turbo Sessions

Whilst we are in our base training period and doing the Long Steady Distance (LSD) rides at the weekend it is still important that we do some higher intensity work each week. With the dark evenings and inconsistent weather most of us will be doing some indoor cycling, either in the gym, on a turbo trainer or on rollers. Here are some ideas of sessions that have been of use to me and hopefully will give you some more ideas of what you can do:

Warm Ups
Cadence pyramids. We have been doing variations on these at the Wednesday club turbo nights.
Warm up for 10 mins or so in a steady gear, cadence around 90RPM. If you don’t have a cadence sensor then try a pedal 15 revolutions every 10 seconds.
Do one minute at 105 RPM, recover back to 90 for 30-60 seconds
Increase by 5 RPM for next interval and recover.
Repeat to 120-130 RPM and then intervals back down to 105.
A 20 minute warm up of that type will ensure that your muscle are ready for some high intensity work.

Basic Pyramid Session
A session that gets progressively harder, peaks and then takes you back down to recovery. Only takes an hour with a good warm up but can be used to take you above Lactate Threshold into an area where you are working anaerobic ally depending on what gears / resistance you use:
0-15 min: warm up in steady gear
15-30 min: Up one click or one gear - base line, suggest about 70% Max Heart Rate
30-35 min: Up one click or one gear
35-40 min: Up one click or one gear
40-45 min: Drop back one click or one gear
45-50 min: Drop back one click or one gear - back to base line
50-55 min: Drop back one click or one gear. Try to spin
55-60 min: Warm down
If you wish to make the session longer or harder just add more increases until you reach the intensity you desire. Will all sessions of this type remember not to start too hard. If you’re going to repeat the sessions record what gears / resistance you use so you know where to pitch it next time.

Basic Ramp Session
20 minute warm up. Use cadence drills if possible.
Pick a gear that’s just one above the intensity that you would do for a base ride. Pedal at a steady 90RPM for 6 minutes. Remember that gear. Recover for 3 minutes in an easy gear.
Go to one gear harder for 6 minutes. Then recover for 3 minutes.
Repeat for 6-7 intervals with each one in one gear harder.
After the last interval spin out in an easy gear until your heart rate is down to a Perceived Rate of Exertion of 2-3 (light exertion).
Again, you can vary the session with the timings of intervals to recovery and the gears used. A ratino of 2:1 effort to recovery is a good baseline.
Lactate Threshold Session
See separate post on turbo session 21st December
A session designed to increase your Lactate Threshold by working above the threshold for a short interval and then recovering below it. Repetitions of this are a way of training your body to increase Lactate Threshold and ultimately enabling us to work harder in a time trial.

Happy training

Barry

Increasing Lactate Threshold

As a follow up to the turbo session on the 21st December here's a quick summary of what why we are trying to increase our lactate threshold and how we started training to do it:
Lactic acid is produced by our muscles and at low intensity our bodies can process that continuously. When we reach a state called Lactate Threshold our bodies are producing more Lactic Acid than it can process, this then results in the build up of Lactic Acid and ultimately limits our performance. Typically most of reach that point at 80-85% of Max Heart Rate (MHR). This point is sometimes expressed as a % of VO2(max). Most sedentary people reach this at around 60% and good club athletes at around 80%. Elite endurnace athletes may be as high as 90%.
Therefore, for our type of events it is advantagoeus to increase our Lacate Threshold and the session we did at the turbo class was designed to help us do that. If we can time trial at a higher intensity for longer this will directly result in more power and speed. By doing intervals above Lactate Threshold we can train our bodies to deal with Lactic Acid. The method we used was to continuously cross that threshold. If you look at the output from my heart monitor you can see that I crossed that 85% threshold 7 times during the session.

To remind you of the session that we did and to enable you to re-create it / adapt it to your needs here is a summary:
20 mins warm up, drills to increase cadance, some single leg drills.
Pyramid session
1 min in a gear that gets you below Lactate Threshold but isn't too easy
1 min recovery
2 min interval, 1 min in the gear that was used for the first 1 min interval and 1 min in a gear that's two clicks harder
1 min recovery
3 min interval, 2 mins in the first gear used and one min two clicks harder
1 min recovery
4 min interval, 3 plus 1 as per the previous pattern
1 min recovery
5 min interval, either 4 + 1 or 3 + 2 if you can manage it
1 min recovery
5 min interval, either 4 + 1 or 3 + 2 if you can manage it
1 min recovery
4 min interval, 3 plus 1 as per the previous pattern
1 min recovery
3 min interval, 2 plus 1 as per the previous pattern
1 min recovery
2 min interval, 1 plus 1 as per the previous pattern
1 min recovery
1 min in the harder gear
10 mins easy pedalling to cool down

This session has been adapted from one I learned from Richard Stannard's Turbo Torture class that I attended on the 19th December. If ever you're in the Windsor area on a Monday or Thursday I can recommend them as excellent sessions and good opportunities for learning good training techniques.

Feel free to adapt the session by adding / deleting more intervals depending on the time you have and your fitness.

Are you ready for LSD?

Base Training – Long Steady Distance Riding
Firstly many thanks to Andrew Costello for sending me the following link:

http://www.rapha.cc/winter-training/?cm_mmc=email-_-301111-_-img-_-wintertraining

It underwrites a lot of the principals that we need to adhere to make our winter base training a solid foundation for our season. I have also received similar advice from an old pro (Keith Butler) who was ride leader on a winter training camp I attended some years ago. The key point for those January rides is one of Long Steady Distance which we will kick off at our first ride in January. On that training camp some years ago Keith was watching me mash a massive gear on the first ride of the week, for the rest of the week he banned me from using the outer chainring as we were there to turn the pedals for a long time not to push big gears. I can certainly attest to the fact that I got a better training benefit from the camp and coped with the longer rides better. Therefore, I am suggesting that this will be a good thought to have for our January rides.
With the mainstream adoption of compact chainsets I was wondering if the gearing of modern bikes will make it impossible to do a long ride on the inner ring. On the assumption that we will not use the smallest sprocket on the inner ring a cadence of 90RPM should enable us to have enough speed to do the Long Steady Distance rides in January at a suitable pace. Perhaps only using the large chainring where we need that control on certain descents. Now would be a good time to practice riding on the inner ring as we prepare for base training in January.
Please try it and let me know how you get on.
The table below shows the speed in MPH that a 90 RPM cadence generates. If you ever want to find information on gears the first stop is the late Sheldon Brown’s page:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

Inner chainring
Sprocket 39 36 34
12 22.9 21.1 19.9
13 21.1 19.5 18.4
14 19.6 18.1 17.1
15 18.3 16.9 15.9
16 17.2 15.8 15.0
17 16.1 14.9 14.1
19 14.4 13.3 12.6
21 13.1 12.1 11.4
23 11.9 11.0 10.4
25 11.0 10.1 9.6

So if this doesn’t match your gears put in your own figures so you can work your own out.