Spring Training

Spring is upon us. If you live here in Montana, that means the racing season is finally about to commence, and it's also probably stll going to snow a lot more. The first Missoula training race is a mere week away, with the "real" season close behind. The always challenging Rocky Mountain Roubaix has been pushed back a couple weeks from the previous years. This only means it's going to hurt a little more, as racers have a few more weeks of hard training in their legs, as well as some solid racing miles already in the bag. Many hard core racers, including some of my teammates on the super motivated GAS/Intrinsik Cycling Team will be attending Frozen Flatlands in Spokane, and the always brutal Tour of Walla Walla out in Washington. Racers will come into the Roubaix fit and ready to put the hammer down. Will you be ready???

Where should your training be at this point in the season? Well, as always, that is highly individualized and depends upon your overall goals. If you're following a periodized training plan, and if your goal race is mid summer, like say the very prestigious Tour de Bozeman at the end of July, then, generally speaking, at this time of year you should have a pretty good base established and be starting to ramp up the intensity in your training.

Hopefully you took a short break following the end of your season last year. This should have been long enough to rest and recharge your body and enthusiasm for the sport and training, but not to long as to allow all your hard earned fitness to completely disappear. Then, you began putting in some nice easy miles on the bike, as well as enjoying some cross training to help beat the dull drums of endlessly slogging away on the trainer. Some time in the gym to build muscular strength and some solid core work would also have been a wise way to spend part of the long, cold, dark winter months. You may have started with some nice long endurance rides, adding in some on-the-bike-strength-work, gradually building up to tempo rides, and occasionally adding some sub-threshold, threshold, and some climbing work into your training schedule. If your goal race is mid summer, this should be done, or very close to it.


So, what should you be doing now? With races starting to pop up in April, now is a great time to focus more on building your threshold power. Although you may have been doing a little threshold work throughout your base building period, now is the time to really focus on it. Before doing full on threshold work, a few weeks spent doing sub-threshold intervals, or sweet spot training is advisable. Sweet spot work is done at 88-94 percent of your functional threshold power, and is a great training intensity to help push your threshold power higher, without inducing quit as much fatigue as full on threshold work. Throw in two or three 12-20 minute sweet spot intervals during a couple of your weekly endurance rides, and you'll be ready for some full on threshold work after six to eight of these sweet spot rides. Once you've progressed to full on threshold intervals, which are done at 96-105 percent of threshold power, you can gradually increase the amount of time spent in this zone. Depending on your level of fitness, you can start with 2 x 12-15 minute intervals, then progress to 3 x 15 minute intervals, followed by 2 x 20 minute intervals, and 3 x 20 minute intervals. These are hard efforts, and require some recovery, but can be done up to a couple times a week. You should eventually be able to ride for 1 hour at this level of intensity, but it will hurt. A great workout for this time of year is to do a sweet spot or threshold ride with some high intensity burst thrown in. While riding in your sweet spot, do some bursts of 20 to 30 seconds every 2 to 5 minutes up to about 120 percent of functional threshold power, not allowing your intensity to drop out of your sweet spot or threshold zone after the burst. This is a great ride to help you get ready for the constant speed changes you will encounter in your races, as well as helping with being able to recover slightly, even at a fairly high intensity. Another area to address as the racing season approaches is short term power. Doing a few short, 1 to 2 minute intervals of high intensity will also help you prepare for those speed changes, and perhaps give you the ability to create some separation from the pack to start a breakaway, or hang with the peloton as those breaks are constantly being chased down.

Althougth the first races of the season may not figure into your overall goals, if you've done your work up to this point, you can still be competitive and get in some good racing miles. There will be some racers who are in exceptional shape, even this early in the season. If you're following a periodized plan you may not be one of them, don't let this discourage you. Use these races for training. Get in some good, solid miles at race intensity, and some good racing experience. Get used to riding in the pack again, throw in some attacks, chase down some breaks, try some things you may be afraid to "risk" doing in a race that "counts". Most of all, have fun, whatever that means. I still haven't figured out what the fun part is, as most of the time I'm suffering to bad for it to be even remotely fun, but, regardless, I'll still be paying my hard earned money to toe the line, and see what I've got week in and week out, hope to see you there.

Until then, keep it PURE.
Coach Brad