A discussion about off-season cycling sessions as we re-build for speed and thresholds.

A discussion about off-season cycling sessions as we re-build for speed and thresholds.

This is a (b) bike session. You’ll see that we’re building into your customized HR, cadence and power from your Assessment Tests to personalize your training (not just pulling from magazine workout plans).


We’re creating this session to both continually improve communication and get new looks at what a training session can look like that has purpose and focus, rather than just going for a ride.


Keep in mind, in off/pre-season, we’re building new habits toward speed and anaerobic thresholds. Hence, shorter sessions that emphasize speed, form and technique while we leverage the extra time to build strength ahead of prep-phase base building.Remember: keep growing from a student of the sport, to being a scholar :)Definitely read the notes in the comments!!

Warm-Up
5-10 minutes to get a good sweat. Really look at higher cadence and a nice smooth pedal stroke that keeps you feeling light on the pedals.

Main Session
Repeat the following intervals 3 times
– 3 minutes at ~80% Max HR @ 10% above Average Cadence of your 10-mile TT Assessment Test effort
– 10 minutes hard at ~85% Max HR @ 10% above Average Cadence of your 3-minute Assessment Test effort
– 2-minute easy pedaling

So what does this mean in the Main Session? Let’s say, for example, your metrics are the following:
10-mile TT: Max HR=168, Average Cadence =83 and 3-min: Max HR=148, Average Cadence=88

Then what we’re looking at is
– 3 minutes hard at ~135 bpm @ ~90-95 cadence
– 10 minutes at ~125 bpm @ ~95+ rpm cadence
– 2-minute easy pedaling


If you don’t have a record of cadance or power, jump to the end of this and find ***What if I don’t have cadence metrics?***
So what’s happening here? We’re clearly warming up, and then getting to the business of teaching our body to kick into an anaerobic state in the first three minutes. This is stressing your body to provide a faster cadence the you’re used to for a the specified HR. Then, we’re backing down to slightly slower HR but higher cadence which gives your heart a rest.
…how does this relate to Power/Wattage…? 😉 Yes, this is the session question. Part of the answer is power/watts become our degree-of-freedom. You’ll be able to adjust the resistance/power/gears to fit the the criteria. Your athlete analysis should eventually help to reveal and internalize that being fast on a bike is a multi factor system: high cadence with low power won’t give us speed. A high HR can be achived without going faster…certainly we know that a low cadance can send us zooming if we set our gears/power at the right level, right?So what we’re trainnig ourselves here in these intervals is not just to practice getting better Assessment Test results, but actually changing our efficiency in riding and stressing/teaching our energy system to be smarter.
***What if I don’t have cadence metrics?***
If you don’t have a record of these metrics yet, fret not. Replace cadence with speed and HR with Percieved Effort. Cadence and Speed aren’t the best synonyms for one another, but with practice it can get better and is at least a good starting point.For the most part, Percieved Effort is a 1 (easy) -10 (hardest) can be looked at as a percentage of max HR. So, we would say your MaxHR (220-age) would be a 10 out of 10. Then each PE would be worth 10%… 9/10 would be 90% of MaxHR, 8/10 would be 80% of MaxHR, 7/10 would be 70% of MaxHR,…
***What if I don’t have cadence metrics?***

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