Introduction

Part 1: Training Cycles

Part 2: Training Zones

Part 3: Implementing the Workouts

Part 4: Overview

One of the most difficult aspects of this heart rate based training program is, paradoxically, it's straightforwardness and simplicity. Many riders are "just looking for a training schedule;" They want some numbers on a page that tell them exactly what they have to do each day. That is precisely what this program provides, tailored specifically for each individual. But that alone won't necessarily make one a better rider, or prevent overtraining. Understanding how to interpret the numbers on the page, how to implement each workout, and how to adjust or even abandon the perscribed workout based on recovery needs is the key to using this program effectively. Initially, that's the coach's responsibility. The numbers aren't useful without someone to help you understand and modify them. Eventually, the rider will begin to see the pattern and logic in the decisions being made, and the program will start to make sense.

Part 1: Training Cycles

Since the program is based on cycles of work and rest, it's good to understand each cycle, what it's called, and what the goal of each one is. Training is essentially a process of stressing a system, letting it recover and adapt to the stress, and then stressing it again. This cycle of training exists at every level; from intervals and recovery in a single workout, to a hard season of racing followed by a rest in the fall or winter. Even on the largest scale, you often see riders who miss a season due to injury and come back the following year stronger than they were before they stopped. Imagine taking a rest season!

Seeing your training in this pattern of repetitive components can help you plan from top to bottom and find a rhythm as you execute it. It's no different than those fractal art pictures that look like a bunch of random swirls; if you stare at them long enough and change your focus, instantly a picture appears that you hadn't seen before. In the context of our training plan, that picture is your fitness. The cycles you see, starting with the largest ones and then getting more specific, are:

1. Career
2. Season/Calendar Year
3. Macro (phase or period of season, 2-18 weeks)
4. Meso (2-6 weeks)
5. Micro (1 week)
6. Mini (3-4 days)

Many coaches define their cycles in different ways but use the same terms, which can sometimes be confusing. The key is understanding that each process of stress, recovery and adaptation builds on itself in repetition to create the cycle. 2 mini-cycles make a micro-cycle, 4 micro-cycles make a meso-cycle, multiple meso-cycles make a macro-cycle, and so on.

Many riders may not even have begun to think this large, but it can be important to know what cycling means to you in the long term. Do you want to be a European pro, or perhaps find time to stay fit enough to be competitive in local racing despite the pressures of a job or family? Both ends of the spectrum are difficult challenges that require different approaches and different mindsets. Planning for career goals is an important part of what will motivate you to go out the door every day to train.

A season can vary greatly from rider to rider based on geography, style, ability, and a host of uncontrollable circumstances that have yet to be set in motion. Generally, a season has a typical structure of peaks and valleys that starts at a certain level of fitness and ends at a higher one. For each season, it's important to have concrete goals. Upgrading to the next category, making it onto the national team, or improving your time up Mt. Washington are all things to build a season around.

A macro-cycle is a 2- to 18-week period within a season where a particular energy system or type of training is focused on. Your six main types of macro-cycles are the off season, the pre-season, the base period, the intensity period, the peaking period, and the maintenance period.

• The Pre-season

The pre-season is that period after you've had a break and completely recovered from the season before, but it's still to early (or the weather's too bad) to actually begin training consistently on the road for the next season. This period can be completely non-existent, or it could last a number of months. If you raced cyclocross at the end of your road season, took two weeks off in early January, and then went to California to start racing in early February, you wouldn't have a pre-season at all. On the other hand, if you stopped racing in September, took a month off, and then started riding again in November without planning on racing until March, you might have a 12-week pre-season.

Your pre-season can serve a number of purposes. In colder climates, the goal is mainly to try to keep a minimum level of road fitness by riding 2-5 days a week as the limited daylight and weather permits, augmented by cross-training such as cycling-specific gym work or perhaps nordic skiing.

In warmer climates, it can be used to work on specific weaknesses without the concern of having to be well rounded for racing every weekend. Even in this case, it's a benefit to be able to include some gym work to prepare for the coming season.

• The Base Period

In the base period, the emphasis is on building an aerobic foundation. The majority of the intervals are done in the Light and Middle zones, below the lactate threshold. The goal is to increase your aerobic power and efficiency, and raise the heart race at which you become anaerobic. The weeks get both progressively longer and harder during this period, with Weeks 6 and 12 (and essentially Week 1) being rest weeks, and Week 11 being the longest and most intense. While there are 12 training weeks in this period (and some riders will do these twelve weeks straight through), the period may last as long as 24 weeks, depending on the rate of progression. Here are some examples of how this period can be broken down:

1. Cycle 1: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Cycle 2: Week 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Total: 12 weeks in 2, 6-week cycles.
2. Cycle 1: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. Cycle 2: Week 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Cycle 3: 7, 8, 9, 10, 6. Cycle 4: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Total: 20 weeks in 4, 5-week cycles.
3. Cycle 1: 1, 2, 3, 1. Cycle 2: 2, 3, 4, 1. Cycle 3: 3, 4, 5, 6. Cycle 4: 7, 8, 9, 6. Cycle 5: 8, 9, 10, 6. Cycle 6: 9, 10, 11, 12. Total: 24 weeks in 6, 4-week cycles.

There's a limit on how many weeks your body can focus on developing a certain aspect of fitness before it becomes a dead issue and staleness can set in. This is the main tenet behind the idea of periodization. Theoretically, you can only work on an energy system (aerobic, anaerobic, CP/ATP) for 12-18 weeks before improvement will stop without either a marked rest or a change in the emphasis on the system being trained. In most cases, though, a certain level of fitness has to be achieved before the next phase of training can occur. Thus, in the list above, we see the third, 24 week base period. This is essentially 2 base periods; a base for the base, if you will. For new riders who may never have followed a structured training plan before, this is typically the approach I will take. Most other riders will follow some mix of 4-6 week cycles, depending on racing and work schedules, weather, and health.

• The Intensity Period

During this period, the intensity percentage starts at a very high level and decreases against the duration, which starts at a low level and increases. The goal here is to take the fitness created in the base period and maximize it, making your fitness complete. The emphasis shifts from raising the threshold to increasing the ability to ride over it (in other words, from lactate threshold training to lactate tolerance training). The majority of the intervals here are Middle and High, with some occasional Submax in the early weeks. This is the time of year where good form is won or lost. The intention is to bring your form to the edge and keep it there for a long as possible without going over. Until a rider's limits are known, this can be very difficult to do. Week 13 in particular is a week that is best done in conjunction with a stage race or a number of weekly training races. It can be just as responsible for ruining a rider's season as making it successful if the body's signs are not paid attention to, and the numbers on the page followed blindly. This is the time of year when motorpacing can be very useful. The training philosophy during this period can almost be thought of as "on or off;" either you're training very hard, or you're riding very easy to recover.

Again, the same rules of periodization apply here. There are only so many weeks you can spend doing this kind of training before the improvements will stop. It's in this period that cycles must be flexible and creative to accommodate the racing schedule and a rider's goals for the season. Looking at the schedule as whole and stringing together races with strategically placed rest weeks yields a steady, consistent racing period, with the rest weeks providing the extra snap and freshness for important events.

• The Peaking Period

The peaking period can last as little as 2 weeks, or can continue for as long as a rider's form holds. By this point, the athlete's fitness should be a complete, total picture. The intent is to back off from the training so that the body's energy levels begin to rise, doing just enough to maintain fitness levels, but not so much that freshness and recovery are impaired. This may consiste of as little as one day of hard training during the week between races, with the rest of the time spent resting and recovering.

• The Maintenance Period

The maintenance or "re-build" period can be anywhere from 4 weeks or more. The goal is to try to push the form back up a notch if needed, or even bring on another peak. Here you'll bring some endurance back in to the program after the previous period of short, intense work. There is some High in the phase, but the biggest emphasis is on Middle. This period will often fall in the late summer when the majority of your hard training has been done, and your body is fit enough to handle a bit of volume again. It's also a great time to try to focus on any weak aspects of your total fitness picture.

• The Off Season

The off season is designed to be at least 1-2 weeks completely off the bike. Of course, it doesn't have to be restricted to that, but it really shouldn't be any shorter. Up to 6 weeks off is the limit of what you can get away with and not have an insurmountable task of regaining fitness. The idea of the off season is to completely repair the body and recover from the previous season. You can't have highs without lows, and this is the planned low for the year.

The meso-cycle is a 2-6 week training period within a macro-cycle. It typically consists of 3-5 progressive weeks of training followed by a rest week.

The microcycle is typically a period of one week, though it can be adjusted to be 8 days or 6 days long as well.

The mini-cycle is a period of 3-4 days. There are 2 in each micro-cycle. The first is the Monday-Thursday period, and the second is Friday-Sunday. In an 8-day micro-cycle, the Monday-Thursday mini-cycle can be repeated twice. In the case of limited training time during the week due to work or other concerns, the shorter, 3-day Friday-Sunday mini-cycle can be done first, followed by the 4-day cycle. This moves more of your shorter workouts to the weekdays, and lets you maximize the weekends. Within each mini-cycle, the days play out in a traditional Lemond-style program, as follows:

Part 2: Training Zones

So, now you know how to set the schedule up and why. You've got your numbers, you've got your heart rate monitor, so now what?

This zone is fairly easy to understand. Purely aerobic, oxygen, glucose, fat and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) are the primary fuel sources. In this zone, residual lactic acid is cleared from the blood quickly and minimal new lactate is produced, allowing recovery to take place. Blood lactate is below 1 millimole/liter of blood. A millimole/liter (mM/L) measurement is simply a way to describe the concentration of lactate in the blood.

This is not a training zone; it is a recovery zone, and you'll notice that your training program doesn't account for it when determining ride times. Anything in this zone will be above and beyond the numbers you get "credit" for, but will still be an important part of an interval workout.

This is the basic endurance zone, the first aerobic capacity training zone. Anything easier than this is recovery, not training, and you might be better off using the time to take a nap. Fuel sources are the same as the recovery zone, but lactate levels are approximately 1 mM/L. Duration is unlimited.

Also known as extensive duration. This is the first real training zone. The emphasis here is on aerobic capacity and endurance. Same fuel sources as previous zones, though fat begins to be used less.

Interval lengths for this zone can vary from 15-60 minutes, with 10 minutes of recovery between efforts. My recommendation is a range of 15-30 minutes in interval length and 50-100% of that for recovery time for riders new to the program. Advanced riders can push to the 60 minutes interval length when large volumes of light are planned, but in all cases, 30 minutes is the ideal period.

The intensity of this zone is comparable to a rolling tempo in a road race, or sitting in during an easy criterium. You can still speak in full sentences, but are somewhat uncomfortable. This is the time when the emphais is on aeobic efficiency, and a cadence of 105 RPM's is recommended.

Also known as intensive duration. This is the lactate threshold training zone. Typically, this zone should be about 10-14 beats below your threshold. In the past, it was thought that to improve one’s threshold, one had to ride at threshold. It's since been shown that training 10 or more beats below yields the same training benefits without doing nearly as much damage to the athlete.

Interval lengths for Middle should be from 5-20 minutes, with 10-15 minute blocks being the ideal range. Longer than 20 minutes, and your venturing into Light, less than 5 minutes and it would be a duration appropriate for a more intense training zone. Recovery should be approximately 100% of the interval length.

With Middle intervals, the emphasis can be on either aerobic strength or speed, and should be controlled with cadence-- high or low to emphasize the area that needs to be addressed. Either way it should be an extreme; you should never feel comfortable doing this intervals, unless you're simply using it to open up for a race.

If you use the USA Cycling training zone recommendations, zone 5 can be broken up into many different types of intervals, all of which we give the descriptive names of High, Submax, and Max. We will consider these from highest to lowest intensity.

Power Starts, Hill Sprints, Sprints, CP Jumps/Max : The duration recommendations for this zone are unanimously 8-15 seconds in any program I've encountered, though recovery recommendations vary from 1 to 5 minutes The intention with efforts in this zone is to increase the body’s store of creatine phosphate (CP), and not lactate tolerance training. As a result one must be sure not to completely empty the body's store of CP and turn the effort into one the emphasizes a different energy sytem, and to completely recover between efforts in order to insure that CP stores are replenished. This happens quickly, but not so quickly to be foolproof. So, the interval can be viewed as one minute long: 8-15 seconds of maximal effort, and the remaing minute as recovery. Then the minimum rest required before the next interval is one minute. Thus, the tightest your sprint workout should ever be is an 8-15 second jump every second minute, but can be looser depending on time and recovery ability.

If the interval itself does not exceed 15 seconds, the effort will be primarily alactic; that is, minimal lactate will be produced, because glycogen is not a fuel source. If CP stores are not completely replenished before the next effort is made, CP cannot be used as a fuel source; the body turns to glycolysis and lactic acid is produced, creating an interval more appropriate for lactate tolerance. Thus the importance of full recovery between sprints.

Different cadences and sprinting styles should be emphasized at different times of the season. Weeks 1-6 should emphasize sprinting in the saddle, beginning from walking pace, and in a gear small enough that it can be spun out in the first half of the sprint, and stayed on top of for the second half. Normally, these will be done in the small ring. Weeks 7-12 are also sitting down and from a walking pace, but now in a gear that takes the entire 8-15 seconds to spin out. This may require the big chainring. Weeks 13-18 should emphasize sprinting out of the saddle from a walking pace, and gear that can be spun out by the end, while weeks 19-24 focus on sprinting out of the saddle and shifting down all the way through the sprint.

Aerobic Power, Climbing Acceleration/Submax : Also known as intensive intervals. The interval length for this zone is 45 seconds to 2 minutes, with 1 to 5 minutes recovery. The ideal structure is to do these as one minute on, one minute off. Never take a recovery period shorter than the interval period in this zone.

While the heart rate in this zone should be at or above lactate threshold, the delayed reaction of the heart to catch up to this effort makes going by heart rate somewhat useless. The idea here is that the effort should be maximal, but because it must be held for a slightly prolonged duration, the result is necessarily submaximal, hence the name. Essentially, you should begin the effort as if you were doing a sprint, and then attempt to hold the effort for the remainder of the interval. The intention here is to improve lactate tolerance. This zone is very damaging to the muscles because of the high lactate levels reached, and should be undertaken cautiously.

Similar to Middle, Submax should emphasize speed or strength, though in this case it's aerobic speed or power. So, cadences at each extreme, high or low, should be chosen to emphasize the day's training goals.

VO2 Intervals/High: Also known as extensive intervals. Interval length in this zone is 2-4 minutes with a recovery period equal to the interval or longer. The ideal interval length is 3 minutes, which helps to differentiate it from either Submax or Middle.

Concerning heart rate in this zone, one should look to be as close to lactate threshold as possible. An interval of this intensity and this duration begins as anaerobic, but because of the duration is aerobic as well. Muscle glycogen is the primary fuel source.

Training in this zone is intended to increase your ability to deliver oxygen to working muscles quickly, and tolerate high lactate levels. The idea is to improve lactate tolerance by learning to ride through the pain of being anaerobic, and increase your anaerobic strength or speed. This type of training can be very beneficial, but the high lactate values it creates can be very damaging to the muscles and difficult to recover from. Overdoing this zone is the easiest way to ruin your season. It's recommended not to do more than two workouts of this type in a week, and that includes racing. Additionally, one should not undertake this type of training without 8-12 weeks of base training.

What this means is that when you see High in your program, you must consider: am I racing this weekend? How many times? If you have two High workouts scheduled in a week with a race on Sunday, you should only do the first workout, and even then, only if you have fully recovered from the previous weekend of racing. The only exception to this might be the week 13, where a type of intentional overload is the goal.

If you’re recording heart rates in a race, set your upper limit as your lactate threshold, and value anything above that as High.

Part 3: Implementing the Workouts

So, now you understand the structure of the season, and what the point of training in each zone is. But what do you do with the numbers on the page. If it's Tuesday, and you've got 31 minutes of Light and 10 Sprints, on a 73-minute ride, what do you do? We'll go through the days of the week here and try to break things down.

Monday and Friday: I like to distinguish between Monday as a recovery day and Friday as a rest day. After a weekend race, you need a day, and often more than one, to recover from the efforts made. Whereas on Friday, after your weekly training, you'll likely be able to recover overnight, and instead need a rest day to be fresh for the weekend. On both of these days, you will most often ignore the intensity specified in the program, and do the entire ride in Easy. Since you will have most often done extra intensity on the weekend, these are the days where you can take some of that back. On the other hand, if you followed the program without ever racing, you could follow the numbers as specified. I occasionally do this in the early season when I'm training without racing.

Additionally, if you have switched your program so that you are resting on Thursday, you might do the Tuesday sprint workout on Friday to help open up for the weekend, provided you feel recovered enough to do so. This is where interpreting the numbers on the page becomes very important.

Tuesday and Saturday: Theses days are almost identical, and the emphasis is on sprints and other high intensities. Tuesday is slightly more intense than Saturday, so you might find a few more sprints, or perhaps some Submax in the latter part of the program. You will almost always have some Light as well.

Typically, it's best to do a block of Light as a warm-up before starting the sprints. I prefer to do my sprints in one straight set, but multiple sets of 3 or 5 with longer breaks in between can be done as well. If I can finish all of my sprints, I'll then finish the workout with the remaining Light, if there is any. Or, if there's Submax or High to do, I will do them in descending order of intensity. That is a rule that can be generally followed through this program: use the Light as a way to warm up, but then continue through the numbers with the highest intensities first. The same holds true if the workout is to be broken up into double sessions. Do the Sprints in the morning and the Light in the afternoon. The only exception to this is when training for Race Endurance, which we'll discuss later.

I prefer to do my sprints different ways at different times of the season. Most often, and always at the start of the season, I do them in the small chainring (39 x 17-15), starting from a walking pace, and sitting down the entire time. The first 5 seconds focuses on an explosive effort, while the second 5 focuses on leg speed and maintaining the sprint. This focuses on a well-rounded effort, and teaches good pedaling technique at a time of the year when the joints may still not be ready to swing a big gear around. In my second cycle, I might switch to a larger gear (52 x 19-17), but still to them sitting down. Now the focus is on accelerating the entire way through the sprint. In the intensity period I'll begin to mix things up and do some out of the saddle sprints in the 52 x 15-11, still combined with some in the saddle. When thinking of cadences, you want to be doing extremes: either a large gear with low RPM's, or a small gear with high RPM's.

Wednesday: Wednesday is your middle distance/Middle intensity day. Typically you will have your largest blocks of Middle on this day, though that changes somewhat in the intensity period when some of that Middle turns to High. But the workout can be implemented much like Tuesday: a block of Light to warm up, and then blocks of Middle. I try to make my blocks as large as possible, usually up to 15-20 minutes, before I begin to do multiple sets. I rarely do smaller than 5 minutes. When doing Middle, it's again important to either be in a large gear or a small one. You should never be comfortable. Either you're emphasizing leg speed, or you're emphasizing strength. Which to emphasize depends on the level of fitness, time of year, and races targeted.

Thursday: Thursday is the longest ride of the week, and while there's often a certain amount of Middle to do, the real emphasis is on the Light. It's nice to take the first hour or so of the ride to ease into things after two hard days previous, and then try to finish the Light with equal time on and off for the remainder of the ride, or until the Light is completed. 30 minutes on/30 minutes off works well, as does 15-20 minute pulls in Light when riding in a small group. The middle called for on this day is there to emphasize aerobic endurance, and should be done as the last interval of the ride (different from the recommendation of intervals in decreasing intensity on the other days of the week). Again, interpreting the numbers is important in helping you decide if you're still fresh enough at the end of this ride to complete the numbers.

Cadence-wise, it's ideal to do the Light in something slightly faster than the comfortable 90 RPM's. It's important to stay on top of the gear and have a lively pedal stroke in this zone.

Sunday: Sunday's ride is a combination of the duration and the Light from Thursday's ride, and the Middle from Wednesday's. It's the day you essentially put it all together and have what might be your hardest ride of the week. This is a great day for a group ride when there's no racing to be done. You want to combine the goal of the Middle on Wednesday by doing one set early in the ride, and the race endurance from Thursday by saving one for the end.

Part 4: Overview

As an overview, you can look at your training goals on this program as the following:

1. Increase aerobic endurance, speed, and strength
2. Raise lactate threshold, and increase power and efficiency
3. Increase lactate tolerance, and speed and strength over threshold.
4. Increase overall anaerobic power and efficiency.

What you do with these things is almost limitless. They apply to every discipline of endurance cycling: road racing, criteriums, cyclocross and mountain biking. I would perhaps only leave out a match sprinter on the track from this program, as I think it applies, with modification, to even a pursuiter or a kilo-rider. Whatever the application, the intention is to bring out the best in each rider.

In a larger context, I believe class in a rider cannot hide. As a junior, I raced one year at the Tour de L'Abitibi in Canada. On the longest stage, I placed second behind a Dutch rider named Max van Heeswik. It was his fourth stage win of the tour, and he would eventually take a total of 5. We talked a lot about training that night, and he told me that he was only riding to school and back every day, because the Dutch coaches would not let him train hard yet. In contrast, I had motorpaced multiple hours every day for a week in preparation for that race, and that second place was the highlight of my junior career. Max went on to ride for Motorola, and most recently for TVM, Mapei and Domo. I spent the next 10 years struggling to turn pro in the US. The point here is that riders with that kind of talent will show it regardless of the training they do. It's those of us who are only moderately talented that have to be impeccable in their preparation. I survived in the sport for as long as I did because I trained smart, and raced smarter. I worked on my weaknesses, but I played to my strengths.

Furthermore, it's precisely because I wasn't the strongest rider that I believe I'm an effective coach. I had to pay infinitely more attention to detail than a more talented rider did because I couldn't afford to waste any advantage I might get. Essentially, I had to think as hard as I pedaled. The key then is to take that knowledge and apply it to the talent your parents left you with. For some that might mean riding the Tour. For others, that might mean upgrading to category 3. Both of those are fair goals, and those who will go the furthest in the sport are those who can combine the talent with the knowledge and discipline. However, I believe success with those types of goals and the amount of natural ability you have aren't even the real point of being on this program.

How much ability you have and how far you go in the sport are relatively unimportant details in the grand scheme of things. Personal perfection is much more important, and allows for fulfillment regardless of natural ability. What we're interested in, and what we're attempting here is mastery of the self. Everything else that follows is incidental. The skills and qualities you will acquire following this program are not limited to just climbing or sprinting, they include introspection, honesty, communication, and discipline. You will have to solve problems and evaluate situations, often making decisions based on limited information. This is the true satisfaction of following a training program for cycling. Success is in the journey itself, not the destination.