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Your need for speed is at an excruciating peak by now. You have patiently built base, carefully watching your heart-rate, reining in your natural instinct to surge. You’ve spent a tantalizing month transitioning from low intensity to high intensity with some stimulating neuromuscular work, focusing on on-bike strength work mixed with high-cadence. All obediently carried out with the promise of unbridled efforts, at speeds where a stray bug can take an eye out. Put your Oakleys on, the time has come.
There are some restrictions, though. I’m not reneging on the deal; I’m just trying to make sure that all the hard work and patience exhibited so far doesn’t go to waste in a hasty ascent to form. You need to dole your intensity out carefully and progressively. Think of your efforts as an allowance that you need to cultivate, conserve, invest, and manage in order to profit from it. If you use it all to buy candy now, there won’t be any left for more significant treats later.
So, we will proceed with tightly controlled lactate threshold (LT) workouts, remembering sage advices to limit lactate accumulation in these workouts in order to maximize time spent at LT. As a coach, I tend to err on the conservative side, knowing the general nature of my type A charges to push the envelope. I prescribe LT workouts starting with twenty minute limits, assuming the heart rate levels are optimal. This is a bit of a tease to begin with, but as the LT workouts accumulate through the first week, most athletes wrap up the week satisfied and a bit knackered. I generally give each athlete the flexibility of at least testing his/her levels each training day through the week, in order to ascertain whether it is judicious to continue with the prescribed LT workout or default to recovery. If levels are beneath a predetermined low-limit, the default is observed and the ride should become an exercise toward recovery. If levels fall within the predetermined optimal range, another go at LT zone development is underway. I teach my trainees to perceive when they are loading under the imposed limits, and when those limits are exceeded, I strongly urge them to peel off and default to recovery. That will allow them to stay out of the proverbial hole, and stay in the optimal training zone, encouraging growth of high-output aerobic systems. The time limits at LT are extended by ~5% each week, allowing for flexibility in weekend training races or club rides.
Always giving the central nervous system (CNS) the priority it deserves, avoid making these LT workouts a tedious or irksome activity. I prefer to have these workouts blend into an existing group-ride infrastructure, just to make them stimulating and fun. You should try to keep to your prescribed agenda, but do it under the CNS protecting umbrella of a brisk group ride. Best would be to have a group that is on a similar program. There will be times when you will be forced to go out and engage in a solo mission of heart-rate monitoring and clock-watching. These sessions will often yield less than stellar levels due to CNS disapproval. I have learned not to question the CNS in these issues, and I don’t try to force-feed intensity into an unstimulated CNS. Get the work done, but don’t make it drudgery.
These workouts will begin the build-up to good form. Your need-for-speed will be appeased. There will still be plenty of form-building to be done through racing. This LT work will build up the primary high-end system employed when you race. You are now building the bulk of your form’s structure on top of the base you built earlier. Next article will discuss how to finish off your structure with a nice peak.
Go ride. Ride hard with wisdom. Watch out for bugs!