http://www.bike.com/features/template.asp?date=2%2F6%2F2002&page=2&lsectionnumber=5&lsectionname=Smart+Training&lsectiondirectory=training
These days, there's an abundance of training information available that didn't exist even 10 years ago. Books written by Eddie B. and Greg LeMond were bibles in the '80's, and while they're still relevant today in many ways, they've been supplemented by more modern training literature. Yet with all the self-help information that's out there, many racers still have the same question: what should I do for training today?
I still adhere to the basic weekly schedule laid out by LeMond in his Complete Book of Cycling: easy on Monday, sprints on Tuesday, intervals on Wednesday, long, steady ride on Thursday, easy again on Friday, sprints again on Saturday, and a race simulation ride on Sunday. That schedule has stood the test of time and still makes the most sense to me. It has you doing your most intense workouts first, and decreasing the intensity of each following workout until you have a rest day and start it all over again. It's seems like the "Thursday long ride" is a fixture in every town where there's a collection of serious cyclists.
The racing season is upon us once again, and while "racing is the best training," as the adage goes, it's also the most disruptive to a systematic training program. Many of us will be racing on both Saturday and Sunday, rather than just the Sunday that the above program accommodates. If you're following a LeMond-style format, how do you substitute a race for Saturday's sprint workout? The two don't match up, so something has to give if you're going to stay on track.
The best way to address this is to "swap the cycles," as I refer to it with my clients. Essentially, you can break the 7-day training week into 2 smaller, "mini-cycles:" Monday-Thursday is the first, 4-day cycle, and Friday-Sunday is the second, 3-day cycle. If you view those cycles as entities unto themselves, you can simply reverse them within the context of a training week and still be completing the same amount of training, with the proper progression of decreasing intensity and increasing duration.
To see how this fits in, break it down and look what you'd actually be doing each day:
Monday: Friday's workout. Still a rest day, and nothing really changes.
Tuesday: Saturday's sprint workout. Again, these rides are essentially identical, and nothing changes.
Wednesday: Sunday's race simulation. Sunday's workout is a combination of the intervals from Wednesday and the longer duration from Thursday. So, Wednesday becomes your longest training day during the weekdays, and the end of the 3-day mini-cycle.
Thursday: Monday's rest day. Now you're starting the second, 4-day cycle, and what was your long day is now your rest day, 2 days before your Saturday event.
Friday: Tuesday's sprint workout. You've moved your sprint workout to the day before the race, a perfect way to open up. You won't want to dig too deep on this day; just enough to test yourself and make sure everything is working.
Saturday: Race. Now, instead of disrupting Saturday's sprint workout, the race falls on Wednesday's interval day, which coincides well.
Sunday: Race, or Thursday's workout. If you're racing again, a long road race fits in well with Thursday's long, steady distance ride. If you're racing a shorter criterium or a cyclo-cross, you might want to take a longer warm up and cool down to make sure you get in the appropriate duration. You can let the race take care of the intensity. If there's no race, you can go ahead and do Thursday's workout as planned, with the volume of intensity regulated somewhat by how you feel you've recovered from Saturday's race.
Swapping the cycles like this allows you to be prepared for a Saturday race day, while still getting the training done that you've planned for the week. All this without having to take an extra rest day, or feeling shut down in the race from having rested on Friday.
While I originally formulated this structure to accommodate a Saturday race, itıs turned out that an even bigger boon is for people trying to balance working with training. If, like most of us, you're working full-time during the week and have limited training time on Monday-Friday, the benefit here is in moving more of your shorter workouts to the workweek and maximizing your weekends.
Adam Hodges Myerson is a cycling coach, race promoter, team manager, and USCF category 1 racer. His company is called Cycle-Smart, and he can be reached at adam@cycle-smart.com. He lives in Northampton, Mass. with his wife, Allison, and their two cats Birdie and Marie.