by Robh » Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:12 pm
[quote="Michelle"]Now this is getting into the realms of 'me no understandee'.
Just trying a bit of structured training ( or is that straining) as have some really BIG events to do this year, rather than riding round and round my hill circuit and trying to get ' more miles on the legs' which is all I did last year.
Doesn't seem to be too bad so far, come back from 9 weeks off the bike, done 3 weeks on it, and managed to cling on to the 19s nearly all the way to the cafe.
The reason you've hung on is your Skiing over the last 9 weeks as this has helped mainated your structure (base work) you have developed on the bike. This doesn't disappaer overnight unlike functional training (interval work).
What is structure i.e structural training? What does it do? It will develop the aerobic capacity by :-
getting enough oxygen inside your muscle cells
adequate concentrations of the enzymes necessary to oxidize pyruvate at high rates
enough mitochondria in your muscle cells
your muscles, heart, and other tissues are not very good at extracting lactate from the blood
To prove that Michelle's Skiing helped maintain her structure, during the recent Mallorca camp one of the women who was riding with me was telling me she's hardling done any real riding since 2004 when retiring from Ironman. Most of the winter she's just beeing doing the odd cross country skiing. When I asked her when she last rode becuase she was doing a grand job with riding with guys she said don't ask as it was a very long time ago. She strongly believes her years and years of structural training on the bike and the skiing she's being doing recently has helped her to be able to ride with us in Mallorca.
Rob