Why do zone training on the club run?????

[Robh]

[quote="Sean Hogan - 何祥"]I'll be getting back to Juerg shortly.

[Daniel Gee]

are you having difficulty getting it up Sean?

[Marky Mark]

[quote="Antloony"]

What will be interesting is to follow Seans and Marky Marks progress whilst training the FaCT way though I doubt I'll need to be looking over my shoulder in case they catch me up. These pair have been cycling longer than myself and put more hours in on the bike compared to me. (By the way guys thats in no way a dig at you, rather a subtle way of me saying stop wasting your time, get out there and try pushing yourselves harder instead of riding round everywhere at walking pace watching your heart rate every 10 seconds) Go on, thrash your legs, fair more enjoyable than staring down at a HR monitor wondering if you should walk over the speed bumps in case your heart rate goes to high from the effort of climbing them.

Yours awaiting some kind of reply claiming I'm talking crap.

Ant the out spoken one

[Marky Mark]

[quote="Sean Hogan - 何祥"]Ant, you've awoken the monster within Marky Mark. As for myself, your opinions are your own...obviously .

[Marky Mark]

[quote="Juerg FaCT"]Hallo Sean , Mark and Michelle ( and Rob )
If you like I would enjoy to give you a training proposal based on the test results from FaCT
FaCT is a trest idea not a training idea, but we use the test result to develop some kind of a control workout situation over a certain time.
Here my proposal :
Sent the full FaCT resuylt and the following anwers I need to know.
1. How many hours do your wokr out /week.
2. How are this ours set druing the week ( what days and how long )
3. When do you ride in a group as in your case the team you are in .
4. What day time do you work out
5. When is normally your last food intake prior to the training and when after the workout.
6. What kind of other sport you do besides biking.
( hours of workout include on the bike hours , but tell me wjhat other workouts and hours you may train besides biking and if yes what kind of sport.
7. Tell me your latest Fit test number , if Rob did one of theis tests with his polar watch.
Now I will sent the proposal to Rob as well , as well as to your e - mail adress.
If you are interested in thsi mail to factquestions@hotmail. com
I will give you further details there with some short versions of assessments you can do at home or with Rob. Cheers Juerg

[Antloony]

Nice essay there Marky Mark. I feel you've taken my original comment a tad too seriously though but I fully respect your indepth reply and honesty.

I find myself slightly frustrated with you though Mark as I'm convinced there's a far faster cyclist inside you trying to get out, just look at the 1st TT you did back in the summer and how you beat everyones expectations including your own in setting a bloody good time so obviously the desire and ability to get better and faster is lurking in there some where, its just a case of waking it up and getting it out of you. Maybe the method you've chosen will work, only time will tell. I'm only putting over my point of view and what I did to get to where I am now which is just sheer hard work using only one ride a week. I guess the same won't work for everyone as we're all different. If I am talking CRAP then its CRAP that worked for me

I didn't start out to offend you Mark, thats not my style at all, I try and encourage people too better themselves when cycling. I'm always trying to push people to move up a group and try that little bit harder. The last thing I'd do is discourage anyone from wanting to improve.

Sean, I think your right, I think Marks turned green and has ripped his Addiscombe shirt off.

Look guys, I hope what your doing is right, I'm obvioulsy no expert in training and only gave an insight into what worked for me. I shall watch for your progress with eager eyes and if it works, hell, who knows, perhaps I'll go down the same route myself.

[Antloony]

Great, so now I have the Hulk and Iron Man after me (spooky, I watched the Iron Man film last night)

See Sean, you can do better so stop messing around and get on with it......

(runs off to hide under the stairs)

[Andrew G]

Think that cleared a bit of air Mark . A good point well made, in between the flecks of spittle ,regarding what you want from training.

[personal viewpoint alert]The training section of the forum shouldn't only be about hardcore training to race at x level, and/or be elitist in who feels they can post or discuss things there.

A lot of people may want to train simply for better all round fitness and health, or if racing and choose to do some TTs for example then they will be competing against themselves and their own PBs (certainly initially) rather than against George, RichV, Rob R-E, Jon H etc[/personal viewpoint alert]

Ant I may be wrong in my interpretation, but think part of the idea behind the LBP training is to build the base on which you can then build. As per Marek's analogy in another thread, about more blocks at the base allowing you to build a taller pyramid rather than a thin tower which won't be as stable or potentially reach the same height. Depending on a persons physical (could be medical) and psychological make-up they may not have any "base" and will therefore hit the wall early, or spend a lot of time running in the red. Sean (sorry to get personal with an example) can put in big strongs digs to charge off the front but tends to run out of steam. With his endurance built up he'd be able to continue with these efforts for a more sustained period or meter them out to a greater degree.

Whichever path you, me, Toks, whoever wants to follow to get to their goals I think they should be left to do it. Toks and I don't agree on a number of things (you may have noticed ) but equally we are both after different things from cycling, have different aims, and different time constraints. I think if something isn't working for "us" then most of us are intelligent enough to realise that and look at a different approach to see if that suits us better.

Heck everyone told Obree he was mad, didn't know what he was doing etc. but it seemed to work for him. Might kill me if I tried it but then we're not all the same.

[Marky Mark]

So you think the stairs will save you, do you? Hmmmmm

You far from upset me Ant, I have just taken a lot of knocks on the chin lately (not as many as Rob) and kept my big gob quiet and started to listen to everybody's opinion.

I remember well that day of the unofficial TT and done a run under 27 minutes at me first ever attempt, then done the official one at just under 30 minutes and bottom lip out.

Looking outside the box. I have done alot this year with a few ups and downs.

I tried the hard and fast method.... In my case and in my body, IT DON'T work.

I lost heart with it all and even started to look for excuses not to go on the CR, luckily I just kept me head above that one.

I'm going to try another method that may suit my body, I'm sure the urge to go faster will come back and when it does you'll more than the bloody stairs to hide under young man!. You never know, I might even put my neck on the racing choping block.


Marky Mark (teacher at Anger Management class just gave me a gold star )

[Jon H]

Never mind Hulk or Ironman, I'd quite like to be Superman but the UCI have banned that position.

[quote="Antloony"]Nice essay there Marky Mark. I feel you've taken my original comment a tad too seriously though but I fully respect your indepth reply and honesty.

[quote="Marky Mark"]I lost heart with it all and even started to look for excuses not to go on the CR, luckily I just kept me head above that one.

[Paul H]

Whos next then?

Clearly riding at Max HR after a long break isnt a good idea.

Differences in opinion shouldnt be taken as knocks on the chin.

[Robh]

Found this on another forum :-

Its important to know that there is no precise exactly solution on how to get faster. Each rider, each season will be a bit different. For example, I personally would not be so quick to dismiss longer endurance fat burning miles during this part of the season. Here's why some might need to do more volume earlier: while someone like Kenny or a multi-season veteran rider might have years of race and athletic experience, thus a well developed, mature, efficient fat burning endurance system...someone more new to endurance sports might need more work to train their body to be efficient at lower intensities. The lower intensity volumes can help your body learn to burn fat more effectively, teach you about pacing and dosing your efforts as intensities rise thru a training block, and ultimately give you far better conditioning, strength and fitness as you turn up the intensity.
For someone like, lets say, Ned Overend, he's been doing endurance racing for so many decades, that i read he really does almost nothing during the early offseason since he has chronic, great, endurance. Others with lesser experience might need that volume during their first few seasons.

For example, if one were to follow strict periodization, or Joe Friels scripts, you'd see they usually have 3 months of base for new riders versus 1 1/2 to 2 months of base for more experienced players.

Its also important to tie all this into what kind of riding you want to focus on.....if you are a sprinter and thats your thing, then you might be far better served putting in heavy hours in the gym, more so than doing 4 hour slug fests on the road bike. vice versa, if you were a triathlete or century rider, of course volume will matter. On the other hand, one could argue you should over train that which fails you. SO if you are an endurance rider constantly beat in sprints (yours truley), then maybe your energies are best spent hitting the weights and building fast twitch to improve your deficiency.

And, there is always more to learn. And, always new and great ideas. Heck, for 2,3 years, ive' struggled with anaerobic training. always was a failure at it. So Coach Cummings came up with the Tabata intervals, a pretty unique structure for training anaerobic intervals, andf rankly, it really really helped me. Research new stuff, ask questions, do not take any one persons' ideas as being correct. They might only work for that person. Heck, they might not even work for that person, they just dont know differently.

If i were a rider looking to get better, i'd consider acoach. even if one doesnt have the loot or interest in full coaching, many do one-off consults where you could speak once every few weeks/months. they can help establish an Annual Training Plan. So you know broadly and , well, day - to day exactly what you should be doing to hit your peak events in full stride. Systems like Training Peaks are really awsome for that as well, and have automated systems for working up a full training plan. Cosgrove uses that and compliments it with occassional chats with Coach Cummings. Thats a great set up for most.

Now, to simply answer your questions: in my opinion, base miles are important. you do not want to do junk miles or garbage miles as thats just valueless time on the bike...and there we'll have plenty come race season. if you figure that most people are burning fat at 65 to 85% of their max heart rate, assuming you're not a wattage/power/srm/powertap guy, then thats about your zone. anything heavier or harder and you push on up in extensive endurance and subthreshold /tempo kind of stuff. thats not bad, but too early for a base period. an occassional harder 5 to 10 to 20minute einterval isnt a bad idea. some guys will do form sprints a few times a week when cooling down to keep the legs from droning at the same tempo. work on cadence, spin ups, isolated leg training (one legged drills).
on hills, try going "easier" since you would end up going harder on the hills than the flats if you kept speed linear. hills have an inherent load so go easier there, and on the flats, push a bit more. too many do the reverse; we roll up hills at 300 watts and are doing 160 watts across a flat.
try to keep it linear, steady. for someone with an FT in the 330 range, peg it in that 210 to 260 range , occassionally above, try to avoid being below.
no umph. no chasing. no chasing wheels. work on breathing,nice and lite. think about form, about posture, about breathing, about cadence, and avoid junky low wattages, going to easy.

[Marky Mark]

Can 'speed' be classed as a zone?