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Taking advantage of reduced working hours right now to keep training outdoors for the Raid Pyrenean next year, it's more fun than turbo and I get some vitamin D!
I have a variety of local road loops but my favourites combine a selection of relatively easy climbs between 8 and 20 minutes long.
Today I did a 10, an 8 and a 20 minute climb.
All I can use right now is heart rate, and I typically sit right on 90% max heart rate, although the last couple of minutes of the last climb were higher than this as I was trying to empty the tank.
Is this the best use of these climbs? My thinking is just to fine tune it and ride to the highest HR I can for those durations.
I'll be using some local CX rides and turbo for higher intensity stuff (e.g. shorter 3-5 minute efforts) plus a handy 'half pipe' road nearby with a 5 minute climb up either side 😎
Ta
Over the 100 hours that you get to complete the ride if you are doing the timed route the only time you will hit hills like that are in the last 15miles or so as you head down the coast where it gets a bit punchy. The other climbs are very very long your aerobic system will have to be super strong. I have done the route a number of times as a ride leader and some guys really come strong in days 3 and 4. Day 1 is fairly "easy" in the terms of climbing. It is a top route if you get the weather Have been there in June where it has been 1 degree on the top of the Tourmalet the week later it was 36!! You could use the climbs for some over geared slow cadence work to build strength but watch your knees
Yeah, I can't hope to emulate the big Pyrenean climbs in Central Belt Scotland 😁
Hoping just to accumulate as much time climbing as near to threshold as I can, yesterday's ride was apparently 50 minutes total at threshold although some of that was time-trialling flat bits.
Just hoping that approach, combined with some 'above threshold' work, makes good training sense...
I haven’t done that raid, but I did the Raid Alpine & have ridden many of the climbs on the route in the Pyrenees.
The 100 hours doesn’t really mean you’re flat out since it’s best done over five riding days (with a later start day one). the middle three days you’ve got the whole day.
Just need to be used to mountain riding, and to multiple hard days after each other.
I’d do longer rides to up the vertical metres gained, doing the climbs several times if there’s no others around, but at your sustainable pace rather than 90%! Then go do it the next day.
Do repetitions up the same climb at the smae intensity so you are hiting the same energy systems over and over in one ride would be my guess. But I appreciate it isnt so fun as a longer loop. Did you not use Trainerroad before? If you did you can send workouts to a garmin and follow them using percieved effort... harder without a power meter though
What's the terrain like before the climbs? If possible, I'd try to sit at threshold on the flat going into the climbs to extend the intervals to 20 -30 minutes.
If you have a 20 minute climb you can do the classic 2x 20 sub threshold/ sweet spot session.
Climb 20 minutes around high z3 heart rate. Roll back down and repeat.
I've done the raid, west to east.
At this point in time I'd be concentrating on spending as many hours as possible in the saddle for consecutive days and not worry too much about the terrain, HR or gradient. Nearer the time would be when I'd start to up the intensity of the sessions personally.
There are some lovely climbs, hope you enjoy it.
I would look at using hill training as giving you 2 different objectives:
1. Training specific to climbing you'll be doing in the Pyrenees i.e. sitting in the saddle and spinning your way up a steady gradient for an hour or so. If you've not adapted your cycling to suit, it can come as a bit of a shock. You can also mix it up, 5 mins seated, 5 minutes standing but at an aerobic intensity.
2. Use the hills for 1 or 2 higher intensity sessions a week to work on your fitness - more of a structured interval session. Even doing some high intensity stuff / maximal efforts as they yield the biggest return. You have to go 'hard' on these - I used to do mine on a hill that was exactly 1km with 100m ascent on the big chainring - it really hurt and I sometimes had to lie down at the top after the final effort.
Thanks all. I'm trying to have my cake and eat it by keeping the rides a loop, for my own enjoyment really.
I can still do this I think, not too difficult to combine the two shorter climbs into something approaching a 20 minute effort, and I can tag a bit extra onto the 20 minute effort to maybe eke out another 5 minutes, so ideal for the longer sweetspot stuff.
Still keen to do some work on the rollers so maybe some really prolonged sweetspots on the rollers, they don't have the resistance for anything harder!
Starting with the terrain and making the training work to that is really the wrong way around.
You need to assess the demands of your event, explore how you build your fitness around those demands over time, in a progressive fashion.
When is your event? If it's next year you need to be building the foundation of your periodised fitness now, not doing race-specific stuff.
If you want to do this properly, either get a Joe Friel book to understand training protocols and principles a bit more, or speak to a coach.
Sorry, that sounds grumpy - its not meant to 😉
No, I know what you say is correct, but I think I've decided I'd rather compromise the effectiveness of the training rather than spend too much time indoors.
I have the very basics of periodisation down, e.g. I have always aimed for an 80/20 split although with winter coming in I've started using shorter sweetspot rides rather than longer Z2 rides etc.
Good shout on the Joe Friel though, it's the fundamentals I want a better understanding of, I don't believe training needs to all be indoors, I dabbled with Trainerroad but it just seems laughably prescriptive...*
*I know why this is though, maximum gains etc.