For most cyclists there is what is called an "off season". This is the time of the year when the temperatures drop, and the weather conditions generally aren't favorable to riding a bike. I have subscribed to that concept in the past, even though I am a year round rider. Up until this year, I have only ridden recreationally until the Spring when I start training for the Tour to Tanglewood in late Summer. This year I am seeing a major change in my training needs. For the first time, I am actually working towards several different goals at different times during the year. My first goal comes relatively early in the cycling season, mid April. This means that my normal recreational riding just won't quite cut it during the winter months.
I am actually finding that instead of letting my fitness drop as I did last year, I am having to not only maintain it, but add to it. You see, the Assault on the Carolinas ride is a 100K ride through the mountains of North and South Carolina. There are two major climbs on this ride, one of which is heading up Cesar's Head State Park. This climb is longer and steeper than any I have attempted before on a bike. I will have to be in shape for this ride, or risk having to give up before cresting the major climb of the day. Lets put this in perspective with an elevation chart from their website.
That major dip represents about 2,000 feet worth of climbing in about 7 miles. There are also some other rather steeply pitched sections as well. While this is nothing for a professional cyclist to ride, it is a bit daunting for me. I am by no stretch a climber when it comes to my cycling style. I am just not built for it as I am rather larger. 5'11" tall and averaging mid 180's for weight. However, I have accomplished climbs up several Category 4 climbs, and numerous Cat 5's. I have learned a lot about how to make it up these climbs with a couple of trips to the Blue Ridge Parkway over the past year, and will be using that knowledge to make it through the AOTC.
Something else that I have found I have a certain amount of control over is my power to weight ratio. I can adjust those numbers somewhat based on training and diet. That has been my goal through the first two months of the year. I have been trying to drop weight while adding power to my legs. With the weather outside not the best for cycling, my ability to go out and practice on hills has been reduced a great deal. However, I have been able to make use of my Cycle Ops trainer which has allowed me to spend a great deal of time on my bike.
Now, before you assume that a trainer is just so you can get on and turn the pedals, let me clarify just what this contraption does for me. First of all, there is a resistance wheel hooked up to a fluid drive on the rear. This provides a progressive resistance which mimics the behavior of wind and rolling resistance....simply put, the faster you go, the harder it gets. The goal of a trainer is not just to get on and find a comfortable gear and spin for hours. Not only would that be brutally boring, it would net you very little in the way of results other than some calorie consumption. When you add intense sections to your workout though, you will start to see several benefits. First of all, your calorie consumption goes up, your heart rate goes up, and you start building endurance at your upper levels of performance. This is interval training, and this is what I do on the trainer.
Riding on a trainer is unlike any road riding you have done. It is harder....a lot harder! In a regular road ride, it is rare that you will ride for long periods of time at or near your aerobic threshold. Our bodies just aren't designed to do that under normal circumstances. You find that you soft pedal down grades, and slow cadence going up grades, and just maintain on level ground. Working on intervals changes that. You pick an intensity, and then you stick with it at a steady state for 30 seconds, up to 30 minutes or more. It is not uncommon for me to work at 87-93% of my maximum heart rate for periods of 15-30 minutes at a time, while pedaling around 18mph. That just isn't found on the road.
I tend to focus on longer intervals as opposed to the shorter intervals. They accomplish two different things. The short intervals are great for practicing sprinting. You will spin up in a big gear, and high cadence for a very short amount of time. Your heart rate will max out, and you will be forced to stop because your body just can't continue at the same rate. Then you rest for a short time, and repeat. While the speeds achieved on these sprint intervals are impressive and great for bragging rights, I don't think that they will benefit me nearly as much as the endurance intervals I spend the most time doing.
In these longer intervals, the intensity is less, but you are still working at the top range of what your body can maintain for a specified time frame. It is important for you to understand the workload and be able to pick the right gear/cadence early on that you can maintain for the duration of the planned interval. The higher the gear, the shorter time you can maintain the effort. Over time, with experience, I have found that the amount of power (or workload) I am able to deliver has increased. My heart rate has remained comparable, but my speeds are increasing, as is my cadence in many cases.
Unfortunately, I don't have the use of a power meter, so I'm not positive about how that whole power to weight thing is working out for me. However, I have been keeping track of my weight and my performance in a controlled environment (trainer) and have noticed some things that support what I'm wanting to see happen. First of all, my weight started to drop and I went from 186 to 182 early on in January. It has since been creeping back up and is now sitting at 185. However, my performance on the trainer is getting much better and more consistent. I'm able to push bigger gears now than I was, and go for longer without feeling like I'm going to pass out. My heart rate is staying about the same, if not a tad lower. Ironically, I have bumped my max heart rate to a respectable 196 bpm which is very high for a 39 year old. All of this supports the theory that my training is working as suspected.
The real test to the theory can only be made on the road in real world conditions though. I did have the chance to give that a try. As I said, I'm not able to do much riding outside right now, and the last ride in January was on the 20th when I rode a metric century of 62.11 miles in 3 hours and 43 minutes. I had an average speed of 16.7 mph and climbed 2,831ft. The weather was chilly and there was a strong wind to contend with which I fought on the return leg. Still, I thought this was a pretty good ride considering the time of year.
After 13 sessions on the trainer, I again had the opportunity to return to the open road on Feb 12 for another metric century. While I had no intentions of comparing this ride with my last ride, the numbers did give some very interesting insight into my training plan. The distance for this ride was 62.36 miles which was completed in 3 hours and 31 minutes. The mileage was nearly the same, but I shaved off 12 minutes while going a quarter mile further. It might not seem like much, but I maintained an average speed of 17.7 mph (a full mph faster!) and climbed 3,061ft which is over 200 more feet than the previous ride. Now....the weather might have played a factor in this, but it was windy on this second ride as well. Since I will rarely ride with the winds over 10mph, I would say that the winds were comparable on both days, as was the temperature.
So, what does this go to show? Unscientifically it shows me that with about a month between road rides, the trainer has gotten me to a much higher level of fitness. Will it help when it comes time for the Assault on the Carolinas ride? Only time will tell, but as the weather starts to improve, I will be searching out hills to climb for the remaining few weeks before I saddle up in Brevard, NC. The idea is to have my first training peak happen when most cyclists are just really getting used to being back in the saddle after several months away.
