I didn’t know one single thing about training for endurance sports, so this book was a good place to start. Apparently the book on DIY training plans for cycling. Most of the book is spent laying a conceptual foundation, and then all of the detailed “how” is in the last ~50 pages.
Aerobic capacity, also called “VO2max,” is a measure of how much oxygen you are capable of using when riding at a maximal effort for a few minutes. The more oxygen you can process to produce energy, the greater your aerobic capacity.
Anaerobic threshold (sometimes called “lactate threshold,” although physiologically these are not exactly the same thing) is the percentage of your aerobic capacity that you are capable of sustaining for a long time, such as 40 to 70 minutes. The higher the percentage, the greater your anaerobic threshold fitness.
Economy is tied to all metrics of performance in that it has to do with how much energy you waste while riding. Economy is largely determined by your physical structure, but it also includes your pedaling style, position on the bike, and bike-handling skills. The less energy you waste, the better your economy.
I should also point out, however, that if you are in the first two or three years of training for bike racing, a power meter isn’t all that important. In year one, you are primarily focused on changing your lifestyle and building a strong base, so your primary goal is to get out the door and ride often. Frequency is therefore the key to your progression at this stage.
For the intermediate cyclist in years two and three of racing, the common key to continued success is increasing the duration of rides. That builds aerobic endurance and takes a couple of years to accomplish.
The experienced athlete’s focus, however, must be on intensity. If training frequency and duration are still not well established, then the advanced rider will not make progress.
For the typically experienced high-performance rider, volume accounts for roughly 40 percent of race-day fitness while intensity is the reason for the remaining 60 percent.
[Describing TSS] Keeping track of your training load week after week through such a scoring system gives you a good idea of how fit you are becoming. If you are able to progressively overload your body over time, you can deduce that supercompensation is under way and you are becoming more fit.
Fatigue changes more rapidly than fitness when resting. So while a pre-race taper will shed a lot of fatigue quickly, fitness will be lost very slowly. If done right, on race day you will feel as if you gained fitness, even though that feeling is actually the result of having less fatigue. In other words, you’ll be on form.
There are only three workout components you can manipulate to produce fitness: frequency, duration, and intensity.
At AeT, the body removes the lactate-associated acid flooding the muscles as quickly as it enters them. But at 4 mmol/L and higher, the acid, comprised of hydrogen ions and other chemicals, begins to accumulate in the blood and so restricts muscle contraction. The body can’t remove all of the acid unless you slow down considerably. That’s why you start to suffer and can only maintain this level of intensity for a limited amount of time. An athlete in exceptionally good physical condition can maintain an intensity at AnT for roughly an hour—with a lot of suffering—whereas AeT can be sustained for several hours without agony.
In fact, I suggest that your distribution of training intensity should be just the opposite. Most of your training time should be at a very low intensity. Over the course of a season, the total time you spend at or below your AeT should be around 70 to 80 percent. The remaining 20 to 30 percent should be above the AeT, with a sizable chunk of that above the AnT.
The single biggest mistake in training is to make easy workouts moderately hard (between AeT and AnT), thus decreasing recovery. You need lots and lots of easy riding if you are to perform at a high level. I know that seems contradictory, but it works.
If you search the Internet, you will find many formulas that rely on personal data such as age, gender, and perhaps other variables to determine your maximum heart rate. Once you have that number, you’re often told to take a percentage of it and call that your AnT or some other name that refers to the upper threshold. The most common of these formulas for finding max heart rate is 220 minus age. There are some others, but you should steer clear of all of them because they are unlikely to work.
When rear derailleurs were introduced in the early 20th century, the Tour de France banned them. It preferred to see racers change gears by dismounting at the start of a climb and reversing the rear wheel, which had a single gear of a different size on each side.
Shooting for the stars with the hope of making it to the moon does not motivate because down deep the athlete knows the goal is unachievable.
Regardless of whether you are a world-class rider preparing for a Grand Tour or an accomplished rider who mostly does local criteriums, there are only three physical metrics of endurance fitness that must be developed through training. That’s it. Only three. They are aerobic capacity, anaerobic threshold, and economy.
Also referred to as “VO2max,” aerobic capacity is your physiological proficiency for using the oxygen you inhale to produce energy. It’s your maximal volume of oxygen. The more oxygen your body is capable of processing, the more energy it produces and the greater your power output becomes.
Your VO2max starts with your heart. Changes in aerobic capacity largely have to do with how much oxygen-carrying blood your heart pumps to your working muscles with every beat. This per-beat measurement is called “stroke volume” and has a lot to do with how great your aerobic capacity is. One purpose of training is to increase your stroke volume.
Besides stroke volume, there are other physiological contributors to aerobic capacity such as aerobic enzymes found in the muscles, blood vessel diameter and ability to dilate, blood volume, and hematocrit, or red blood cell count. All of these have to do with delivering massive amounts of oxygen to your muscles when you put the pedal to the metal.
Now it’s time to take all of this science talk about the three determiners of fitness and begin shaping them into common cycling-specific workouts. To do this, I organize all workouts into six categories called “abilities.” Each of the abilities is related to aerobic capacity, anaerobic threshold, and economy in some way. The six abilities are divided into basic and advanced, as follows:
Basic abilities:
Advanced abilities:
You should concentrate on developing the three basic abilities before moving on to training for the last three. The basic abilities are typically developed early in the preparation for a race, and the advanced abilities are the focus of the last few weeks before the race.
For novice riders (and even some intermediates), the basic abilities are the typical limiters. Athletes new to the sport should focus their training on them. There is no need to devote much time to the advanced abilities until the basic ones are well established, and establishing them may take one to three years of basic training. For experienced athletes who have devoted several years to improving aerobic endurance, muscular force, and speed skills, the common limiters are the advanced abilities—muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, and sprint power.
The concept of periodization in sport has its roots in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a state secret during the early decades of the Cold War and was used only by Eastern European countries.
The starting point for any training methodology is its underlying philosophy. As a coach, the philosophy I have used for many years is rather simple: The closer you are to your race, the more your training must be like the race.
I'm James—an engineer based in New Zealand—and I have a crippling addiction to new ideas. If you're an enabler, send me a book recommendation through one of the channels below.
