I have been training the wrong way for the last 3000 miles. I am the type that just can’t stand going slow. Problem is, when it comes to cycling, you have to go slow in order to go fast.

If you go fast from the get go, you never get the most out of your muscles. Then by the end of the season, you are running out of power while those who started slow are just coming into theirs.

Here is how I’m told it works. You go slow for longer distances to slowly bring all of your muscles into play. The capillaries begin to spread and attach to the muscles that have not been used as much and this helps get oxygen to your body. This is important when you start going hard. You’ll need that oxygen!

If you just hop on and go hard, the body tries to work with what it has. It tries to feed fewer muscles and those muscles get overworked. Overworked muscles are unhappy muscles. Unhappy muscles equal unhappy cyclists.

So, even though it is a little late to change my ways, I have started a plan to do more interval training rides. This is where you go easy for a set time or distance and then go hard for a set time or distance.

Here are my laps of Cleveland Park:

Lap (#)	Time (m:s)	Distance (mi )	M Spd (mph)	HR (bpm)		Cadence (rpm)	Energy (Cal)
				Avg	Max
1	12:04	2.48	27.5	122	143	63	176
2	6:31	2.51	32.2	176	186	84	185
3	11:14	2.49	27.5	150	184	73	193
4	6:54	2.49	32.7	179	187	74	174
5	8:49	2.48	25.3	163	177	78	173
6	6:50	2.51	34.7	181	186	80	174
7	10:00	2.47	26.4	156	182	72	170
8	6:35	2.48	38.7	181	188	74	191
9	10:10	2.49	25.3	155	182	68	202
10	7:22	2.49	34.7	175	188	86	200

I was happy to see that on my hard laps (the red ones), I was able to stay under 7 minutes per lap. I also was able to nearly match my last hard lap to my first – only 4 seconds off. That last lap was actually not part of the training. I did a lap with some other cyclists.

The result of this was that I felt like my legs got an even better workout than when I push for an hour. By the way, my average speed was 17.2 mph for 1:26. Even though I felt my legs got a good workout, I recovered much faster. I really think this is going to help.

My plan is to do this most Tuesday or Monday evenings. Thursday evenings are for my climbing training. I’ll do intervals there as well, but they will be up Paris Mountain. This Thursday, my plan is to do five “laps” which should give me about 20 miles.

I think I just might be ready for the P3 when it comes around…

 

Tags: Cleveland Park, Training

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 10:06 am and is filed under Rides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.