Got my new training schedule from Lorri a few days ago, and we’re now going for speed rather than distance. She’s cut my hours/week back to 7.5 (from about 13-15), eliminated the resistance training, and is having me do shorter, more intense workouts rather than long endurance rides. So, yesterday I did gear-up drills on the trainer (start in a relatively low gear, pedal one minute, go up one gear, pedal one minute, and so on for five minutes, maintaining the same cadence – this is harder than it looks!). Tomorrow I’m doing aerobic intervals – half an hour warmup, then an hour of 10 minutes in zone 4 (lactate threshold/max sustainable effort) alternating with 10 minutes in Zone 2 (easy cruising), then an hour of easy riding. Next week, same thing:
Tuesday: lactate intervals on the trainer
Thursday: gear-up drills
Saturday: longer lactate intervals on a road ride
Sunday: easy spin
plus some stretching and core work.
The idea of all this (I assume) is to increase my lactate threshold, which in turn will increase my speed for endurance work. Here’s an article on lactate thresholds, for the curious.
Not sure how I feel about it just yet – I must confess that I hate to work hard on the bike, but if I want to bring up my speed, that’s pretty much what’s necessary. Be interesting to see what Saturday brings…
One nice thing about this revised training schedule: more time for weaving! 🙂
wow, what a schedule. now i know why i’m not getting any faster! hang in there sister. if you need a riding partner on your sunday spin ride, lemme know!