How I Train

This posting describes bicycling related training regimens I have followed with a focus on what I have done lately to support my transition into endurance bicycling. I will lightly describe some fundamental concepts related to training and reference sources for learning more about these topics. My hope is that this posting will give the reader insight into the factors to be considered in creating a bicycling training program. One thing I want to say up front is that training regimens such as those described below are meant for people who do not have medical conditions that would put them at risk due to the training.

For a long time I rode a bicycle without much knowledge on how to train. In my twenties and thirties I would do rides that ranged from 30 minutes to an hour in duration. When road riding I would ride as hard as I could sustain for the distance of the ride. I had only one goal when road riding, to not be passed by another bicyclist. When I went to the gym I would ride a LifeCycle and do the hill profile at a level that would put me in the upper ranges of my aerobic zone. The results of this approach were satisfactory relative to my purpose of achieving a level of aerobic fitness to provide balance with the weight training that was my focus at that time. What I did not achieve by this approach was any significant improvement in my bicycling capacity once I had achieved a certain level of fitness.

When I resumed bicycling a couple of years ago, I went right back into the same training mode as I had done in earlier years. Sure enough my riding capacity hit a plateau fairly quickly. I was fine with this for a while. I thought this was about as fit as I could get given that I was approaching 50 years in age. This perception changed once I decided to start endurance riding and did some homework to support that goal.

My homework started late in July, 2008 with some reading. I bought three books on bicycling: "The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling: Build the Strength, Skills, and Confidence to Ride as Far as You Want" by Edmund R. Burke and Ed Pavelka; "Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100" by Roy M. Wallack and Bill Katovsky; and "Cycling Past 50 (Ageless Athlete Series)" by Joe Friel. After glancing through the books, I decided to read the Burke and Pavelka book as a starting point. It seemed to be offer the broadest introduction to bicycling. This was something I needed since I didn't really know much about bicycling at that time. I had time to read the bike cover to cover during a vacation I took at the end of July, 2008. What I learned in the book has been the foundation for my training since that time. I have also read about half of the Wallack and Katovsky book and found the information in it to be a useful supplement. It provides a more rounded perspective on training that puts a broader emphasis on overall life-style. The only knock I have for the Wallack and Katovsky book is that it presents several alternative approaches for most of the topics it covers with very little discussion by the authors as to relative pros and cons. I suspect the "Cycling Past 50" book will offer additional insights. I promise to read it around the time I cross the half century age threshold in April of this year.

So what did I get out of these books relative to my training? I will start with the results. After following the century preparation training program I found in the Burke and Pavelka book, I was able to do my first century with ease. After the last break at mile 83, I was feeling strong and hooked up with a couple of other riders. We formed a small pace line and maintained a speed of between 22 and 23 mph on the flat routes of the eastern shore of Maryland. After a few miles one rider dropped out and the other rider and I kept up the pace all the way to the finish in Salisbury, Maryland. We covered the last 17 miles in 45 minutes. We did not get passed and flew past many other riders. Now this was an easy century due to being flat, at sea level, and the weather being perfect. Still I did far better than other people who had done centuries expected me to do, averaging 17.7 mph excluding breaks. Another result I credit to the training program is an over 2 minute improvement in my best time for the 13.3 mile route that was my standard ride before I started endurance training. I achieved this recently on a cold winter day. I suspect I could shave off even more time on a day with optimal riding conditions. UPDATE - In May 2009 I shaved another five minutes off the time of the 13.3 mile ride, achieving a seven minute reduction after about nine months of heavy duty training. The final thing I will note is that I can see a huge improvement in my hill-climbing. Four percent grades that I used to grind up at eight mph are now done more briskly at 11 to 12 mph. UPDATE - June 2009, my speed on one 1/3 mile four percent grade is now up to 14 to 15 mph. For me this is a huge breakthrough.

To help in understanding my training program, I will describe some of the basic underlying concepts. I recommend you read the books I referenced above plus whatever information you can dig up to satisfy any need for an in-depth understanding of the theory behind the training.

The core of the training approach is taken from an approach popularized by the former coach of the Bulgarian weight lifting team, Tudor Bompa. My understanding of this approach boils down to a few basic principles. First is the need to vary the load put on different muscle groups over time so as to keep them from optimizing their response to a particular load level. Second is the need to give muscles time to recover and expand their capabilities based on an optimized schedule. This approach is executed by varying workouts over time. The varying workouts provide a periodic focus on different muscles and muscle loading, thus the term periodization being coined for this workout approach. Another element of the approach is something I was already doing on my own and which was supported by the Wallack and Katovsky book. This is the need to mix in a variety of exercises and stretches so as to exercise a broad range of muscles and to keep muscles and tendons limber. Equally important to training is diet. This is a topic I will discuss in a separate posting.

The first step in setting up a bicyccling training program is to determine your maximum heart rate and then use this information to determine your heart rate at the point where you exceed your lactic threshold. The Burke and Pavelka book gives several ways to determine your maximum heart rate. It takes some effort to determine this as accurately as possible including doing fun things like riding so hard that you get to the edge of blacking out. An easier way is to estimate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. For me this gives a maximum heart rate of 171 beats per minute (220 - 49). For someone in decent shape the lactate threshold can then be estimated as 85% of the maximum heart rate. For me this worked out to 145 beats per minute (85% * 171). Riders in good shape will have a higher lactate threshold and people in poor shape will have a lower lactate threshold. If you ride enough and use a heart rate monitor, you will soon get an idea of what your lactate threshold is for you. Based on how my body has reacted on recent rides, I believe I have pushed my lactate threshold up to around 152 beats per minute.

So why is it important to know what your lactate threshold is? My understanding is that it is the point at which exercise transitions from aerobic to anaerobic. This is an important threshold. When you exercise aerobically your body is most likely fueling itself from fat reserves and sugars in the bloodstream with some dip into short-term glycogen fuel reserves. This mechanism of fueling can be sustained for long periods of time. This is also a level of exercise that changes the body at a cellular level so that it can burn fat more easily, an essential capability for staying fueled during rides of more than an hour and a half to two hours. When the lactate threshold is exceeded, the body needs more fuel than what can be supplied through fat burning, and thus starts burning through glycogen reserves very quickly and also may start burning protein (muscle). This is not a bad thing unless it is done for an extended duration. Riding above the lactate threshold creates a stress on the body that it responds to by increasing its peak performance capacity. The drawback of exceeding the lactate threshold for an extended period of time is that readily available fuel supplies will be exhausted and there will not be enough fuel in the bloodstream to satisfy the demand the body has created. A "bonk" results when this happens. If this happens to you, you will know it. You will be incapable of doing any significant physical activity. It will be like a car running out of fuel. It is a strange and unwelcome feeling that I hope you never experience, particularly not when you have miles to go and are out in the middle of nowhere on a solo ride . This I know from personal experience.

Now that the underlying concepts are explained I will finally get around to what I actually do in training. I will start by describing the program I adopted leading up to my first century ride. This program was derived from a program I found in the Burke and Pavelka book. I do four training rides a week. I do two of the rides on weekdays, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. These are shorter rides. When I started training for my initial century, the duration of each of the weekday rides was about an hour. I increased the durations by about 10% per week. I strongly recommend keeping the increase to 10% or less versus increasing more aggressively. This will allow the body time to adapt to an ever increasing load without the risk of injury that a more rapid ramp-up could lead to. My Tuesday ride has a mix of about two thirds riding at an aerobic pace with my heart rate no less than 15 beats below my lactate threshold. One third of the Tuesday ride is spent with my heart rate a little above my lactate threshold, perhaps 5 beats above with an occasional spike a little above that. I try to alternate between above and below my lactate threshold so that I am never in one state for more than a few minutes. For the Thursday ride I keep the same ratio of heart rate above and below my lactate threshold, but do it differently. I start by riding below my lactate threshold for about the first 15 minutes. I then do a continuous period where I am above it. This period is approximately one third of the total duration of the ride. I then try and ride the remaining length of the ride at a pace that keeps me below my lactic threshold though some hills may make me briefly exceed it.

The weekend rides are my long rides. Both weekend rides will be about the same length and duration. I started out with 90 minute rides as I trained for my first century and increased the duration of the rides by about 10% per week leading up to the century. The Saturday ride emulates riding in a pace-line. My emulation has me riding 20% of the time in spurts that put me well above my lactate threshold and pretty close to my max heart rate, with the spurts followed by stretches where I am riding at a rate that has me 15 beats or more below my lactate threshold. Given that I live in an area with many small rolling hills to ride up and down, I use the hills to generate the load needed for getting the heart rate up. The challenge is in keeping the heart rate down when I need to and have a hill to climb. I handle this by riding routes that have less severe grades to the hills. My Sunday ride is similar to my Tuesday ride, just longer.

As I ramped up my distances each week in preparation for my first century, I noticed that my legs were getting a bit fried after about four or five consecutive weeks of training. The evidence for this was a slight decrease in performance and a more noticeable burn when walking up several flights of stairs. I then missed a few rides due to business travel and came back with fresh legs and a very noticeable improvement in performance. This has led me to the practice of taking a week off from riding about once every six weeks. This practice is consistent with the periodization theory and recommendations you will find in the Wallack and Katovsky book.

By the time I was ready to ride my first century, my weekday rides were about 105 minutes in duration and and my weekend rides were over three hours. A week before the century I did my last training ride and then took the week off as advised by the Burke and Pavelka book. I ate a lot of carbohydrates that week, particularly in the two days before the century. This all worked very well. I felt completely fresh and very strong at the start of the century and as noted above, I was able to ride strong to the very end of it.

Since doing the century in October I have kept riding at a level that I hope will allow me to easily ramp up for my next century. I have not been as religious about manipulating my heart rate around the lactate threshold as described above. I have kept the overall mix fairly close to the two thirds below and one third above formula. My riding has me doing a lot of hill climbing on rollers with elevation gains ranging from tens of feet to over a hundred feet, and grades ranging from 4% to 15%. I also have recently begun climbing Sugarloaf mountain weekly, a 500 foot ascent at an average grade of around 7%. In general the area around where I live gives about 1000 feet of ascent for every 15 miles, excluding Sugarloaf mountain.

A good portion of my winter riding has not been on the road. Given that I get off work after dark during the winter months, my weekday rides have mostly been one hour rides on a LifeCycle. There is an occasional exception to this when I join a group from work for a lunchtime weekday ride. In the spirit of periodization I do a combination of hill and random profiles when I ride the LifeCycle. Overall my training currently adds up to the equivalent of 80 to 100 miles of road riding per week.

Based on how I felt on a recent 43 mile ride with 3200 feet of ascent, I feel I could do a flat century tomorrow at a better pace than I did the Seagull Century. The challenge is that my next century is going to be at Lake Tahoe where the altitude will vary between 6000 and 7000 feet. My plan is to do some weekend riding in the mountains of West Virginia at an altitude of 3500 to 4000 feet as a way of getting some preparation for the altitude at Lake Tahoe. I will also do some reading and see what the experts have to say and take that into account.

The other aspects of the physical part of my training regimen are weight lifting and stretching. My weight lifting program is not yet optimized, but is something I have tailored for the purpose of maintaining my muscle mass as I get older. I try and do weight lifting twice a week, alternating muscle groups and exercises so as to give my body a variety to work with. I usually don't lift for more than 40 minutes. The typical workout will have me doing perhaps eight different types of lifts with two sets for each type. I lift to point of failure. For everything except the bench press, I take about a minute between sets. After reading a little bit of one of Tudor Burpa's books, I now realize that I should change my weight lifting program if I want to have a chance at improving my performance.

Given my focus on bicycling, weight lifting is secondary to my bicycling and is usually done on weekday nights after I have done my cycling for the day. I was once told that this approach would allow me to improve my lifting capacity more easily versus doing the lifting before riding. It would be good to do some checking and find out what the latest theories are relative to mixing lifting and riding.

The stretching I perform is made up of a variety of stretches I learned over the years as fallout from being a football player and running track in high school. I also have learned some specialized stretches which were given to me by doctors who treated me for back problems. Note that my back problems did not come from my recreational athletic activities, but rather from some stupid lifting I did as part of a job I had when I was in my late teens.

My stretches are a combination of leg stretches focused on different parts of the legs and ankles, special stretches and crunches to help with my back, stretches to maintain limberness in my mid-section, and stretches and warm-up movements for my chest, arms, shoulders and neck. I always make sure and do the upper body stretching prior to doing any weight lifting. It takes me 15 to 20 minutes to do my stretching. I cannot claim to be an expert in stretching, so advise you to do some more research on this topic as you devise your own routine. The Wallack and Katovsky book has a good discussion of non-biking exercise. What most interested me is the section on yoga. It seems like it could be a really good way of doing a single thing to obtain multiple benefits, such as increasing flexibility and strength in combination with a meditative experience.

With that I encourage you to take this posting for what it is meant to be, which is to be an example based on what one newbie did to get himself trained for a century and how that worked out him. The hope is that it will convey a flavor for the types of things to be considered in training and lead you on to more investigation as you develop a training program suited to your needs. As you create your training program, listen to your body as it will let you know what works for you. Whatever you do, be careful not to push yourself too quickly. Think of training as a life-long and evolving process that you will tune over time. Seek to keep your needs and goals in synch with your training schedule and you will be able to sustain it over the long haul.