Nibali’s two approaches:
- 20hrs/week + 3 weeks racing or
- 22hrs/week + 1 week racing.
Nibali will clock up between 75 and 80 hours of training in June instead of the 90 hours of intense training and a week of racing at the Criterium du Dauphine he would have done had he not ridden the Giro d’Italia.
(via CyclingNews)
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This was an interesting listen today, the podcast does not show up on the VN website. Once again, every athelte’s training is a n=1. Key is how well they recover. Some do well on intense-easy-intense-easy. Others on 5 days intense and 2 days easy. And all is driven by the demands of a race.
There is no magic training intensity distribution, there is not the one type of interval session that delivers it all. Training is an iterative process, you go from day to day and make adjustments accordingly. Yes, there is a program which guides through the year. But key is the flexibility to make adjustments.
VeloNews Voices | Beyond Limits, Ep. 2: What it takes to train for the Tour de France
What kind of workload does a rider need to achieve in the weeks and months leading up to the Tour de France? What kind of power numbers do they need to hit? And what new techniques can help the preparation?
Allen Lim, PhD, has been coaching elite cyclists for two decades. In the run-up to the 2019 Tour de France, Lim has been working with Tejay van Garderen of EF Education First.
In this episode, Lim and cohost Brian Co of Veloworthy recount all the training that has been done to get Tejay ready for the start of the Tour on July 6.
VN lists this series somewhere else:
Interesting common pattern/method. First of all, top riders climb ~45min @ 6W/kg, 20-30min @ 6 W/kg. This is what they prepare for in training. TJvG had trouble finding training partners capable of keeping up with him. That’s why they put ex-pros on e-bikes in front of him. It’s all about keeping up with the Ineos train.
Ineos: they spend so much time on their volcano doing sustained climbing efforts. I guess no need for moto-pacing as they have a very strong team mit similar climbing capabilities. No shortage of training partners. However, once again, specific preparation for the demands of the race.
Sort of interesting: MvP. In preparation of the road season he spent quite some time in Italy with motopacing up the Passo Stelvio. Interesting, as he’s not racing mountain races. We don’t know much about his training but his coach said this was for building the engine. First a lot of base riding in Spain in winter, later these motopaced sustained climbing efforts in Italy.
I’d be really interested to see the microcycles of their sessions.
Here on the ebike pacing:
From a Suisse newspaper, translated with Google Translate (does it quite well):
After his triumph at the Tour of France in 2018, Thomas excelled nowhere.
… When asked what he had done afterwards, Thomas answered in a conversation at a Bern hotel in June: “Many parties.”
The price of the many parties was high. At some point, Thomas realized that he had never paused so long in his career. And that was not all: his competitor Tom Dumoulin teased the Welshman that he was gaining weight significantly.
Not until mid-November, exceptionally late, did Thomas begin to train again. At this point he did not put himself on the scales: "That would only have depressed me even more.
It was much harder to lose weight. The professional cyclist had to comply with diets that were designed for him by the nutrition experts of his team Ineos. Sometimes Thomas would sit on the bike for five or six hours, trying to eat as little as possible on the road, consciously straining himself in a state of energy shortage.
Risky strategy, probably only safe (in terms of keeping performance level high), when a full support team is behind one. Would be interesting to know what they did differently this time (though context is different this time):
Latest episode of a German podcast with Christian Knees, one of the pillars in Team Ineos. Interesting remark on training: “I never get a chance to ride for KOMs, we always just do GA1 and GA2 in training.”
GA1 = Coggan zones 1-2
GA2= Coggan zone 3, low SST.
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Some insights on pro weight-loss/nutrition in general from a nutritionist who is with Bora
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no deficit on rest days, larger deficits on training days. Larger then the 300-500kcal/d we often hear. However, on a weekly basis it would come down to 300-500/d
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key is not to run totally empty on deficit days, e.g. generous breakfasts, fueling their rides and getting in food afterwards. Basically have a steady inflow of food. At the end of the day a defcit remains. He finds this crucial for not shutting down the metabolism (which hinders weight loss) and for avoiding performance loss (which is absolute key)
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Yes, fasted/“low” rides are in the toolbox. Depending on the time of year once or twice per week. Only with endurance rides. They may have a low-carb dinner the night before (after some intensity). They always have a protein rich (with even some carbs) breakfast on the fasted/low days. After ~90min into the ride they would start eating carbs (40-50g/1-1.5h)
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endurance workouts would be fueled with 40-60g carbs/h, depending on context. Higher for their long tempo/SST sessions.
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Some interesting notes on pro training in preparation for GTs:
Typical preparation will look like this:
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Winter/Base period: lots of endurance riding (I have to think of Froome’s Strava postings from his January training in South Africa … these were massive hours, in line with what is said in the podcast)
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then a switch towards more specificity: key is to work on fatigue resistance, not so much on the development of max power (e.g. power duration curve). Typical workouts would be blocks of days where they pre-fatigue their legs with ~2500KJ of tempo (no man’s land) work and then do some intervals. The system should adapt to a fatigued state. “Dirty intervals”.
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Forgot about him being that skinny back then in 08
Understand the rationale for no deficits on rest days but seems a good opportunity to have say 100 kCal gap, depending on the speed of weightloss needed. Recovery and muscle growth requires a plus I thought, but at this training point wouldn’t have thought they cared, as long as the deficit isn’t too large to suffer from muscle degradation.
Dimension Data’s Ciaran O’Grady who they interviewed was my coach for a couple of seasons, about 2015-16.
How the mighty have fallen…
I’d be interested in hearing views / science on the efficacy of this. I can understand that it’s something tremendously important to test, but I wonder what evidence there is that you improve your ability to put out efforts fatigued by doing intervals fatigued - or whether you’d be just as well doing intervals fresh and then doing the 2500kj afterwards.
Other pros also do this…and I even took it as far as using the TR Workout Creator to replicate a ‘Tired 20’ workout, putting a 20min Threshold interval at the end of a 2,000kj Sweet Spot session. I’m far from being sciencey, but I’m sure it trains your body to produce power in a depleted state, just as training fasted trains your body to use fat as fuel.
Then there’s this Thomas De Gendt training “secret”:
At the [2018] Tour Down Under I did three days of chasing the breakaway and then one day I was in the break. That is good training for later in the season. That’s 300-350 watts for three or four hours, that’s the power you produce. In training that would be impossible – maybe you could for an hour, but then… mentally you just can’t do it
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which is one aspect I’m struggelin with myself. In order to prepare for 10-12h races and build my fatigue resistance I often try to do some intensity in the end of long sessions. But it is so hard mentally to actually push yourself. It’s easy to do this when fresh but extremely tough when fatigued. But you have to push up your pain tolerance. Once of the rare occasions where I apply intermittent intervals again. Or over-unders for more SST like work.
Just had my A-race, well below my expectation and previous years’ results. Even though short duration performance went up again this year (after a plateau). However, I did significantly less of these fatigue resistance workouts this year … and failed completely after 5-6h this year. Seeking redemption for 2020, will do more of this again. Failing a race is worse then going through some pain in training.
I was thinking about this as well. Don’t think there’s any scientific evidence, but if a lot of the world tour teams follow this model then I’d think there’s something to it.
Performing well is only about 50% based on the raw fitness of an individual, the other half is mental. All imo, but coach chad touched on this a bit a few podcasts back. Tough and race specific intervals may not be better than others in creating lab based physiological responses, but if they get you to race better that is all that matters.
You train for the demands of your race. If your race requires you to climb in zone 4/5 for 40 minutes after 5 hours of racing, or to do that three times over the course of 5 hours, then you train to simulate those demands (both physical and mental).
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Cycling Weekly had its “Week in Training” on Christoph Strasser, RAAM winner.
March camp, Cyprus (I can highly recommend this island for an early camp).
Tu: 5h ride (not details given)
W: 6h ride (not details given)
Th: 6.5h steady endurance (Coggan Z2)
F: 8h with low cadence climbing in Coggan Z3 . As much climbing @ Z3 as possible.
S: 4h fast endurance ride (just above AeT)
S: rest day
M: Like last Friday but only 4h. As much Zone 3 climbing as possible in this time.
Tu: 5h, long ride with threshold intervals (at FTP): 12x5min(with very short RI)
W: 8h long Tempo (Zone 3) ride.
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This is interesting to me. Never heard of “fatigue resistance” workouts before. My question is WHEN and HOW OFTEN are these workouts done? Are they something that you sprinkle into your training all along the way towards your A-event or do you typically do them as you actually get close to the event (of course without building too much fatigue into the event)?