Wifey bought me Chris Carmichael’s “Time-Crunched Cyclist” book for Christmas. 😀

I don’t have either a heart rate monitor or a power meter. I will buy an HRM to start with, as it’s the cheaper option and seems to suffice for what I plan on doing.

It’s been almost 20 years since I last had an HRM – what’s the STW recommendation?

You only need a basic one for this program.
Timing and HR read out are all you need. I use a decent sized clock with a seconds hand. That way it’s easy to work out things like peak and fade i.e building up to speed over the first minute.
Mount the HRM on the bars
You’ll see why when your screaming for mummy and/or oxygen, and you cant remember if you’ve done 2 or 5 minutes. And that dinky little HRM becomes impossible to read when covered in sweat.
Add, electric fan, towels and water.

Try and get one that gives average heart rate, the 2 times 8 min test you use to set your training zones requires you to have your average heart over each 8min test. Most basic HRM models do not have average HR. i use ‘polar cs200’ which does a good job, can start it manually which is useful, plus has RPM.

Power meter would be nice if available 1/10th of current price!

If you want something just for the bike then can recommend the garmin 500. Does HR and can do cadence and is compatible with a lot of power metres. Also does all the distance and speed stuff, and you can follow courses on it too.

Otherwise if all you want is HR just get the cheapest polar than you can mount on the bars. You’ll also need a timer that does splits.

Power is a lot better than HR as it can take a while for HR to catch up with effort, not great for the short intervals. Might be worth hiring a power metre for a couple of weeks just to get an idea of zones and effort.

+1 for the fan when using a turbo. Keeps you cooler and stops HR creeping up for a given effort.

Garmin 500 is a great wee thing.

there’s apps if you have a smart phone

Is this book any good? I’ve been thinking about buying it and using my commute to do some proper structured training.

I got some good performances using the program in the book. Does leave you pretty spent at the end though so plan around that. Reckon it’d be fairly tricky to do the intervals on the road, did most on the turbo. If you have some long flat roads though it might be easier.

Is this book any good? I’ve been thinking about buying it and using my commute to do some proper structured training.

Okay.
I did a nine week program hoping to find a few seconds per lap during this seasons cross. That didn’t happen, Though I was slightly quicker because it helped improve my ‘from the gun’ speed.
I won’t be bothering again.

Thanks folks – good advice. Think I’ll look for an inexpensive HRM that reads the average heart rate… and buy a clock with big visible hands and a second hand!

It’s nice watching that seconds hand going round. When you can’t see it minutes last hours?

Cateye V3. Got a couple of these and they’re great. Been reliable even in the wet. Can be picked up for around £100. Menus much more intuitive than Polar.

Hang on a sec. Doesn’t the TC plan work on percentages of you max. IIRC the 8 minute test weren’t to establish an average, but a sustainable maximum?

Edit, so a £20 Lidl one does the job.

Edit No2, what racing do you plan to do? and when, because the plan need to deliver you to the first race.

The event I’m training for is the Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) sportive – the full 240kms on March 31st, so I have 12-13 weeks to prepare.

I’m capable of riding 6-7hrs comfortably right now, but I know the RVV will be a whole different ball game requiring me to ‘step up’ to a whole other level of fitness.

Digger, Chris Carmichael has been pretty quick to answer questions and offer advice via email/twitter on tweaking the plans in the past so it might be worthwhile explaining what you are doing and see what he says.

A HR monitor that will do average HR will be worth it for the CTS field test.

Get something that can go on the bars, which could well be a watch on the bars.

After a few weeks you don’t need the HR much just the slooooowly ticking clock.

I found the book useful having never done any serious bike ‘training’. It worked for me for sure and i’ll do another round next year.

I did it outside rather than a turbo. I think you get more out of it on real roads e.g. the under threshold intervals on rolling roads was good for me as a mtber who frewheels downhills instead of maintaining the power on.

Don’t know what the others think, but I’d not bother with the TC if that’s your goal.
I don’t have the book to hand, but memory tells me that the plans were very race specific especially so for Crits and cross?
The plan I did would mean that you’d spend five days over nine weeks doing intense shortish stuff, when pukka quality road miles might simply be better?
Enjoy Flanders, make sure the bikes well sorted the roads of Flanders are very ‘working class’.

The training plans in the book are equally divided between race and endurance rides i.e. ‘Centuries’. Flanders is 150 miles, so can be treated as a long century.

Erm… researching this it’s a little more involved than I thought.

I need an HRM that has a timer, and can record avg heart rate over separate intervals e.g. 2 x 8mins, 3 x 12 mins – it needs to record the avg over each interval separately, not the avg heart rate over the whole 60-90mins workout.

Reading the blurb on many HRM’s it isn’t clear at all which ones can do this vs. which can’t. I must’ve looked at more than 20 HRMs now and can’t decide… any recommendations from the STW massif?

Don’t Chris Carmichael’s training schemes involve, ahem, ‘supplements’ that allow ‘improved’ recovery ?

I would be nervous of following one of his plans without ‘support’…

Just reset the monitor after each interval, not as good as being able to record each separately, but still works ok. I have been using polar cs200 as you can start stop it manually.

Its only important to have the actual average from each 8 min max effort from the field test that you use to set training ranges. Once your into the program its not as important, you just need your HR at the Target range for the last half or so of the interval as it takes time for HR to increase so does not indicate your effort at the beginning of the interval.

It’s for this reason that you can not use HR for 30 sec interval due to time lag. It’s also why power meters are used a lot more now as it gives you real time effort reading.

Since power meters a bit expensive i am happy to use HR monitor.

I have an old polar 510 you can have which will probably do the trick. You would need to get yourself a HR strap for it and source a new battery (R2354 I think) Found it lying in the spares box the other day. It can download to a PC but it is an ancient audio transfer requiring you to stick the unit close to a microphone. Not sure if the software is still available. However think you can review lap statistics on the unit.

I have a sigma pc9 which has 3 settable heart zones and does average heart rate. They are available for around 25ukp and so far I have found it to be reliable.

Thanks for the info again chaps. And TexWade – many thanks for the kind offer but I’m going to get a new one as I do want to link it to my Mac and the audio/microphone thing sounds arcane!

Hardly seems to be suitable for ‘time crunched’ cyclists if it’s so complex to follow and such a flaff*?

* based on comments here, not any knowledge of the book…

I followed the TCC and it was so hard. Used a guestimate of power based upon speed on a Kurt Kinetic turbo for most of the interval workouts. May be better out on the road.
Its tempting to follow something like this if you have a goal in three months but at the time I just got progressively more knackered.
Also find HRM of little use now. Used them on and off for years and have a good idea of what my HR is. I now use simpler workouts based upon perceived exertion or just ride with club mates etc.
If I was in your situation I would probably find a local chain gang to beast myself with for 3 months and do a little trainer work with something like sufferfest that does not require the tech.

iDave, it’s okay but like selling your soul to the devil, for nine weeks in my case. You can’t miss a session so you need to have shed loads of will power.
The first few minutes become quite depressing, when you know you have 90 minutes of pain to follow.
The near to passing out moments add a little something.

garmin forerunner 60 from handtec just under 60 for the watch and hr strap, can get a mount for the bars, you can program in the intervals if you want using garmin connect, or an edge 500 if you have more cash, the fr60 is not too big to wear just as a watch as well

It’s not complicated and it’s not a faff.

The only time you really need to know an average is when you do the field trial thing, and that’s only once at the start. You just do two 8 min intervals as hard as you can sustain and take the highest average of the two. You then use that figure to work out the ranges (there are about 5 I think) that you then use in subsequent workouts.

When you do the intervals in the program you just try and keep your current power/hr within the range you calculated for that specific interval. It’s not complicated, though they are hard workouts and I found writing it down clearly before the workout made it a lot easier to follow.

Agree with the comment of using the program to train for a specific event at the end of the 3 month program. If you just want something to follow year round then this probably isn’t the right book. Though principles are worth knowing.

Also regarding the “supplements” comment, not quite sure what flap_jack was alluding to. The only thing in this book is about being properly fuelled for the workouts. There’s guidance as to how much carbs to take for length of workout, that sort of thing. No mention of any special beef marinades!