Hi all, I have an ‘all mountain’ race at the end of august, so approx. 14 weeks from now. I’ve done a few enduros but never any sort of mass start race. It’s 27km with short but technical and steep climbing. Basically for me its pretty tough. Winner last year did it in under 2 hours, last person was 4.5 hours

Anyhow, I’ve been riding 3 times a week for the past 6 weeks or so and am seeing improvements . It’s not getting easier but i’m getting faster…. but wanted a quick critique of what i’m doing and what i could improve, if thats cool? So….

monday 20-25km ride focussing on intensity. Keeping breaks to absolute minimum and trying to replicate racing i.e cycling non stop. These rides wipe me out.

weds: same as monday, but perhaps a little more chilled with a short break or two (5 mins for a banana!)

Saturday: longer ride of say 30-35km, kind of split in two: first half intense, then a break for 20mins, then more riding with small little pauses.

Plan is to keep upping intensity to try to replicate a race over the next few weeks

Just writing this down actually helps..! What am i doing right and wrong?

Also, i’m going to spain for two weeks in early july. Is this a welcome break for my body or throwing away all my training?

Thanks in advance!

A question for Men’s Health magazine? 🙂

It’s not getting easier but i’m getting faster

“It never gets easier, you just go faster.” Greg LeMond

Seems you’re doing it right

Also, i’m going to spain for two weeks in early july. Is this a welcome break for my body or throwing away all my training?

Do a decent hard week just before heading off, try not to overdo it on holiday, and it won’t be a major problem.

Then go on a diet on your return.

Thanks for the info. Do you think the general approach is right though? Should I be riding longer distances ? More intense sessions?

I’d try and put some intense intervals somewhere into the programme, but I’d take mogrim’s advice on the holiday.

This where I get a bit lost.. You mean like go as fast as possible for a couple
of minutes then rest for a while then do it again?

http://www.active.com/cycling/articles/high-intensity-interval-training-for-beginners

Like this? On the bike whilst out and about or in a gym? If on the bike as part of one of my rides or a separate session?

Thanks!

For a mass start race the pace tends to be fairly quick for the first part of the race, and it is worth making an effort so you don’t get held up in bottle necks near the start. After that you can normally ease off the pace slightly. So to get used to it I would try to fit in a hard 30 mins immediately followed by a more endurance paced ride.

As mentioned above I would try to overtrain a bit before going on holiday. Once on holiday try to find some way to fit in a bit of exercise. On holidays I done everything from dodgy hire bikes, indoor bikes in the hotel gym, early morning fast walks on the beach. I struggled a bit last year as Eygpt in August was a bit hot, but managed some decent time swimming in the sea.

If you want to do interval sessions on a bike the easiest way is probably hill repeats – do a 20min warm up ride to the base of a decent, long hill – something like a 5% gradient – then do ride hard up it for a minute, and roll back down to recover. Turn around and do it again. 9 more times 🙂 Another 20 min gentle spin home to cool down.

This is a suggestion – if you find 10 times too hard do 8, or instead of a minute maybe do 2 minutes, or up to “that tree”, or whatever.

Pure intervals are a bit harder on a bike: instead of a hill you sprint for a minute in a high gear, then bimble for a minute to get your breath back. And repeat. Of course this means you end up going a lot further, and if the terrain isn’t flat some of your intervals will be harder than others. Not a huge problem, but something to bear in mind. (On a turbo / spinning bike this isn’t an issue of course!)

Whatever way you do it, you will find that the intervals get progressively harder – don’t fall for the temptation to lengthen the recovery period. They’re supposed to hurt 🙂

Edit: if I didn’t make it clear earlier, the number and length of repeats, hill or flat, can be changed. A good hill workout for example is 3 sets of 8 minute intervals with a 4 minute recovery. Obviously you can’t go full out for 8 minutes, but the idea is the same.

Thanks great stuff. Was planning on having a couple of days MTB with Ride Sierra Nevada in the two weeks I’m away so won’t be sat around eating Jamon and drinking all day. Possibly.

With regard to the interval training, should I start that now and just carry on until race time? So replace say the Wednesday ride with intervals? Once a week and do my Monday and weekend ride ?

Was thinking that about ‘race pace’ . It’s climbing right from the start for twenty mins or so , then a downhill section before the real killer climb . Will try and get ahead then and ease off a little I guess .

Just interested to see how fit i can get really . It’s a nice challenge.

I’d do intervals once a week, probably on the Wednesday to get a decent recovery before the weekend. Keep doing them until the week before your race, and then during the last week reduce the volume but keep up the intensity – for example instead of 10 intervals do 5.

If you’ve got a 20min climb right at the start there are two things you want to do: 1) warm up beforehand, and 2) make sure you get a good start (somewhere near the front, don’t take it too easy). I can’t really help you with pacing as I don’t know the course, but 27km isn’t that long for a bike race so you probably don’t need to hold back that much. I’d also say you probably don’t need to eat during the race, maybe take a gel after the second (“killer”) climb, but not before.

And speaking from experience here: don’t go out on the piss the night before, it won’t help and doesn’t count as carboloading 🙂