General Training Thoughts

From experience, I have learned that I can do lots of hard training rides with little to no recovery rides or recovery time, which then leads to overtraining.

I have also learned that in response to the overtraining scenario I can do lots of easy long training rides with too much and recovery time, which then leads to undertraining.

Therefore, this time I am using what I learned from my failed training regimes and combining that with my one and only time that I trained for a marathon. I will break up the training into four-week segments. Increasing the training intensity for the first three training weeks and then use the fourth recovery week to pull back and recover.

In each of the training weeks, I am still incorporating either recovery rides and/or just time off the bike, so to minimize overtraining.

For the first two training weeks, I will be doing one to two 2-3 hour rides on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (these will include lots of intervals) with a day off or recovery ride on Monday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday will be 4-6 hour training rides.

The third training week will be less intense during the week, but the end of the week will be 3 consecutive days of long rides. These rides will begin at 6 hours for the first training segment and increase by 3 hours per ride per segment leading up to three consecutive 18-hour training rides next spring.

The recovery week will be just that, and if I have done the three training weeks properly, all I will want to do is recovery and/or easy rides and get ready for the next training segment.

Because I am using the CompuTrainer, I am able to set a constant resistance (wattage) for my rides. As the weeks progress I am also increasing this resistance, so for my intervals and shorter training rides I am increasing the resistance. For the long rides, I am not only increasing the time of the long rides, but will also increase the resistance.

Of course, all of this is subject to change and probably will.