Cycling program v4.0 2011-2012 (Page 26)

Question for Jorge and others:

Well, its finally caught up to me.  I'm on week 8 of Don Fink's IronFit plan for IMCDA.  I was replacing the weekday bikes with Jorge's plan (I'm on week 10) and the past two weeks, my power has been falling on the interval rides.  I just don't know that I have the fitness.  Should I, 

A) Continue the plan just knowing full well that my power numbers may not show progress due to the extra load I'm taking on during the IM plan.

B) Scrap Jorge's plan knowing that I at least got 10 weeks worth of gains and fully focus on the IM plan.

Thanks all!

Ya, that was the "less" intense one. Or leave off the optional long ride.

I am not the guy you want to be taking expert advice from....

Last year I tried to stay on programs and what ever... now people that have been doing this for a while don't seem to take "recovery" weeks, they just alter things a bit. So I do my running plan and now this plan and I will adjust depending how I feel and if I am feeling run down then I will take it easy for a week to recharge. I don't plan on "recovery weeks", but I will need to recharge from time to time.

This plan is "cycling specific" but for triathletes... so if you need to cut back or rest up because of your running, do so... you could just substitute one of the beginning weeks as a recovery week since they were sort of short and easy. I don't know how much help that is, take it for what it's worth.

Thanks for the thoughts.  I don't think I want to scrap the long ride, as that's one of the core workouts in the fink plan and my A goal is to certainly complete IMCDA.  I'll tinker around with moving the days around, but since my A goal is the Ironman, I may just take what I've gotten at this point from the Jorge.

Jorge

I've read in the past that once you know your FT in watts you can just dial that number in for a race and keeping as close as possible will deliver the best performance you can manage. Does the same apply for heart rate?

Now I know my FTHR can I keep that number in mind and aim to maintain my heart rate at or near for the duration of the race (Olympic, so the numbers from the cycle programme are roughly correct) and achieve the same result?

Thanks

How much of the CP/FTP gains carry over throughout the season?  I will finish the program in March and then will start specific training for Ironman Wisconsin.  The program is working great and I see great improvements now.  Should I expect my FTP to drop as the season progresses (since I will be doing mostly aerobic training), or does it stay pretty steady?

Thanks!

Holy buckets, as my mom used to say.  Here are my results:

20 min power was 303/ now 305 watts.

5 min power was 334/ now 358 watts. (4.67 w/kg)  I guess the ceiling has been raised.

Jorge,  My CP has dropped about 10 watts.  I understand the why.  But my question is if I can do the workouts at the higher CP value, should I do them?  Or, would I get more benefit from lowering my CP and doing my workouts with the lower value?   

My question is what are we working on with the long rides? I'm learning this stuff about VO2 and CP. My running is on hold so now I am going to ride the 4x a week till I can get back to that. I did the long ride yesterday. I'm just week 2 but did 2 hours watching the game. The workout was 70-75-80%... that was pretty easy and I was not tired so I basically did about 85% for 1.5 hours.

My question is what are we working on? What is the range I want to stay in for the long ride? And I am realizing this year it's about the weekly work load not blowing out a killer workout.

20' as 2' @ 95-105% + 10' @ 70-75% 

I think that's a typo.  I think it should read.  Ride for 20min. as 2min @95-105% and 2 min @ 70-75%.  So you are alternating.  2 min hard/2 min easy.  

Jorge,

This may have been asked before, but I haven't read all 20 some pages yet, but will be when I can.

Anyhow, I' looking at starting the program Mon along with the free HIM plan. I have the HIM plan modified to fir my schedule along with your plan. Would it be ok for me to just drop it in place of what it calls for on the HIM plan, most weeks only have 3 days for bike, most weeks maybe 60,60, 90+ so that I think will work well with your plan, but does add a session which I don't think will be a problem, just extra bike traning.

My question was in regards to recovery weeks though, your plan while it does have a recovery week, they are still fairly high in effort, but reduced on the long ride. The problem I was wondering about though is it will not line up with the recovery weeks of the HIM plan. The HIM plan is weeks 4, 8, 12, and 16 for recovery, and yours are 6,10, and 15.

Even if I did wait to start your plan to make 8 from the HIM plan line up with 6 from yours, I t still would be thrown off with the extra week you have at the end, instaed of 14 in your being recovery, it is 15.

So should I sweat it? Or just start at the same time and call it good, even though I'll still be going fairly hard on the bike during my recovery week for the HIM plan, if anything I guess I could just cut your long bike to an hour on those weeks, and extend the long bike on your recovery weeks.

Hope it makes sense with me flip flopping talking about your plan vs the other.

Test 2 (Week 7) done!  20 min test was pretty good, 5 min test was pretty tough, my average power dropped a bit in the last minute, so will need to work on pacing.  Also for some reason started coughing pretty hard after 5 min test (may have something to do with an open window and really cold temperatures outside)

Here are the results!

5 min @ 319W (vs  4 min @ 313W test 1)

20 min @ 255 (vs  20 min @ 240W test 1)

CP 234 - 2.98 W/kg (vs 222 - 2.83 w/kg test1)

Feel there is some progress ... 2 tests to go to reach my goal of 3.45 w/kg

Happy training!

Question for Jorge and others:

Well, its finally caught up to me.  I'm on week 8 of Don Fink's IronFit plan for IMCDA.  I was replacing the weekday bikes with Jorge's plan (I'm on week 10) and the past two weeks, my power has been falling on the interval rides.  I just don't know that I have the fitness.  Should I, 

A) Continue the plan just knowing full well that my power numbers may not show progress due to the extra load I'm taking on during the IM plan.

B) Scrap Jorge's plan knowing that I at least got 10 weeks worth of gains and fully focus on the IM plan.

Thanks all!

Finished my 2nd test today. I felt good for the 5 min test. The 20min test on Tuesday was another story!  However, very happy with my progress to date...

Test 1.  20min  274w  w/kg 3.0          5min  302w  w/kg 3.3

Test 2.  20min  292w  w/kg 3.2          5min  339w  w/kg 3.7

what are you training for? usually on long rides since you will longer, you can ride at lower intensities and this will result in different adaptations (i.e. increase muscle fiber fatigue resistance). For those training for IM, perhaps a ride on the 70-75% range will be very race specific. This might seem easy once your improve your CP, still, you need to run 26.2 after that. 

That said, I sometimes have my athletes do some of their long rides at 'faster than race' pace or something like 5hrs @ 80-85%CP to achieve different adaptations. on race simulations, I have them do 70-75%CP but then I have them do a longish intense long run.

You can really play with it in so many ways, the key is to do enough within your 'own' limitations to avoid doing too much or too little. 

Right now, the 'long' rides are a bit on the easier side as the rest of the workouts during the week are rather intense. This is assuming most athletes are also doing swim/run. If you are not, then you can do your long ride longer or more intense.