Training at or above race pace

tunney

Fazz wrote: »

F&%* me...

50% of your bike work is at or above your planned race pace?
How much volume can you get done at that effort per week?
I'd suggest trying a different approach unless you strongly feel this is what works best for you.

Up to last Oct, about 80% of my biking would be easy each week. That is around the 60% FTP mark give or take.
20% was hard aka turbo pain cave sessions or a bit of hills on long ride etc.

In Nov, as I kicked off more run volume I dropped the biking to 4-5 hours per week, with about 2 of these sessions being at medium/strong intensity.
I gained very little, definitely fell back and lost power, or at best maintained the power I started back with.
Just felt like my engine wasn't built back enough to be able to absorb the quality.
But we are all different and respond to different trainings.
Since I've picked up my bike volume I already feel better and am biking better.
So for me, the 80/20 rule is currently ringing true anyway.

Maybe it's because the volume just can't be done if on a 50/50 routine.
If you want to be a better biker, ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike.

My 2 cents based on my experience.

Polarisation of training............
Again as I said in the email on polarisation on those that wanted it. Polarisation requires volume of training.

Also @Kurt - if you are in year two you could base your training around the principle of inserting bananas in your rectum and you would still make huge gains, years 2 and three people make huge gains just from building on the previous years.

Fazz

peter kern wrote: »

if we use seillers studies (lets ignore responders and non responders ) the difference between top nat level norwegian skier and world class is the time spend easy training .
to simplyfy this
norwegianworld class skier proatheltes train to keep it easy 1000ish a year so 200 hours in high intensity training
top level nat nordic skier train appriox 30 % less so lets say 700hish ( but still 200h fast) its 70 3o ( rember the level is quite high in norway in this sport )
so now you tell me where you think how this would go further if we go down to 10 and 6 hours of training a week as an weekly average
so what iam saying is people also need to take in consideration how many hours they train if you train 8 hours a week with 80 20 this is not going to work at all
so while you are certainly saying the right thing ie ride your bike ride your bike
for some people that is not feasble.

I get that alright for sure.

But I do wonder if say biking 5 hours a week, whether the 50/50 approach yields better than the 80/20 approach.

Of course it makes sense, hell I was doing this only a couple months ago but felt I was not improving, at best remaining the same.

Be interesting to see as physiologically it may allow for better adaptation.

But then we are all different and respond different so all about learning what works for each of us in our given training time.

peter kern

if you were to believe hiit studies than answer is v simply yes.

Fazz wrote: »

I get that alright for sure.

But I do wonder if say biking 5 hours a week, whether the 50/50 approach yields better than the 80/20 approach.

Of course it makes sense, hell I was doing this only a couple months ago but felt I was not improving, at best remaining the same.

Be interesting to see as physiologically it may allow for better adaptation.

But then we are all different and respond different so all about learning what works for each of us in our given training time.

Kurt Godel

Larry Brent wrote: »

I’ve a lot to learn. Your explanation there Kurt makes a lot of sense. My wife has held some Irish swimming records in her time and I’ve often said to her that if I was to train for an long distance triathlon swim (starting off as a non-swimmer, essentially) that I think I’d be best follow a Total Immersion approach, and just try to get used to swimming for about an hour with it taking as little as possible out of me. I imagined, just long endurance swimming would be the way to go, but she insists that lots of typical swim sets, 100m reps etc. would be the way to go. I’ll have to find out some day through an experiment of one...So ignore anything I’ve said about training intensities. Saying that, would I be right in thinking that triathletes, more often than runners, leave their race in training? i.e. they do very good training sessions, but the race doesn’t go as well as expected? I could be totally wrong there having a very small sample to chose from.

Apologies, just re-read this thread, and having "pulled" you into it, the least I can do is answer your question to increase the sample size.

I've had good and bad race results across both running and Tri. FWIW any bad Tri results have been because of novice issues- getting boxed in during the swim start, slow transistions, going too hard on the bike and leaving nothing for the run. I've not yet felt my Tri training "deserved" better results in races, although this year's results will be more telling in that regard. So far, any race results have been fair in that I've got out what I put in (in training).

However, I previously twice trained hard for a sub3 marathon, with dedicated training program which hit all the boxes in regards sessions completed. I toed the line both times with the knowledge that I had all the training ingredients, but blew up in each. In retrospect I was overtrained. So my experience so far would be that hard training in Tri produces expected results, while hard training in running leaves me overcooked.

peter kern

what was your weight for sub 3 hour marathon attempts ?
and what times were you holding for key sessions?

Kurt Godel

peter kern wrote: »

what was your weight for sub 3 hour marathon attempts ?
and what times were you holding for key sessions?

No real idea Peter- weight was lower than usual, training hit 95% of the P&D (<70miles/week) schedule zones I was aiming for, pre-marathon races were hill runs (so no real comparable metrics besides finishing higher placed than usual). I'd previously ran 3:10 on a lot less training milage, focussing on intensity.

I'm just trying to answer LB's question, and give a general idea of how hard training intensity affected me. I know its unscientific and there are too many variables, but in general when I look back over my Tri and running "career", I've left my races in training more so in running than in Tri.

Oryx

I'm interested in whether working at very high intensities over a prolonged period (multiple seasons) has a cumulative effect that leads to breakdown?

tunney

Oryx wrote: »

I'm interested in whether working at very high intensities over a prolonged period (multiple seasons) has a cumulative effect that leads to breakdown?

When done in a silly fashion yes.

Oryx

tunney wrote: »

When done in a silly fashion yes.

I ask because I've witnessed what would appear to be not silly people crash and burn. (I spent 6 months recovering from overtraining myself but I was silly.)

How does regular numpty self coached person avoid it, what are the best self assessment markers to use? Cos from looking around, it seems that in training, good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.

Larry Brent

Kurt Godel wrote: »

So my experience so far would be that hard training in Tri produces expected results, while hard training in running leaves me overcooked.

Maybe it’s just a case then that it’s easier to see when a runner has hit a target as there are more chances to do it and the target is more measurable (sub 3 is sub 3, whereas time may not be as important in tri due to course length variability, swim/bike conditions) and there are more round numbers (don’t mention the war), i.e. 2:59 is a resounding success if going for sub 3 marathon, 3:01 is abject failure, whereas with a 2:10 Olympic target perhaps 2:09/2:11 are close enough?

Back to high intensity training, you pointed out the reduced impact of swimmining and cycling, so that might certainly allow for more intense and more time spent training intensely from a physical injury risk point. But what about the effect on other systems? For example in running, high intensity training will increase blood acidity which may erode aerobic gains. I read something by Canova recently where he mentioned you could run a 400m at an intensity that would lead to blood lactate level of 16mmol and it would take a few hours for blood acidity to return to normal levels, whereas if you ran an 800m and got a level of 16mmol it would take more than a day. So some intensity is important, but too much of it might be a bad thing (in running anyway). And what about the effect on the hormonal system - can a lot of high intensity swimming and cycling lead to sustained raised cortisol levels which might adversely affect fitness levels? I imagine we’re in agreement that intensity is good, just to make sure you do it right and recover well, so no need to answer these questions, more rhetorical.

Dory Dory

@ Kurt....I would also argue that comparing your performance in an Olympic/Sprint distance triathlon to your performance in a marathon with respect to your training is perhaps apples and oranges. And I say "perhaps" because I am probably the least qualified here, but it seems to me doing three disciplines at relatively short distances is not comparable to doing one discipline over a long distance from both a mental and physical perspective, and how that translates in a race setting.

Kurt Godel

Dory Dory wrote: »

@ Kurt....I would also argue that comparing your performance in an Olympic/Sprint distance triathlon to your performance in a marathon with respect to your training is perhaps apples and oranges. And I say "perhaps" because I am probably the least qualified here, but it seems to me doing three disciplines at relatively short distances is not comparable to doing one discipline over a long distance from both a mental and physical perspective, and how that translates in a race setting.

No argument from me Dory; I completely agree. They're not comparable at all.

Kurt Godel

I was going to start a new thread, but this video is relevant to this discussion. This is part of a very interesting lecture Jack Daniels gave a month back. This one segment deals with the differences between Swimmers and Runners training at paces close to their race pace. Lots more of interest besides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=assWTvw7Kyo

peter kern

Zico10 is such a slacker in one of the videos there is trainings stats
of a guy that did 66 mile long runs
and i think his peak weakly mileage was 380 MILES ;-)
and 240 miles average a week for a year .