Training for a hilly race

Doug smith wrote:
What kind of dieting did you do? Serious count every calorie, some
theory type diet like Paleo or Atkins, or more generic cut out the
sweets and beer diet?

1. Eat less
2. More fruit+veg, less fat+salt
3. Eat+sleep more regularly
4. Sweets and beer (et cetera) no more than 1x/week

On Feb 5, 2:55*pm, Doug smith wrote:
Kurgan Gringioni wrote:
On Feb 5, 8:56 am, Bret wrote:
On Feb 5, 7:51 am, Amit Ghosh wrote:

once you're 5 yrs in, your prospects of getting much better are slim.
if results in amateur races is what your after then it makes sense to
optimize your training and focus on minutiae - it might make a big
difference to someone to go from a midpack cat 4 to a cat 3 front
runner, but that's not a huge leap. talented newcomers go from cat 4
to cat 1 or cat 3 to pro in a season or two all the time.
I disagree. After my first seven years of racing I was able to make
some significant improvements with changes to my training.

Dumbass -

Same here. Kept improving over 11 years. Mostly because of lessons
learned in training and diet.

Diet is harder than training. Training is fun. Dieting is not, but
dieting might be more of a differentiator. Everyone trains. Most don't
seriously diet.

thanks,

K. Gringioni.

What kind of dieting did you do? *Serious count every calorie, some
theory type diet like Paleo or Atkins, or more generic cut out the
sweets and beer diet?

The above question is open to anyone, not just Gringioni.

Are you the Doug Smith that was on the Wheaties box? Eat more Wheaties
especially of you can still get a pro deal.

Bret

On Feb 5, 11:31*am, Amit Ghosh wrote:
On Feb 5, 1:25*pm, Kurgan Gringioni wrote:





On Feb 5, 8:56*am, Bret wrote:

On Feb 5, 7:51*am, Amit Ghosh wrote:

once you're 5 yrs in, your prospects of getting much better are slim.
if results in amateur races is what your after then it makes sense to
optimize your training and focus on minutiae - it might make a big
difference to someone to go from a midpack cat 4 to a cat 3 front
runner, but that's not a huge leap. talented newcomers go from cat 4
to cat 1 or cat 3 to pro in a season or two all the time.

I disagree. After my first seven years of racing I was able to make
some significant improvements with changes to my training.

Dumbass -

Same here. Kept improving over 11 years. Mostly because of lessons
learned in training and diet.

Diet is harder than training. Training is fun. Dieting is not, but
dieting might be more of a differentiator. Everyone trains. Most don't
seriously diet.

dumbasses,

you might have a different interpretation of significant improvement
than i do.

sure some people will have more capacity to improve than others, but i
would be very surprised to see someone who's been racing and training
for 5+ yrs to one year improve power:weight ratio by 20 or 30%.



Dumbass -


My definition was "relative to whom I was racing against". The higher
the level of competition, the smaller, percentage-wise, the
differences are between racers who are "good" vs. racers who are
packfill.

If your measure is sustained power at AT or something like that, ya,
you'd be correct. I maintain, however, that most people don't measure
themselves vs. their Powertap. They measure themselves against their
peers.


thanks,

K. Gringioni.

On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 10:05:35 -0800 (PST), Bret
wrote:

On Feb 5, 10:52*am, "Robert Chung"
wrote:
Bret wrote:
It mainly
came down to finding a small group that was committed to *doing
structured training that included hard paceline rides, easy days,
climbing days and interval workouts.

How do you do interval workouts in a small group?

We would warm up together, do our interval sets individually and then
regroup to finish the ride.

Yeah, I was in a group that did that for workouts on a local climb.

On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 14:14:33 -0800, "marco"
wrote:

Susan Walker wrote:
Doug smith wrote:
What kind of dieting did you do? Serious count every calorie, some
theory type diet like Paleo or Atkins, or more generic cut out the
sweets and beer diet?

1. Eat less
2. More fruit+veg, less fat+salt
3. Eat+sleep more regularly
4. Sweets and beer (et cetera) no more than 1x/week


You had me up until that last one.

For me it's the salt. Or at least I don't think avoiding salt is
important for performance.

But I have a problem avoiding sweets.

I love sleep and get it. Eat lots of fruits and a varying but
generally large amount of vegetables.

On Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:27:17 GMT, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 14:14:33 -0800, "marco"
wrote:

Susan Walker wrote:
Doug smith wrote:
What kind of dieting did you do? Serious count every calorie, some
theory type diet like Paleo or Atkins, or more generic cut out the
sweets and beer diet?

1. Eat less
2. More fruit+veg, less fat+salt
3. Eat+sleep more regularly
4. Sweets and beer (et cetera) no more than 1x/week


You had me up until that last one.

For me it's the salt. Or at least I don't think avoiding salt is
important for performance.

But I have a problem avoiding sweets.

I love sleep and get it. Eat lots of fruits and a varying but
generally large amount of vegetables.

Oh, and I forgot to add: I'm slowly getting fatter so take what I say
with a grain of salt...hahha I'm so funny I am..

On Feb 5, 3:01*pm, Michael Press wrote:
In article
,



*Scott wrote:
On Feb 4, 3:36*am, Amit Ghosh wrote:
On Feb 3, 5:10*pm, Scott wrote:

Who said anything about doing the low cadence/high force efforts at
significantly lower wattages?

dumbass,

if you do an all out interval, say 5 minutes and self select cadence
and then you do 5 minutes and you deliberately restrict your cadence
you won't make as much power, since you have imposed an additional
constraint on yourself.

You don't know what you're talking about. *First, on its face your
argument makes no sense. *Who says that the self-selected cadence
would be high, or that the notion of 'restricting' cadence means your
restricting it to a relatively low range. *Forcing yourself to pedal
at a significantly higher cadence than YOUR optimal cadence is a
constraint, too, in that you are not working in your optimal cadence
range.

Besides, we're not talking about 5 min efforts. *Most folks do SE
intervals over a 15 to 25 minute period. *I guaran-****in-tee you that
you can consistently do a higher wattage at a lower cadence (55-60)
for that period of time than you could do for the same period at more
"normal" cadences (95-100) UNLESS you spend a LOT of time working on
high cadence intervals. *Regardless, you have to have the strength
before you can put out the power at any cadence. *So, what would you
prefer, spend some time during the early or off season working on
strength at a low cadence, then bring in the speed later, or work on
speed immediately but not have the strength?

From my experience I can tell you that it is much easier to hit much
higher wattages at high cadence for short periods, no question. *But,
just because you can do a relatively high wattage for a minute at 100
rpm means you'll ever hit the same wattage for 20 minutes at 100 rpm
just by extending the effort a little bit at a time. *But, if you can
do the wattage for 15-20 minutes at low cadence, you can up the
cadence pretty easily.

Power (aka wattage) equals speed time force.
Equal force at 60 rpm and 90 rpm means
the power (wattage) at 90 rpm is half again
as much as at 60 rpm.

--
Michael Press

This is meaningless. If you're at max power for a 60 rpm cadence, then
by definition you can't increase cadence without a corresponding
decrease in torque (lower gear). There is a theoretical cadence at
which maximum power transfer occurs which would show as a peak on a
max power vs. cadence curve. When Robert says cadence is a red
herring, he means (I think) that the power bandwidth curve is so flat
that practically speaking, it doesn't much matter where you fall on
the curve.

Bret

On Feb 5, 5:28*pm, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:
On Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:27:17 GMT, John Forrest Tomlinson



wrote:
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 14:14:33 -0800, "marco"
wrote:

Susan Walker wrote:
Doug smith wrote:
What kind of dieting did you do? *Serious count every calorie, some
theory type diet like Paleo or Atkins, or more generic cut out the
sweets and beer diet?

1. Eat less
2. More fruit+veg, less fat+salt
3. Eat+sleep more regularly
4. Sweets and beer (et cetera) no more than 1x/week

You had me up until that last one.

For me it's the salt. Or at least I don't think avoiding salt is
important for performance.

But I have a problem avoiding sweets.

I love sleep and get it. Eat lots of fruits and a varying but
generally large amount of vegetables.

Oh, and I forgot to add: I'm slowly getting fatter so take what I say
with a grain of salt...hahha I'm so funny I am..

Are you fattly getting slower as well? You started it with the dumb
word games ...

On Feb 5, 1:40*pm, "Robert Chung"
wrote:
Scott wrote:
On Feb 5, 10:52 am, "Robert Chung"
wrote:
Bret wrote:
It mainly
came down to finding a small group that was committed to doing
structured training that included hard paceline rides, easy days,
climbing days and interval workouts.

How do you do interval workouts in a small group?

Are you asking how Bret himself specifically does it, or is your
question intended to imply that it can't be done?

The former, but I sorta enjoyed the way you jumped to conclusions.

- Show quoted text -

Since I asked you what you meant, how is it that I jumped to a
conclusion? I merely imagined there could be two (perhaps more)
intentions behind your question. If you're taking my further comments
as proof that I thought you were questioning that it could be done at
all, you shouldn't. Off and on over the past few years I've been
teammates with Bret and he and I plus other teammates or friends have
done various rides that would constitute small group interval
workouts. I suppose you could say that my comments could've been
taken in response either to a direct question to Bret OR in rebuttal
to a implication that you can't do group intervals. Sorry for the
confusion.

On Feb 5, 3:01*pm, Michael Press wrote:
In article
,





*Scott wrote:
On Feb 4, 3:36*am, Amit Ghosh wrote:
On Feb 3, 5:10*pm, Scott wrote:

Who said anything about doing the low cadence/high force efforts at
significantly lower wattages?

dumbass,

if you do an all out interval, say 5 minutes and self select cadence
and then you do 5 minutes and you deliberately restrict your cadence
you won't make as much power, since you have imposed an additional
constraint on yourself.

You don't know what you're talking about. *First, on its face your
argument makes no sense. *Who says that the self-selected cadence
would be high, or that the notion of 'restricting' cadence means your
restricting it to a relatively low range. *Forcing yourself to pedal
at a significantly higher cadence than YOUR optimal cadence is a
constraint, too, in that you are not working in your optimal cadence
range.

Besides, we're not talking about 5 min efforts. *Most folks do SE
intervals over a 15 to 25 minute period. *I guaran-****in-tee you that
you can consistently do a higher wattage at a lower cadence (55-60)
for that period of time than you could do for the same period at more
"normal" cadences (95-100) UNLESS you spend a LOT of time working on
high cadence intervals. *Regardless, you have to have the strength
before you can put out the power at any cadence. *So, what would you
prefer, spend some time during the early or off season working on
strength at a low cadence, then bring in the speed later, or work on
speed immediately but not have the strength?

From my experience I can tell you that it is much easier to hit much
higher wattages at high cadence for short periods, no question. *But,
just because you can do a relatively high wattage for a minute at 100
rpm means you'll ever hit the same wattage for 20 minutes at 100 rpm
just by extending the effort a little bit at a time. *But, if you can
do the wattage for 15-20 minutes at low cadence, you can up the
cadence pretty easily.

Power (aka wattage) equals speed time force.
Equal force at 60 rpm and 90 rpm means
the power (wattage) at 90 rpm is half again
as much as at 60 rpm.

--
Michael Press- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yeah, but who said anything about equal force? Your reference to
power equaling speed times force just reinforces the point that in the
situations I'm talking about you're generating much greater force over
a longer period at low cadences than you would doing higher cadences.
I am now and forever more talking about 15 to 25 minute work
intervals. Unless you've spent quite a lot of time working on the
ability to high cadence efforts for extensive periods, you'll find
that you can generate consistent power (key word: consistent) over
that period of time at lower HR with a low cadence approach.

Before you try to bring in some example about how weightlifters or
whomever don't do their max lifts at really slow speeds, but rather in
a somewhat explosive manner, keep in mind that whether at 55 rpm or
120 rpm, we're not talking about single-rep-max type efforts. We're
talking about a VERY aerobic activity that most folks can do for many
thousands of repetitions before exhaustion, not one repetition.