Training for a hilly race

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:31:08 +0200, Donald Munro
wrote:

Robert Chung wrote:
That must've been his secret for winning that stage over the Gavia.

Susan Walker wrote:
http://greenjersey.files.wordpress.c...gavia_1988.jpg

Normal service has been resumed.

Wow, I didn't know Christian Van de Velde's father was leader of the
Giro too. Now it all makes sense.

That pink jersey was pretty dark back in the day. At least we know
that guy in the pic wasn't doping, since he was an American.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
Susan Walker wrote:
http://greenjersey.files.wordpress.c...gavia_1988.jpg

Wow, I didn't know Christian Van de Velde's father was leader of the
Giro too. Now it all makes sense.

That pink jersey was pretty dark back in the day. At least we know
that guy in the pic wasn't doping, since he was an American.

That's some pretty high trolling density. I wonder though if it takes
off from here. We are all so jaded! Perhaps a crosspost to rbt would
have been appropriate.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
Susan Walker wrote:
http://greenjersey.files.wordpress.c...gavia_1988.jpg

Wow, I didn't know Christian Van de Velde's father was leader of the
Giro too. Now it all makes sense.

That pink jersey was pretty dark back in the day. At least we know
that guy in the pic wasn't doping, since he was an American.

I think you'd better stay in rb.tech, John. Your racing related
knowledge seems a bit out of whack. Also, I think plenty of Americans doped.

Kurgan Gringioni wrote:
On Feb 2, 1:44 pm, "Robert Chung"
wrote:
LawBoy01 wrote:
When I am doing hill repeats, I sometimes force myself to sit and
grind up the climb with no less than 60 rpm while keeping up witht
folks using smaller gears. I just think that I am killing myself
without benefit sometimes. I suspect that your advice is correct.

John Phillip Lawboy:

Use the gears you're going to use. Cadence is a red herring. Focus
on power.




Dumbass -


I don't agree with the gear thing.

No matter how hard you try in training, you'll find yourself doing
stuff in races that you could never do in training.

Dumbass,

I disagree with the gear thing I wrote above, too, but not for the reason
you've given. When I wrote that, I didn't know he was 200 miles away from
the nearest hills. I thought he'd switched cassettes in order to do oddball
low cadence/high torque work, and I was suggesting that he just stick with
what he had. As a fat master, his problem is almost surely power-to-weight,
not gears.

On Feb 2, 3:32*pm, Carl Sundquist wrote:

The problem here is that LB is about 225 miles away from the course. He
is in Frisco, TX and the race in near Austin. He has no hills to speak
of. What he has though, is a lot of wind. It's a poor substitute, but he
needs to do a lot of into the wind intervals and tempo work.

If I were in that regrettable situation, I would be doing intervals
back and forth over a freeway overpass. I would also check around for
a tall parking garage.

Bret

Susan Walker wrote:
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
Susan Walker wrote:
http://greenjersey.files.wordpress.c...gavia_1988.jpg

Wow, I didn't know Christian Van de Velde's father was leader of the
Giro too. Now it all makes sense.

That pink jersey was pretty dark back in the day. At least we know
that guy in the pic wasn't doping, since he was an American.

I think you'd better stay in rb.tech, John. Your racing related
knowledge seems a bit out of whack. Also, I think plenty of Americans
doped.

Even if they doped, where's the evidence that it made a difference? There is
such a high degree of randomness in racing that doping has undetectable
effects.

On Feb 3, 11:24*am, Bret wrote:

If I were in that regrettable situation, I would be doing intervals
back and forth over a freeway overpass. I would also check around for
a tall parking garage.

you can ride up the side of a parking garage? Impressive! In what
gear?

On Feb 2, 4:50*pm, "marco" wrote:
Bret wrote:
Some people do low cadence, high torque climbing intervals to train
leg strength. I've seen Andy Hampsten do this on two separate
occasions (when he was still racing) with his arms resting on the bars
so that he wasn't using any upper body strength.

You may be stepping into a minefield here. Dr. Coggan and his followers will
argue that there is no benefit to those leg-strength intervals because,
primarily, you do not ever race at those cadences with those force high
levels. That's true, but you do a lot of things in training that aren't 100%
specific to racing. I think Andy did a brief ad hoc study to back up his
claims (not sure about that)

No study required; the math is quite straight-forward. The only reason
that I bothered to do any so-called "strength endurance" workouts at
all is that, at least for some people, a picture is worth a thousand
words.

and if I remember correctly, he said that the
efforts were really no different than climbing stairs. Well, anyone who has
done them over the course of a winter knows that is not the case. I'll bet
that Doc C. didn't do his experiment for a long enough period

I only did a few representative workouts, and didn't incorporate such
nonsense into my training. That said, there was no need to back up the
statements that I made, since there are hundreds of resistance
training studies in the literature to support my conclusions.

, nor did he
use high enough force.

I pedaled at the highest force I could maintain for the selected
durations (i.e., 5 and 20 min). The only way of increasing the force
requirement would be to do even shorter efforts at an even higher
power, but that's not what most people do and/or call "strength
endurance" training.

Anyway, you can point to a lot of very successful
pros for whom low-cadence, high-force intervals are a key element of their
off-season program.

But are they successful because of, or despite, such training?

I'm sure they're just fine with everybody else thinking
that it's a waste of time.

In my opinion, it *is* a waste of time (unless you race under
circumstances in which you have to generate high power at an
abnormally low cadence).

Andy Coggan

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:43:38 -0800, Robert Chung wrote:

Susan Walker wrote:
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
Susan Walker wrote:
http://greenjersey.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/
van_der_velde_gavia_1988.jpg

Wow, I didn't know Christian Van de Velde's father was leader of the
Giro too. Now it all makes sense.

That pink jersey was pretty dark back in the day. At least we know
that guy in the pic wasn't doping, since he was an American.

I think you'd better stay in rb.tech, John. Your racing related
knowledge seems a bit out of whack. Also, I think plenty of Americans
doped.

Even if they doped, where's the evidence that it made a difference?
There is such a high degree of randomness in racing that doping has
undetectable effects.

Why bother at all then?

Andy Coggan wrote:
No study required; the math is quite straight-forward.

I recall doing math that showed the workout is more like climbing stairs
while wearing a heavy backpack. Of course, that presumes certain gears and
slopes, which I chose based on what I know strong riders use.

I only did a few representative workouts, and didn't incorporate such
nonsense into my training.

Now, now... no need to be pejorative.

That said, there was no need to back up the
statements that I made, since there are hundreds of resistance
training studies in the literature to support my conclusions.

I found and re-read your report. For others interested, it's at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/setraining/

One of your references has this in its conclusion:
"The main finding of this investigation was that eight weeks of low-cadence
high-resistance interval training improved mean power by ~8% in a 40-km time
trial in well-trained male cyclists."

I pedaled at the highest force I could maintain for the selected
durations (i.e., 5 and 20 min).

Yeah, 20 minutes is a lot longer than most people do I think. But 5 minutes
is representative certainly. I know that when you are fit, you can climb
stairs wearing a heavy backpack for 5 minutes. Especially doing it a couple
times a week for a month or two.

I said:
Anyway, you can point to a lot of very successful
pros for whom low-cadence, high-force intervals are a key element of
their
off-season program.

Andy said:
But are they successful because of, or despite, such training?

We won't ever know. Obviously they think it helps.

In my opinion, it *is* a waste of time (unless you race under
circumstances in which you have to generate high power at an
abnormally low cadence).

Hey, what if your rear derailleur cable breaks??

Seriously, aren't there plenty of examples of athletes doing things in
training that don't perfectly follow the "specificity, specificity,
specificity" rule? Marathoners do speed work.....basketball players lift
weights......soccer players do plyometrics.....etc.

Wouldn't you agree that there has not been a thorough study specific to
cycling that addressed this issue? Any training technique that has the
amount of support this has shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, in my
opinion.

Mark
http://marcofanelli.blogspot.com