Cycling Fitness / Training Advice

What you do is you drink beer then eat kebabs then drink more beer every day until you have the god-like physique of everyone's favourite shitposter.

I’ve no idea if this is apocryphal or not, but I used to know a guy who went on to win many caps for the Irish rugby team. At the start of his career (when I knew him) he was told that his performance metrics were top notch but that he was too lean and would thus be injury prone. His coaches therefore put him on a diet of McDonald’s and kebabs to add an extra layer of fatty body armour.

Anyway #csb

It's easy and cheap so if it's a simple case of adding calories, sure. I'd imagine they'd aim to be a bit healthier these days but still, if you're not eating enough your performance will suffer and if you're really not eating enough you can get into the hormone fucking territory and end up totally fucked.

Worth recording what you eat in terms of calories for a week or so (you might do this already)

Given your weight and cycling workload, you probably need to be eating at least 3000 calories a day.
You are so light and lean for your height already, so overtraining and under eating in combination while on a long cycling trip might have wrecked your muscles somewhat.

As Hippy said, not so easy to find non veggie protein options in French countryside/rural locations.

Cheers all for the tips. I’m going to start doing this for the next week. I’m sure I under eat

Suppose you had less time than was ideal for a planned session- would you do the reps at full duration but do fewer of them, or do shorter reps and the prescribed amount, and/ or sneak a bit off the warm up, cool down, rests etc. I think I know the answer but worth checking!

Do fewer reps, a bit harder than prescribed? If you have to, don't skimp on the warmup, but shorten the cool down (ideally keep both same though)

Ah good shout, I hadn’t considered increasing intensity slightly. Thanks, good tip

Rather than starting a thread: Does anyone have any coach recommendations?
TT/ Road Racing focused. Aim of sub 50 and sub 19 for next season/ do well in Cat 2 racing.
(current PB is mid20 and a long 53- on a less than optimal set up- now addressed, and racing skills are improving).
Ideally one that includes Strength and Nutrition, as if left to my own devices I will just do Tempo sessions everyday and eat peanut butter #PBAS, this is not ideal for life or fitness.

After some indoor training advice. Managed to crash into a tree on the mtb, fracturing my humerus (upper arm) in 3 places, chipping it, and potentially cracking the shoulder cup as well.

I've been told to ride an indoor trainer but to expect to be off the bike for 3 months at least.

I've never used an indoor trainer but have borrowed one from a mate, I can't push myself too hard whilst recovering but any suggestions on a plan to follow? Want to keep the weight off whilst I get better mainly, and to try and keep some of the fitness up I gained over summer.

Ouch! Sorry to hear about the crash.

If you’re not supposed to push yourself, then you’ll be looking at doing longer z2 sessions to keep weight off. These will either be fine or soul destroying, depending on your boredom threshold.
Basically work on your base.
In terms of a plan/progression, just increase volume as you start to heal and feel able.

Do you have power to work with and know your training zones? Or the HR equivalent?

Whatever you do, pick some good tv series that you look forward to watching, keeps you distracted and motivated, especially with base km on the turbo.

Watching films with headphones on is what I did. I hate the turbo drowning out the quiet dialog so headphones really help keep focus on film rather than turbo and pain.

I would inititally start at very easy intensities and judge pain levels. If ok, I'd probably do some kind of TR base plan or just set a power level to 50-70% threshold depending on pain and duration and let it be.

@TTM @hippy @cjr

No idea what my training zones are, Elite Turno trainer doesn't have power I don't think (speed/cadence) but I know if I'm going for it I hit 175bpmish. 150bpmish I am comfortably spinning so I guess I can use these as a guide?

As you can tell I've no idea what I'm doing hah...I'm planning on catching up on a lot of cycling from this year whilst sat on the turbo.

If your upper threshold HR is around 175 then z2 (steady endurance) will probably be between 120-145 approximately.
Basically you should be able to hold a conversation at that intensity without struggling for breath.

OK this makes sense, thanks! Will start giving this a go. Will have to work out what sort if training plan I want to follow.

Hey folks,

I’ve never done any structured training but I’m signed up for Mallorca 312 next year and I want to start a training plan with something like training peaks or Garmin.

I have just received my first ever power meter, a Stages on Hollowgram crank and I have a Garmin Edge 530.

I’m typically out 3 times a week; Tuesday and Thursday mornings 6-9am and sat or sun 6-11am.

These times are carved out of my family time and work time and I’m reluctant to change the times if I can help it.

Can I feed this info in to training peaks / Garmin and it work with my schedule?

Any tips on what plans and how to program them would be greatly appreciated.

If you’ve got 11 hours a week to play with you’re golden. That’s more than enough.

If you’re doing the full 312 then it’s a long steady day. Almost all of the climbing is in the first half, so ideally that’s where you work and then find a decent bunch to share the work with on the flat second half.

With that in mind I’d recommend lots of sweetspot to get your base solid. Start with 2/3 x 15’, gradually increasing interval length and duration until you’re happy tapping out 4/5 x 30’ with short rests. Don’t forget to sprinkle in some vo2 work to keep the top end ticking too.

Cheers @TTM,

And are you saying 2-3 15s every hour I’m out riding? Or over the course of the ride?

And…are we talking about Z3?

Over the course of a ride, but try to keep the rest durations relatively short.

Sweetspot should be around 85-95% FTP

It’s the top of z3, lower end of z4. It’s a good place to spend time as you develop a really good aerobic engine without accumulating a lot of fatigue, so you can do repeat sessions each week without digging a hole.

I wouldn't be as prescriptive around %'s of FTP, and I would certainly not recommend just going straight into "lots of sweetspot". 45 minutes sweetspot building to 2.5 hours of sweetspot three times a week? You will burn out by Christmas if your zones are correct.

If you've just got a power meter then that's going to be really handy for pacing once you've got used to using it, and eventually you might want to do some testing to get your zones.

For now I'd probably continue to ride consistently, with a calibrated power meter, and use RPE for a few months. By all means do some Z3 and if you want then put some long blocks in.

For clarity, I wasn’t suggesting doing that three times a week. Sorry if I was vague.

Progressively increasing sustained power is what’s worked for me when building towards a ride like this and if the 312 is still in April then 5 months is a good amount of time to increase thing’s steadily.
The point above about ensuring your zones are correct first is spot on.

Lastly, don’t forget to plan in rest and recovery time. That’s as important, if not more so, than the work you do on the bike.

Probably worth scheduling a 200-250k ride in a month or so before the 312. It's a long time in the saddle so good to know how your body reacts before the main event.

I would be doing a 312km ride every day from now until the event day, just to be on the safe side.