Atascadero 50 and training thoughts

Had a real nice ride today. The weather was great. Some nice pockets of warm air as we traversed through the county. The climb up the grade was good with a little headwind. Kept gaps to a minimum and regrouped at Santa Margarita park and ride. Construction on Camino Real mostly complete so no hold ups but section with very small shoulder. Good push up 41 and fun descent. The paceline into MB could have rotated a little more frequent and smoother but we will get there. Rabbit led out nicely to the city limit sign. Levi tried to come around at the end but I think I still pipped him at the end. Added Turri to make sure we got in 50. Enjoyed the ride and conversation.

One topic that came up was the use of HR monitors for training. I have used HR monitors for over 20 years in my training and a power meter last 2 years. 3 main ways of assessing riding effort. Power - watts, Heart Rate, and Perceived Effort. Power is the most accurate but difficult to measure, HR is easy to measure but is somewhat slow to change to efforts and dependent on several physiologic factors, Perceived Effort has actually been shown to correlate fairly well with the other objective measures but obviously is not as accurate or scientific. The purpose of measuring effort in endurance sports is to tailor training to improve overall endurance and focus on strengthening specific parts of our muscular endurance system. By focusing and training in certain HR or Power zones we can improve different aspects of this system such as overall endurance, muscle endurance, sprinting, etc. By using these monitoring methods one can tailor purpose in training rides to emphasize or develop these aspects of muscular endurance, allow adequate recovery and rest. Much of the specialization in training methods including periodization I feel is largely dependent on overall training time. For those of us working/family dudes who can only train 3-6 hrs/week, the need for this specialization is less. Going hard during most rides is ok and the natural recovery from limited training probably avoids overtraining and is the most effective way to get and keep the highest fitness. Obviously we will be limited to how much endurance we may develop but can often keep at a quite high fitness level. (won't be able to go hard for a 3 hour road race). If longer training is available then the need for periodization and specialized efforts of training are needed to see the maximum improvements in fitness and to avoid overtraining. It is interesting and makes group rides sometimes difficult as some of us may be trying to accomplish different goals for a given ride even though we are riding together in a group ride and certainly the natural tendency when we get together is to go hard.

The best general resource I have read on cycling training is Joel Friel's book The Cyclist's Training Bible.

I will post more on training zones in the future but here is the links to his websites.

Ciao

David

http://www2.trainingbible.com/joesblog/blog.html

http://www2.trainingbible.com/index.aspx

There are some free resources from some of his books.