So i am not just jumping in for 10 weeks of training..

So I did not just jump on the track and bang out an hour test, then decide to knock out 10 weeks of training and go for an hour record. I started my first week for training for this at the end of August 2012! Not going to go deep into the workouts at this moment (will post those soon).

My basic though was that I needed to improve my aerobic endurance, just loads of constant ticking away at my FTP. FTP is your threshold or what ever you want to call it, there are about 10 different names for it, but let’s just say it is the average power you can hold for 60 minutes. Seems like a pretty good metric to use if you are training for an hour record eh? I had competed at masters track nats the first week of August (won the scratch race), generally the few months before track nats I am doing very little FTP work, really working on shorter power and speed efforts. So, after track nats each year the first thing I like to do is bang out a long climb and “see where I am at”.

First thing I have to say is that I do most of my FTP work on climbs, just more enjoyable and accessible for me. I know this is not the perfect practice for an hour attempt, but I figure this would be good basic prep before the specific preparation. I mean I can’t imagine that I could do all my FTP work on the track for 10 months, I would go crazy. So, at the end of august I went to one of my favorite 30 minute climbs an banged it out, held 322 watts. Cool, got a starting point to work from. In reality most of my workouts are on a 15 climb or a 30 minute climb (26 minutes as I get fit), I just do a few sessions up it.

I base most of my training off the average power I can hold for 30 minutes, as most of my efforts are 30 minutes. When I do my 15 minute climb I use the same number, just repeat it 3 or 4 times.

So once I had my “number” I started banging out repeats at the effort. My week would basically be 3-4 days of riding, each day of riding would be 3 x 15 minutes or 2 x 30 minutes at my “number”. The goal is always to match the number, then roll it out another watt at the end if possible. In my mind if I held the number the workout before then I can now match it, if I am good on the day I can bump it up a watt or two. If I am bad on the day then I just suck it up and match it anyway, these are the hard days, but also the ones that stretch the fitness and cause the good adaptions.

I basically did this from September till April, just ticked away at it.

In the first 6 weeks I got my 30m average power (my “number”) from 322w up to 330w, 8w gain in 6 weeks. I had the original vision in my head that I could keep pumping it up and go for the 35-39 hour at the end of the year, right before my racing age clicked over to 40. Of course things never go as planned. I got sick endlessly from November through February, literally had 5 colds in a row. My kids were sick non stop, once they are sick I am going to go down, fact of life. I showed up at the first race of the year (end of January out in CA) and was still hacking like I had lung cancer, crazy. Of course I continued to train through it all, only took one 4 day break while on vacation. Needless to say that it was not until Feb 1st that I was able to repeat the 330w legs that I had on November 1st, I basically stagnated my training for 3 months being sick, pain in the arse!

Once healthy and stable I continued to build “the number”, lots and lots of volume doing steady climbing. By the 4/11/13 I had my best 30m average ever (actually 27 minutes because I ran out of climb) and averaged 350w. Just in time, about a week before jumping back on the track and starting the focused specific work. Got my 30m average power up about 28w and actually higher than I have ever had on record.