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Hee-hee... well, I don't fit into the category she does!Quote:
Originally Posted by bcipam
Actually, I did lots of weight lifting for many years and did so in the off season too. I have head crusher thighs (use your imgination on that one! HA!).
Lean with no muscle mass... not me.
Good suggestion though, I hope it worked for your friend!
Bwahahaha!!!! Love it!Quote:
Originally Posted by KSH
Hey there... my two cents
Absolutely agree with velo girl
Heres my experience of the past few weeks... I am the "subject/assignment" for a student training to be a coach and she has written me a training a programme.
I had some fitness tests done (Lactate threshold, VO2max, endurance) and then she wrote me a six week programme.
A few weeks into it and I have broken two PBs in time trials and I feel stronger on hills than ever before. My strength (in these early days - only been riding/training since October 2004) and my weakness' are sprints and climbs.
She has scheduled me for three aerobic rides a week (which are not hard pushing - more like recovery pace - and a bit longer than usual rides) These rides are at 70%, 75% and 80% of max.
Then I do 1-2 specific rides per week - she has written into the schedule Fartlek sprints, hill repetitions (riding in the biggest gear I can while staying seated), and speed endurance sprints.
I am faster in my sprinting, I find hills still tough, but i am up them much more quickly - and this is after less than a month of training!
I have told her that when I have finished being her assignment and she has written her report on how the training programme went, I will pay her to write me another.
I have never had this much variety, or this many "recovery" pace rides - even though I have known going slower is possibly more important than lots of faster rides.
So based on this very limited experience thus far i would say vary what you do, do some hill reps with a specific speed, cadence or heart rate in mind... do some little sprints/intervals... make sure you do plenty of riding at a lower speed/resitance...
KSH, I was the same swimmer in high school. I loved doing the 500 free, and people thought I was crazy. I also wouldn't place at 1st, but would do well and felt good at the end. I'm not a sprinter at all, so I think we're pretty similar in terms of athletic genes. I can go long and far on my bike, which is why I'm trying to get into doing brevets, etc. I can sprint only for short distances and I absolutely die after. But I also haven't trained properly to develop those muscles. So part of it is just my style. Keep at it!
I was a competitive swimmer, and also "endurance" but that was just because I'm also just SLOW and those were the only events with room for me. 400 I.m., 200 Butterfly... I have no upper body strength to speak of. My strokes are very nice - I perfected them trying to get fast. Pretty does not mean strong :-)
However, my experience in cycling has been different.
Do you workout like you owuld a swimming workout? That got me tons faster on the bike. I'd go out and do a long warmup, then some medium length sorta-hard intervals, then shorter and faster ones... just like a swim workout. I also focused on technique. If you're doing something inefficiently, then that could have you hitting that speed wall. I have a four mile grid that I use for "laps." Other cyclists would find it too boring... but it's more exciting than the swimming pool, especially 'cause I can watch that speedometer and see exactly how fast I'm going.
It meant going out on my own, in the dawn's early light, but that was part of the "fun" - the REAL fun was the look on that ride leader's face when I hit 17 mph.... going uphill on a 35 pound Western Flyer :-) ... and averaging 21 + with the guys for 30 miles... still on a toe-clipped hybrid (albeit aluminum).
Now, it *could* be that you have X amount of quadness or V02 or whatever stuff they talk about on that other bike forum, but maybe not.