How to get improved

orbeaonyx said:

On previous sunday I took part for first time in a circouit which included 10 rounds of 4 km each one of them.I was in the first group during the race and sometimes i was the leader of it.But when the final sprint started i dropped.I need suggestions how to get improved in incline sprints

Don't lead out the sprint.

orbeaonyx said:

...But when the final sprint started i dropped.I need suggestions how to get improved in incline sprints

Did you start the sprint with the winners and get outsprinted or did you lose position during the windup to the sprint and find yourself out of position to launch your own sprint?

If it's the former and you were where you needed to be and jumped with the winners then you need to work on your top end sprint with some dedicated sprint workouts. Add a dedicated sprint day early in your training week where you do both little and big gear sprints, on the flats and on slight inclines. Rest fully between each sprint and if you have training partners with similar goals then sprint against them to keep it real. Don't try to work this in with other training. You can do that as well on a different day, but do a dedicated sprint day where you can work on top end power and speed and stay fresh between efforts to give it your best.

If it's the latter then you need to work on holding your position tactically or L5 and L6 type work for the high speeds that often lead up to a sprint, probably both. I used to get swallowed in the field swell all the time until I learned to fight for my position near the front (not necessarily at the front). It takes a ton of concentration as everybody tries to get into position for the sprint. If the pack slows at all it's doubly hard as all the riders near the back suddenly see their chance to advance and start moving up left, right and center. You've gotta expect this and put out some serious power to stay near the front. It's actually better when the pace is kept high and things are strung out a bit. Either way you've got to ride really smart, really agressively and be willing to pull out the stops to stay in position or all the sprint work in the world won't help.

Good luck,
Dave

If it's the latter then you need to work on holding your position tactically or L5 and L6 type work for the high speeds that often lead up to a sprint, probably both.
Thanks Dave for your useful advices
You have understood exactly what happened could you be more specific please Which is the ideal duration should i work in L5-L6 I am 37 my MHR is 188 and the next race is in six weeks

orbeaonyx said:

...could you be more specific please Which is the ideal duration should i work in L5-L6 I am 37 my MHR is 188 and the next race is in six weeks

6 weeks is good as that's about the ideal time for some top end training adaptations. I'd definitely add an L5 training day if you're not already doing one. L5 is VO2 max work and trains the very top end of your aerobic capabilities. It's still aerobic and these efforts can be sustained for up to 8 minutes but it's very high end aerobic so it will get you breathing as hard as you can and they are quite painful inervals. Building this fitness can easily make the difference in the last 5 minutes of a fast race or can carry you over a short but hard climb or can make the difference when the leaders put the hammer down for several minutes. It also sets the high end of your aerobic capabilities so in theory at least raising that ceiling can allow you increase your core aerobic power (L4) a bit. So L5 work is really useful during a lot of hard fast racing situations including high speed finishes, if you're not specifically doing L5 or L6 workouts yet, I'd concentrate on the L5 since it's useful in a lot more situations.

HR isn't very useful for gauging L5 efforts. They're too hard and too short. Your HR will come very close to max by the end of these efforts and your breathing will be ragged and uncontrolled towards the end of each one which makes watching HR pretty difficult anyway. Your HR will also take a couple of minutes to come up when you start these intervals and they're so short that it really isn't a very useful metric. Since it doesn't sound like you have a power meter, do these L5 efforts on time instead of HR. You could also do them on distance by choosing a course with preselected landmarks, maybe one flat course for high speed L5 and one short steady hill.

Either way your intervals should last between 3 and 8 minutes with 5 minutes being ideal. Shorter than 3 minutes and they're not worth doing(or you should be doing them much harder and calling it a L6 workout) as it takes nearly 2.5 minutes to get your VO2 max energy delivery systems primed up and working so less than 2.5 minutes and you're not really working the right metabolic processes.

Lacking a PM it will take some practice, but the idea is to find a steady fast pace that you can just barely hold for the 5 minute (or 3-8) duration. If you try too hard you won't be able to finish or will have to back off dramatically. If you don't push hard enough you'll feel like you could have done a lot more than 5 minutes. The good news is that these are pretty short and the feedback is instantaneous. You'll know very quickly whether you're on pace or if you blew it. You won't hurt too much in the first minute to minute and a half, but if you picked the pace correctly you'll start to feel it by two minutes and by 3 you will really be hurting with uncontrollable deep breathing. By five you'll be glad to stop. Rest for an equal amount of time in a really easy gear and then do it again. 5x5 with 5 minutes of rest is a very good L5 routine.

L6 work is purely anaerobic and is what you'll draw on for very intense efforts of up to a minute and a half to two minutes in duration. These are killer hard and realistically you don't use this capability as often as you use your aerobic systems. If you're already doing L5 and other core aerobic work then you might want to add a weekly L6 session but I'd definitely target the aerobic processes first. HR is entirely useless for guiding these efforts as they're so short and so intense. Basically it's just like the L5 except you're targeting a minute to minute and a half max effort. Get out of the saddle and explode hard and then drive it all the way to completion without backing off. A minute will feel like a lifetime during these efforts and it will again take some practice to find your sustainable pace. I really wouldn't do many of these unless you really feel you've maxed out your aerobic capabilities with a lot of L5 and easier work. Racing and group rides can provide some impromptu L6 work that's mentally easier than dedicated L6 interval sessions, especially track racing.

I'm a big believer in Lemond's intensity before duration approach to a weekly schedule or to block training. IOW do the L5 work before L4(one hour TT pace) work and do that before long steady L3(tempo) or L2(endurance) rides. And if you include the anaerobic stuff it would be L7 before L6 before L5.....

That approach takes some faith since at first it's easy to believe the hard stuff early in the week will leave you too tired for steadier work later in your training week. When I first read Lemond's book I was sceptical but it really does work. First it lets you really put out your best efforts on your hardest days, it's also easier mentally since each workout is easier and usually a bit more fun than the previous day. It also ends the training week with a steady longer endurance or tempo ride which is easier to recover from and leaves you in a better position for weekend group rides or races.

So a week might look something like:
M - rest
T - a.m. L7 sprints, p.m. L5 5x5 intervals
W - L4, 2x20 minute repeats
Th - Tempo(L3) or endurance ride of several hours
Fr- rest
Sa. - Group ride, race or more L4 work
Su - Group ride, race, or endurance/tempo work

There are a million variations and it really depends on your own strengths and weaknesses but make sure you get plenty of L4 and some L5 as well as some dedicated sprint work if you want to contest those fast sprints.

As for the tactical part, you've just got to do a lot of fast races and learn how to stay up front when the crunch comes. Just know that it will and that any slowing of the field spells trouble that you have to respond to instantly before you get swallowed by the field. If you have a velodrome nearby then get there and see if they have rental track bikes. I don't know of any better way to get high end speed and to learn race tactics. A typical day of mass start track racing will have four or five events each with a different tactical emphasis, they'll be short and fast and teach you quickly to know where you are in the field and teach you how to respond to different situations. Beside's you get four or five chances each time you go to the track instead of one big sprint per weekend.

Good luck,
Dave

I have the same issues as the OP and Dave's suggestions sounded perfect. Thanks! 😄

thank you very much Dave for your long and very useful reply

can you explain please how much per cent of my MHR (188) should be the L4- L5- L7 ?

How does one determine their MHR?

~Andy

The 188 is the max i have ever seen in my HRM

orbeaonyx said:

...can you explain please how much per cent of my MHR (188) should be the L4- L5- L7 ?

Max Hr is a lousy way to gauge these efforts, without a power meter you should just trial and error until you find the max effort you can sustain for the intended time. So, 10 to 30 minute efforts for L4, 3 to 8 minute intervals for L5 and as bloody hard as you can jump and hold for fifteen to thirty seconds for L7. You could conceivably use max HR for gauging your L4 effort, but even then HR at FTP (or HR you'd get during a one hour steady maximal effort on a well rested day when you're highly motivated) would be a better target.

In theory at least both L6 and L7 efforts would take you to your max HR if you could hold them long enough. But HR doesn't respond instantly to a sudden effort and you really can't sustain a full out sprint all that long so you won't see max HR during L7 even though your body is working hard enough to take you there if you could hold it longer. You might hit it in a longer L6 effort, but probably not if you started from rest, more likely if you jumped for all you're worth near the end of a steady hard hill climb. Again HR doesn't respond instantly so unless you preload with some hard work to get close it'll be unlikely to hit max during a minute to minute and a half L6 effort.

If you really want to use HR to gauge your efforts then you should try to figure out your HR at FTP. It's also referred to as HR at LT (erroneously) or HR at OBLA (Onset of Blood Lactate Accumulation) but however you describe it, it's the average HR you'll settle into for your best hour long steady effort. Correlations between HR at FTP and HR max are pretty weak so it's better to try to measure your HR at FTP and use it to gauge your aerobic efforts.

Using that method you can gauge L3 efforts as 84% - 94% of HR-FTP, L4 as 95% to 105% of HR-FTP and L5 efforts as > 105% of HR-FTP. But you've also got to remember that it takes a couple of minutes for your HR to respond and come up to those levels so you can't gauge the very start of your efforts using those HR targets. If you try to get your HR into those ranges right away, you'll have to go much too hard and you won't be able to complete the effort or you'll have to back way off. So again, it takes some practice efforts to figure out your best pacing that results in the appropriate HRs after several minutes that allows you to complete the effort at the ideal pace. That's one huge advantage of power based training. If you know your target power output you can start putting out that power in the first twenty to thirty seconds of your interval and just hold it steady as best you can. Power responds instantly and is immediately useable as a gauge, HR lags and you have to predict that lag or you'll try to overdo your intervals.

Anyway, I really wouldn't recommend doing your harder intervals on HR at all and just do them on time or across a known distance. It's easier and will help you tune into how your body works at different intensities.

Punisher92009 said:

How does one determine their MHR?...

You can use the method described above, climb a hard steady hill and then jump for all you're worth near the top. Then you can refine this in hard group rides, races or hard interval sessions. Anytime you see a higher number you've just redefined your max HR. I used to get my highest in hard crits and while racing track. The common formulas like 220-age or variations on it never worked for me. I could regularly hit HRs 20 to 30 bpm over those predicted by the formulas. Even now at 46 years old I can regularly hit 190 bpm during hard efforts. It's an interesting curiousity, but for the reasons given above a lousy metric to use in structuring your hard training.

Good luck,
Dave

thanks again Dave. What is the definition of FTP?

orbeaonyx said:

thanks again Dave. What is the definition of FTP?

It´s the power you can sustain in an one hour TT. Therefore it is FUNCTIONAL threshold power.