Time Trial

Comeback2006 said:

What types and progression of workouts are best for time trialing (40k)?

10 to 30 minute efforts with 5 minutes of easy riding in between. Go as hard as you can for the duration some days (especially with the 10 minute repeats) and go a bit easier on other days but make sure you're breathing deeply and steadily and focusing on the efforts. Try some 3 day blocks like:

- day one 3x10-15 minutes at high threshold pace(deep steady breathing, just under your best TT pace where it takes a lot of concentration to finish each repeat)

- day 2 2x25-30 minutes easier pace but still focused with steady breathing

- day 3, 2 to 3 hour ride with 45 minute to hour long blocks at tempo pace (focus enough to avoid dropping down into junk mileage and lack of effort but not hard and breathing should be very comfortable, basically your own fast but comfortable pace).

take a day off and then repeat or follow it with say a L4 Saturday and Tempo Sunday then another day off and repeat the cycle.

40 Km tts are hard, but about as easy as it gets to train for. You just need a strong aerobic engine and if that's really what you want to focus on you don't need high end sprints or purely anaerobic 1 to 2 minute intervals. If you want to do more general road racing and crits along with long TTs then you'll want a more varied training plan but it still starts with those same long L4 through Tempo repeats to build your core aerobic fitness.

Surf these forums for FTP, SST(Sweet Spot Training), L4, L3, etc. there's plenty of good info on bringing up your threshold power with long repeats like 2x20s. That's exactly what you need for 40km time trials. And definitely read: cyclingforums.comt397725.htmlOpen ↗ and the early pages of: cyclingforums.comt 314849 15 1.htmlOpen ↗ the advice and real world examples given there are motivating and exactly what you want for long TTs.

Good luck,
Dave

thanks a lot. much appreciated