I'm not sure I understand exactly what your question is, but here's a couple of thoughts...
Quoted post said:Originally Posted by leanman [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]
....DONT WANT TO PEAK AT ALL.....
IME, the key to not peaking prematurely is to keep building until races approach. You can look at this from an hours, miles, kj or work performed or in power terms CTL standpoint but as long as the trend is to steadily and slowly increase training load during the off season you'll build fitness but won't be real fresh very often. It's when you stop building load through additional rest days, shorter rides or swapping to higher end short interval work that's hard but doesn't generate as much training load that we start seeing rebound freshness and with it a peak in performance. But that performance peak typically comes at the expense of additional fitness gains and if we stay at that lower overall training load for a while we start to detrain which is the problem with premature mid winter performance peaks. The peak itself can be fun but it typically comes at the expense of additional building and having that fitness peak come during the racing season when it's the most valuable.
If you want to avoid mid winter peaking, keep on a steadily and gradually increasing loading pattern during your winter build cycles. Avoid loading up too quickly that might force you to then back off or to plateau as you run out of available hours to train or start to bump into recovery limits and need to back down, both of those will typically result in early peaks. Same for introducing too much short hard interval work during early to mid winter build cycles. You'll likely get enough of that on your group rides and during a 3 to 4 hour ride you'll get plenty of workload on those days but if you start in with the short interval work your load on those days will typically drop since it's hard to rack up as much workload (kj, hours, CTL, however you measure it) doing things like 6x4 minute VO2 Max efforts or 8x1 minute AWC efforts vs say 2+ hours of Tempo or even 40 to 60 minutes of Threshold work. Short hard efforts combined with lower overall workload is one of the most reliable ways to bring on a performance peak so either avoid doing too much of that kind of work too early in the year or at least balance it out with some longer Endurance/low Tempo sessions to keep the overall workload up.
Quoted post said:... is when i incorporate these 4 minute intervals.. wize to do them htis time of year? or wait till race season is in full swing....
Some VO2 max work may make sense, but for the reasons above as well as mental stress reasons I tend not to do too much or even long dedicated blocks of L5 work until important races are drawing near. L5 work tends to cost overall training load, is very stressful mentally and hard to sustain for very long so I don't recommend doing much of it in December or January if your racing begins in March and presumably your most important events are later in the year. Sure you could shake things up every few weeks by swapping a Threshold session for a L5 session or you can go after some 3 to 6 minute hills for all your worth on the group rides but I'd primarily focus on Tempo/SST/L4 work during your winter build and hold off on focused L5 training blocks till you're within 4 to 6 weeks of key events that will demand a lot of L5 fitness.
Quoted post said:...i dont peak for any one race. just race them all hard...
All the more reason to focus primarily on Tempo/SST/L4 work during the off season. Get your FTP as high as possible and put a lot of CTL in the bank over the winter and even if you don't have clearly defined peaks that you might get from focused tapers and high end short interval work you'll likely be very consistent race to race and have a lot of aerobic fitness and fatigue resistance to draw on for a wide variety of events.
There are a lot of ways to skin the training cat, but it sounds like you're not on a traditional long miles LSD program (perhaps time limited like a lot of us) but you also don't seem to be incorporating much above Tempo outside of your group rides. You might Google SST (Sweet Spot Training) and think about doing some additional sustained hard, but sub maximal aerobic work during some of your solo training sessions this winter. It's not magic, but for folks that can't spend 3 to 5 hours on their bike day after day it's a very good way to build both FTP and CTL and even though it's relatively intense compared to traditional LSD winter base building it doesn't have to lead to early peaks or mid season burnout with attention to overall workload and loading ramp rates.
I know it breaks with a lot of cycling tradition and I balked at doing things like Threshold level 3x20 sessions in December and January but it's definitely an option for folks that can't put in regular long hours day after day and has helped me go from packfill to fairly reliable podium finishes over the last few seasons.
YMMV,
-Dave
