Help with Lactic Acid

Congrats on riding at all at 58, much less in need of a hip replacement.

As to your specific question, it sounds to me as though you are doing intervals if you are "continuously spinning to maintain a constant speed when it hurts." An interval is simply an intensity higher than a recovery pace. In HR terms, an interval is pretty much any intensity >75%MHR. In power terms, it's any intensity >75% of your 40K TT max sustainable power. The major difference is that the higher your intensity the shorter duration you can hold it, so you're forced into short intervals for high intensity whereas you can hold it longer (e.g., 20 minutes) for lower intensity. Recovery is just so you can do the desired number of repeats to get in your total minutes.

As to your basic objective of getting faster on the hills, it's basically a function of raising your overall power. From your average speeds, it sounds as though you are producing ~150w now. You can't go up a hill very fast at 150w. If you want to raise that number to, say, 200w average, you need to do a couple of days/week of high-intensity work. I'd say mix it up, one day/wk a high average tempo ride at ~200w, hold it for 10-20 minutes, recover and do it again, and again. Then, one day/wk do higher intensity (e.g., 250w) intervals. You won't be able to hold these as long, so you do more of them. Bottom line is that you've got to spend some of your trainig time at the higher intensities if you want to raise your overall power = speed. This increased power will translate into more speed on the flats and on hills.

Thank you. I'd love to by a power meter, but I can't justify the $1000.00. How did you calculate the approximate wattage?

ltmark said:

Thank you. I'd love to by a power meter, but I can't justify the $1000.00. How did you calculate the approximate wattage?

From personal experience, but you can play around with power and speed at specific assumptions for weight, frontal area, rolling resistance and grade at this link. analyticcycling.comanalyticcycling.comOpen ↗. All the key terms are defined and explained. The interesting thing to note is how much even a slight grade slows you down. Power just gives me a way of characterizing your current performance, whereas speed is a function of wind and grade.

[b]"If you want to raise that number to, say, 200w average, you need to do a couple of days/week of high-intensity work. I'd say mix it up, one day/wk a high average tempo ride at ~200w, hold it for 10-20 minutes, recover and do it again, and again. Then, one day/wk do higher intensity (e.g., 250w) intervals."[/b]

There's the secret right there!!! If all you do is ride at a certain intensity and are limited at that point for long-duration rides, you need to back off and do shorter higher-intensity workouts every once in a while. What you'll notice is that these higher-intensity workouts will get longer and longer in duration as you improve. And the equilibrium point where you used to do the long rides will be raised as well.

Without having a power-meter, you can use a known course that you ride and measure the speed instead. If you're used to riding between point-A to point-B at 15mph when the lactic acid sets in and limits your speed, you have a critical piece of data. Then once a week, rather than riding A->B at 15mph, break it up into segments and do 1-minute at 20mph... then slow down to 10mph to recover and do 2-minutes at 17mph... rest for a couple minutes, then do another minute at 20mph.. rest and continue the rest of the way. Just this one workout once a week, will end up raising that steady-state speed that you used to be limited at 15mph to 16mph... 🙂

RapDaddyo said:

Congrats on riding at all at 58, much less in need of a hip replacement.

As to your specific question, it sounds to me as though you are doing intervals if you are "continuously spinning to maintain a constant speed when it hurts." An interval is simply an intensity higher than a recovery pace. In HR terms, an interval is pretty much any intensity >75%MHR. In power terms, it's any intensity >75% of your 40K TT max sustainable power. The major difference is that the higher your intensity the shorter duration you can hold it, so you're forced into short intervals for high intensity whereas you can hold it longer (e.g., 20 minutes) for lower intensity. Recovery is just so you can do the desired number of repeats to get in your total minutes.

As to your basic objective of getting faster on the hills, it's basically a function of raising your overall power. From your average speeds, it sounds as though you are producing ~150w now. You can't go up a hill very fast at 150w. If you want to raise that number to, say, 200w average, you need to do a couple of days/week of high-intensity work. I'd say mix it up, one day/wk a high average tempo ride at ~200w, hold it for 10-20 minutes, recover and do it again, and again. Then, one day/wk do higher intensity (e.g., 250w) intervals. You won't be able to hold these as long, so you do more of them. Bottom line is that you've got to spend some of your trainig time at the higher intensities if you want to raise your overall power = speed. This increased power will translate into more speed on the flats and on hills.

Quick question for you Rap, I've read some other threads where you state you are riding 14 - 20 hours per week. My question is how are you mixing up your workouts to include intervals? Does it look something like this?

Monday: 2 x 20 (15 min warmup, 20 min interval, 5 min recovery, 20 min interval accounting for an hour) + 2 hours at 75%

Tuesday: 3 hours @ 75%

Wednesday: 3 hours @ 75%

Thursday: 2 x 20 (15 min warmup, 20 min interval, 5 min recovery, 20 min interval accounting for an hour) + 2 hours at 75%

Friday: Off

Saturday: 2 - 8 hours @ 75%

Sun: Off

Just curious how you are breaking it down to get in your intervals AND get in the aerobic miles. I have between 6 - 8 weeks left to set a personal best for a 50 miler before cold weather sets in. It actually won't be cold, but I have asthma and can't breath when it gets so much as cool outside.

Any suggestions will be helpful. Thanks.

Edit: if you want to PM me that would be fine, rather than hijacking this guy's thread. :o

Doctor Morbius said:

how are you mixing up your workouts to include intervals?

No problem, and it may be helpful to the OP since my goal is similar, to get faster at distances from 20K to centuries. Two quick notes: (1) my high-intensity work is compromised at the moment because I am nursing sore gluteus medius muscles (strained by doing my intervals a little too hard too soon, even though I didn't start interval training until I had a solid base of 2 months at 75%MHR). Consequently, I have to get off the saddle >200w to avoid stressing the glutes, and this means shorter intervals; and (2) I'm in month 5 of a 12-month program to be in shape to race again, so I'm a long way from starting to peak. I haven't done a full-out 40K TT, but extrapolating from other data I estimate my 40K TT MP at ~275w. My week looks like this.
Mon, Wed & Fri - 3 hr rides at ~175w-200w (I have a variety of courses, but they all involve some extended climbs)
Sat & Sun - 3 hr rides with my club; avg pace is only ~200w, so I go to the front and push the pace to ~275w uphill and upwind
Tues - short, high-intensity interval day: 30 min warmup at progressive pace (100w-200w) to my favorite hill (3.3 miles; 4%-8% grades; wide bike lane) for 1-1.5 hours of intervals. I mix it up, but my intervals range from 275w-500w at ~60% TMAX for that intensity, recovery to ~65%MHR. This is my hardest day of the week and I really have to psych myself up for this day (which reminds me, it's tomorrow)
Thurs - normally longer (20-30 min) intervals at ~250-275w, to simulate TT conditions. These are the ones I can't do at the moment, so I just do an insane routine of 300+w off the saddle at a high cadence for as long as I can do it, back on the saddle at ~175w-200w to rest up a bit, then off the saddle again. I'm beginning to fall in love with these intervals -- you have no idea how intense it is to do a high-power, high-cadence off the saddle. Initially, they just drained me, but I'm getting the hang of them now. Ever want to pull over to a grassy park and just fall over without even unclipping? That's how I felt initially after a few of these.
All of this is designed to accomplish three objectives: (1) build my endurance for long rides; (2) increase my LT and VO2MAX; and (3) shorten my dynamic recovery time for variable power TT pacing and for the surge/recover pattern of RRs and crits. I'm trying to get data on whether one can specifically train to shorten acidosis recovery, but am coming up a bit short -- it's inconceivable to me that this crucial aspect of competitive cycling hasn't been specifically researched, so I'm still looking for data.
Hope this was helpful and my apologies to the OP if it is off-subject.
Paul

Thanks for the reply. Man that sounds like a lot of training! I didn't even see a rest day in there. At that volume I'm afraid I'd burn out pretty quickly, especially in this heat. 8 - 10 hours a week is about all I can muster most of the time. Occasionally, I'll bump that up but I just get to bored with it after that.

During July I brought the bike back in and put it in the trainer and did 4 day blocks of 2 hours @ 75% with 3 days off to recover. I can't really explain this technically but it seems that workouts like this on a fluid trainer leave me much more fatigued than doing the same routine while riding outdoors. My quads would get pretty sore by the fourth day. If I were to do that same routine outdoors there wouldn't be any soreness and I would be able to ride 5 or 6 days without any ill effects.

Anyway, I'm considering something like the following for August; Mon & Tues: 2 x 20 intervals followed by 75% work totaling 2 hours. Wed & Thurs: 75% work for 2.5 hours and maybe working up to 3 hours at the end of the month. I tend to like exercising for consecutive days with plenty of recovery time at the end rather than spreading the days out with rest days in between.

I personally don't think it is necessary to ride or train for periods longer than one's event distance. Since my goal is to improve my 50 mile time, 2.5 hours should be sufficient. My cousin is the head personal trainer at a chi-chi health club in Indianapolis' nuvo riche side of town. As to be expected, we discuss training ideas at family gatherings. One of his clients is a teen that is training for cross country. This kid was running 7 miles a day 5 to 6 days per week to train for a 2 mile event. When my cousin put him on shorter but more intense runs the kid's time's improved as to be expected.

Well, scratch the above idea. Just finished up an hour ride with two 15 min intervals. Even though I was piddling around for 10 minutes between efforts I couldn't get my HR below 80% due to the heat. My average HR for the ride was 87% with half interval and half piddling around. And it's supposed to get hotter thoughout the week! The entire second interval was between 177 - 182 BPM and I wasn't even pushing myself hard.

Didn't have any problems with lactic acid build up in the legs though! Seems like whenver I've spent some time on the trainer (all of July) my legs don't get tired or burn. I'll give it another day or two but I may pull the bike back indoors and just watch the X-Files or something while training. When using the trainer my legs seem to take the brunt of the workload and I get DOMS after a few 2 hour sessions.

Doctor Morbius said:

Man that sounds like a lot of training!

I agree. If I were going to be racing soon, I would cut back on the volume and put more focus on quality. But, at this point I'm just trying to get back to where I was back when I was racing seriously -- 60 miles at 20-25mph was just a normal day's workout. I'm not the slightest bit interested in my MP benchmarks at the moment -- they're just numbers. I really throw in the interval workouts to get comfortable riding at the higher power numbers. My short-term goal is to get my recovery power up to ~250w. Then, I'll want to get it up to ~300w. Then, I think I'll be happy.

Doctor Morbius said:

Anyway, I'm considering something like the following for August; Mon & Tues: 2 x 20 intervals followed by 75% work totaling 2 hours. Wed & Thurs: 75% work for 2.5 hours and maybe working up to 3 hours at the end of the month. I tend to like exercising for consecutive days with plenty of recovery time at the end rather than spreading the days out with rest days in between.

My one reaction to your training plan is the back-to-back interval days. I just think you might want to consider putting a 2.5-3 hr recovery ride at 65%-75% in between.

Doctor Morbius said:

I personally don't think it is necessary to ride or train for periods longer than one's event distance. Since my goal is to improve my 50 mile time, 2.5 hours should be sufficient.

I agree. When I was racing seriously, my daily training ride was 60 miles and my races were 50-100 miles. I think in part there's a psychological thing going on here. If my routine ride is 50 miles and the event is 50 miles, I'm thinking, "This is no big deal. I do this ride all the time. This is just going to be a little faster than normal." If my routine ride is 25 miles, I'm thinking, "Gee, I wonder if I can go the distance at race pace?"

Also what about the idea of finishing a race with some reserves? Obviously sprinting @ 45mph for the past Km means that you could've gone a little further at sub-maximum efforts? Obviously if you're crawling across the finish-line on your hands and knees and collapsing in heap afterwards, you're not gonna be very competitive.

It's kinda like during intervals above your LTH at 90-95%. You're not going to be doing an entire race at that level, but training there will raise your efficiency. So having a little training at 110% of the distances of races will ensure that you can finish the race for sure.