track taining intervals

Andy Coggan put together a nice powerpoint presentation a few years ago on this very subject:

fixedgearfever.comPASO.pptOpen ↗

It details the training over the course of an entire season, and yes, your 20 minute intervals fit in fine and dandy.

If you don't have a power meter then you'll have to go off "feel" - but it's not too too hard to get in the right ball park if you use some common sense.

The 4km pursuit is one of the longest typical individual TT distance on the track, but most track racing is actually a lot longer than 12 laps on a 333 velodrome. If you want to track race more than a couple events a year you'll end up doing a lot more mass start track events like scratch races (basically crits on the track), points races, miss and outs, win and outs, Tempo races, snowball races, chariot races, handicap races, Australian pursuits, etc. There are a ton of creative and interesting events on the track and the typical weeknight track racing session spends a lot more time doing mass start events than doing solo events, two up pursuits or even match sprints.

Bottom line, the fitness starts in the same place as on the road with building core aerobic fitness as you'll see in the presentation Swampy pointed you to. From there you can specialize a lot towards things like the kilo, pursuit or match sprinting or you can leverage your road fitness for events like points races, handicap races, miss and outs, scratch races, etc.

For the mass start events a good sprint is very useful but perhaps more important is high power for up to eight minutes of a typical shorter track race (points races and madisons can go for an hour or more) and the ability to repeatedly do big bursts and slightly sub maximal sprints for events like miss and outs and points races. Micro-intervals would be useful there with an emphasis on short near maximal sprints as opposed to longer L6 style bursts. Get out to your local track, take advantage of any sort of intro to track program they have (most do) and you'll learn quickly what sort of events they run, which play to your strengths and what sort of training you'll want to do to transfer your road fitness to the track.

Track racing is really fun and a great way to tune up your crit and fast road race skills. Race a few miss and outs and you'll get really good at knowing where you are in the field, who's around you, who's attacking and where you should be to avoid getting trapped with nowhere to go in a sprint. That and after a season on the track most crits will feel like they're ridden in slow motion, they may still hurt plenty but the speeds will seem tame after some track racing.

Good luck,
-Dave

thanks for the comments and tips.

i'll look into the andy coggan article.

hope he gives details on the kind of intervals with length and recovery time.. i overheard track guys talking intervals and they were on the subject of 1 day they do 20 seconds all out followed by 2 min rest. then another workout a few days later the do 20 seconds hard, but with 40 seconds rest. they do 10 of these, rest 10 minutes and do ten more the same way. thats alot different than my simple 20 minute intervals, or the 4 minute intervals. then they were saying in another workout they do 20 seconds all out, rest till they feel good .. could be 3-4-5 minutes. then do a few more the same way. then rest 10 minutes and then do 1 minute very hard intervals, resting a long time so their next is just as hard. they do a few of these, rest 10 minutes and then do a few 4 minute intervals hard, resting however long they need till they can do the next just as hard. they do 6 20 second intervals. 5 minute intervals and 2-3 four minute intervals...sounds like a hard workout. lots of rest between, but with their other weekly session of hard 20 seconds with only 40 seconds rest, they do both kinds.
any tips on these types of intervals?
i may try these.. i still plan on doing a few road races this summer.. thanks for the tips..