March Training Advice – Moving onto the Next Steps
I hope you all enjoyed a month getting back into the routine of training again. It’s March already and Spring is here! Firstly, well done to those that signed up for the SKODA Ring of Clare this month and kick starting your summer goals. A special well done to Sean McGlynn on winning the first prize of 3 months coaching with Schleck X-perience and we are delighted to welcome you to the team and look forward to guiding you towards your goals. I hope more of you will join us on the journey! Now that you have started to complete regular weekend rides and have introduced a basic mid-week session, what is next?
The next step, moving into March, includes increasing your Aerobic endurance and power for shorter periods.
The next steps?
Increasing your aerobic base and commencing workouts that will increase your ability to produce the power required to tackle the long climbs and lengthy headwinds that you will encounter during the course of your events are key in this phase. Along with your now regular weekend training rides, these are sessions that will focus your effort just below your maximal steady state or the power you can sustain on a long hill. As you get closer to your event this type of session will not only allow you to ride longer for a given effort, but along with your longer endurance rides, you will be able to repeat these efforts consistently throughout your event.
This Month – Getting consistent with your training!
This month a good goal is build on the introductory work you did last month and start to build those consistent training patterns that will lead to good results in the months ahead. You can start to enjoy the better spring weather and increase the duration of rides to reflect this. This increase in fitness will allow for a gradual increase in your mid-week training, increasing the duration and number of these sessions over time.
6 Tips for March:
• Get regular and consistent with your training rides!
• Maintain and start to gradually increase the longer weekend rides to increase your aerobic base as the weather gets better.
• Your Sunday ride can reach around 2.5-3hrs with the better conditions and you will see the increase in your fitness after a few of these.
• Still prioritise the longer training with your friends or others that have signed up for the event. As this will still help you stick to your planned rides as we said last month will increase motivation and continue to build your group riding skills for when the event comes around.
• You can start add intensity into your Saturday ride as these tend to be not as long as the typical Sunday ride. 2hrs with a 10-15min steady effort on a hill or harder piece of road can do a lot for your aerobic power building for the sessions to come.
• Finally, mid-week, you can now make this into a good intensive session focusing on gradually and carefully building your power at and around your threshold or Functional Threshold Power as it is commonly referred to. You can still do this on an indoor trainer in the evening and after a warm-up start complete 2 x 8-10mins effort around 15% per cent more effort than your weekend training effort or 85% of your Max Heartrate (several minutes recovery between efforts is ideal). You can increase the number of efforts over the month to three. Limit this session to around 1hr. Towards the end of the month you can start to introduce another midweek session, this can focus on event specific exercises, we will focus more on these types of sessions next month!
That will give you plenty to focus on for this month! Until next month……
For those of you that would like daily advice you can sign up to individualised training plans with the Schleck X-perience CLICK HERE
See the link for our Spring training xperience designed for those wishing to get the maximum benefit for their summer cycling goals! CLICK HERE Last places remaining!